Do you love projects that let you be creative, or maybe you have kiddos that love to do arts and crafts projects, but struggle with the organizing of all of the little pieces and supplies that go along with all of this creativity. This episode is full of ideas for you and for your kids, so that you can finally get your craft supplies organized and make them orderly so that you can always find what you are looking for when you need it.

And you can spend more time being creative. Creative and getting crafty, instead of always looking for the supplies or buying extra supplies that you actually already have, you just can’t find them.

Welcome to another tip Tuesday episode, if you are a longtime listener, you know that on Tuesdays, I take the time to answer your specific questions that you have submitted. Most of these questions come in from a super easy, a little app that allows you to record a message for me, just like you’re leaving a voicemail for a friend or a simple voice message.

All you have to do is go to intentional, edit.com. Click on the record. Record now button. And that button pops up at the bottom or the side of your screen, whether you’re on a computer or on your phone, you just click the record now button. And then you ask your question or tell me your struggle. You don’t necessarily even have to ask a question, just explain the frustration that you are having with something along the lines of an organizing [00:02:00] project, a messy house, how to get the clutter out of their systems that aren’t working, how you can set up systems.

Maybe you don’t even know what is missing or what is lacking, how to solve your problem. Wherever you think I could help you with go to intentional edit.com. Click on that record now button and I will use the question that you ask for a future tip Tuesday episode. So many questions are similar and if you are struggling with something, you want the answer to something, there are thousands of other people that do too. So go to intentional, edit.com or right now, before you listened to the episode, click on the record now button and leave me a message so that I can answer your question or give you a solution for your struggle on a future tip Tuesday, intentional edit podcast episode.

The question that I am going to answer today, came in from a listener that says in the summer, my daughter uses a lot of arts and supplies and loves to craft. It’s a mess, but partially my fault, because we don’t have anything organized. It’s all kept in big totes and no rhyme or reason to what is in each one, other than it is all crafting, what is the best way to organize it?

And how can I have them help? These girls really love arts and crafts and our eight. Eight and nine. Okay, great question and such fun ages to do all of these crafty thing is summer is a wonderful time to get your kids involved in assisting in the organizing projects. Especially when they are the main people that are going to use these products or they’re using the things that needed to be organized.

They’re certainly capable of this type of project because they’re already loving the whole craft thing and organizing and crafting kind of go hand in hand these girls are definitely capable of this type of project, but you may need to take a break. So with them, or do the projects in smaller chunks of time, [00:04:00] depending on their attention spans and how detailed you are trying to get with the organizing of the supplies. Like every single project you will do, you have to start by getting everything out, removing everything from the totes.

In this situation, you currently have these in all the stuff in the totes. I get it out of there, take it out, put it on the table, put it on the floor, wherever you’re going to talk a little project and let the girls be in charge of that part of the process. If you want to start with that for them, that’s a great thing they can do. They can help remove this stuff and set it out on the tables and then they can also be part of the next step, which is always the sorting and they can sort out the supplies.

Boxes big boxes, especially can take up a lot of valuable space if they get a craft kit that comes in a big box. When you take out all of the supplies, you’re thinking, why on earth did it come in a box so big because the supplies don’t take up that much space. So remember the boxes that some of these things come in and take up a lot of valuable space, unless you need that box.

Then it’s a good idea to recycle it instead of keeping it and you could get smaller container. Containers or even use baggies to keep these certain things and keep them separated. If the box has directions on it, you can cut out the chunk with the directions and put that in the baggie or the new, smaller container that you’ll be storing it in.

After the sorting is complete. It might be time to take a break. And again, depending on your kids, how much time you have what their attention spans are, it might have been break time after just removing everything. You simply remove this stuff, and then it was break time. And then the next day you went back to the project and that’s when the sorting happened.

And now it’s time for another break. Gage how your kids are doing with this, you know, them best. So the sorting is complete. Time for a break probably then when you decided to get back into it, this is when you start to do the purging, [00:06:00] because you sorted things into like items. You put papers with papers, glitter with glitter, blues and adhesives, and that kind of stuff with that craft kit supplies together.

