a few weeks ago, during a trip to our local target, i spotted these cute little caddies in the “$1 spot”. inspirational thoughts flooded my mind when thinking of the many ways these could be utilized in our home. i knew exactly what area i was going to tackle first with these caddies (shown below), but a few other ideas that come to mind….you could use these for hair products, make-up supplies, cleaning supplies, a diaper caddy for your car, misc small tools, batteries, small scrapbooking supplies, laundry products, and more.
the possibilities are endless.
the caddies come in a variety of colors, but i stuck with one color scheme for the area i was planning to organize. also, wanted to mention that although these are found in the $1 spot, they are actually $2.50 each.
here are my 4 caddies – in red:
these cute little caddies were the perfect solution for a trouble area in our home. we have this great desk nook between our kitchen and dining room areas. here is the view of it from our kitchen:
this is the view of it from our dining room:
and here you are looking at it straight on:
for the last few years, it has morphed from one use to another. sometimes my husband will work at home from this spot. the desk is a great space for him to set up his laptop. other times, our oldest son will sit here to color or do crafts with glue. the desk has a pane of glass on top, which makes it easier to clean up glue and other sticky craft materials. more often than not, these days, the space is used by our oldest son for doing homework. (i still can’t believe i have a child old enough to bring homework home every day!)
the top left cabinet has always housed my library of cookbooks. that cabinet now holds our family recipe binder – do you see it tucked in on the bottom shelf between my other cookbooks? yay!
that cabinet also holds other random items that i’d like to keep out of reach from our kids.
however, the right cabinet – it was a mess. have a look:
maybe it doesn’t look *that* bad, but upon closer inspection….yikes! there was a mish-mash of random coloring and crafting supplies either housed in the blue bins or sitting on the shelves. there was also a number of coloring books that had seen better days or had been colored on every page.
it was time to give this cabinet a thorough cleaning and purge any broken crayons and used coloring books.
first up, i took everything out of the cabinet. i sorted through the coloring books first and recycled the books that had already been given quite a bit of love from my kids. next up was cleaning out the blue bins:
i found these bins a few years ago at a craft store. they did the job of corralling items for a while, but the crayon bin alone drove me batty. it was tough watching my 1 year old dig around through the bin trying to find a crayon she wanted. and often times she was putting her arm in an awkward position just to get a crayon out or she would have to tilt the bin to see into it. after sorting through the crayon bin, here are the remnants – lots of broken crayons that had settled to the bottom:
and check out the after:
wow! so much better! and much easier for little 1 year old hands/arms to reach!
next up….looks like there was no rhyme or reason as to what ended up in this bin. even though it did have a label at one point:
and here is the after:
i planned this bin specifically to go on the very tip top shelf because it holds items i really want out of reach – like scissors, tape, glue, and erasers that look like little pieces of candy.
also in the bottom of this bin:
were all of these great pencils:
who knew we had this many! i’ll tell you, it’s amazing what you find when you clean and sort. amazing.
since there was room left in the pencil caddy, i added our color wonder markers to the bin. those markers are 100% safe in this house. the real stuff – that is in a special bin over our washer and dryer. yes, i’m a control freak. 🙂
and all of these fun stickers:
here they are in a much easier system to sort through….and it turns out we had about 100 tattoos mixed in with the bunch, so now those have a home of their own too:
here is the before to remind you:
and here is the after:
i simply can’t believe how much junk was originally mixed in with the cabinet. but this is often the case for a busy mommy with 3 children. life gets