All the Play-Doh supplies together, paints all of these things. You were sorting them into categories. So now you can take some of the things away and you can purge, but also bring the kids back in and see what they don’t want anymore. Make sure you are checking the paints because a lot of times paint dries up markers and pens, too. Those things dry up, they dry out and really anything that has gone bad, like in that situation where it’s now dried, you can’t use it anymore. It’s time to get rid of those. Bring a trash bag and throw out anything that is no longer needed. And also have a different bag or box for donations. You can give the girls a piece of paper and have them test the markers. That’s a great job. Take off each cap, test it on the paper. If it doesn’t work, it goes in the trash. They can do that for a few minutes and go through your markers and then you’ll know what you have works and you can actually use it.

So you’re not storing things that you can’t use anyway. After the purging is done, you can take inventory of what you have left. What are the things that remain. And what size of containers would be best for these supplies? There are tons of inexpensive items that will be good options for containers.

I love two of them. I love the hour containers and the multi-purpose bends from the container store. That is what I use for organizing in almost every room of my house. I have one, if not both of those different types of containers, because they’re clear, they come in a variety of shapes and sizes and they are just so good for so storing so much stuff and because they have a solid bottom and sides.

If something spills or leaks, you can easily clean it, wash it out and get it back to new [00:08:00]without ruining that container and having a big mess because it’s soaked through a different type of container. In the blog post that I do for the intentional edit podcast. I will link. I will have links for you for some of these products and pictures. And, um, I will link to a blog post that I have done before. So I’ll put that blog post in the podcast description as well.

Click on that, check that out because I have the details in there with the different products, and then you can see what I use and lots of pictures for how to organize arts and crafts. So check the description below when you, wherever you’re listening to this episode of the podcast, scroll down and then you can get the link to see what, how I’ve organized craft spaces and get links to the products that I’m recommending for organizing as well. Of course you can use other things, but I know the question.

This is a popular post on my website for fun, some reason. And I always get questions about the exact product and the pictures and all of it is linked there. Now, if you have a desk or a designated craft area, you might want to use something like a small turntable with dividers in it on top for the things that they use often or you can have even a little caddy that would have a handle on the top that is easy to move around with the favorite supplies in it as well. Another option. If you don’t have a desk or a designated, a crafts bias that is bigger like that. Then. The little cart on wheels. Usually there’s three different shelves and things can even hook on the sides and hang off of those.

Those can be incredibly practical. You put the most use items on the top, and then maybe some of the new projects that they have received, or these kids that they want to do. Those could be on the bottom, but then when they want to actually sit down and do the project, they pull it out and then they can get rid of the packaging and the box when they have completed it.

Kids can easily move around a [00:10:00] craft cart like this. And if they are doing crafts in different locations throughout the house, this might be a great option. It’s small enough that it can be wheeled into a closet when it is not in use or someplace in a different location when it doesn’t need to be out because it’s not being used, whatever you decide for containers.

Craft supplies seem to multiply. They have lots of little tiny pieces. There is a lot to use from the actual machines or the tools to the specific pieces that are needed for those tools, the papers, the embellishments, all of that good stuff. So be sure to add labels to your containers, especially if they are not clear.

And that way everyone knows what is inside they don’t have to go digging around for things. in various locations and because they can read the label and know what is in that container. That’s also a reason I love the clear containers because you can glance and see what’s inside. follow those steps and you will have your arts and crafts organized in no time.

Be sure you check out the link that I’m going to put in this podcast description so that you can click on the blog post with more information and see the photos. And get the visual for craft storage and ultimate organization for all these arts and crafts supplies. Good luck with this. This is a fun project. Has you for organizing this summer one bonus of getting all of this cleared out and making it orderly and having the kids help is that the kids usually start using things that they haven’t used in a few months or even a few years, because it is a forgotten thing.

If they didn’t see it, they didn’t know it was there. They forgot. About it. So when we get to this point, And the things are organized and they were part of the process of doing it. Then they get excited about using some of these forgotten supplies. That is a great benefit of this. When they’re apart of the project and decision-making process, they usually make decisions [00:12:00] about getting rid of some things that maybe you would have thought to keep. You didn’t know that they actually weren’t into.

That type of craft anymore, or they weren’t interested in doing that. So that’s a bonus as well. This is a great project to tackle over the summer. Thanks for joining me for this episode and submitting a question. If you are listening and you have a question or a struggle that you want me to help with.

please go to intentional edit.com. Right now, click on the record. Now button that pops up. Leave me a message. And I will answer your question. I will put it on the list to make sure it is answered in an upcoming episode of the intentional edit podcast.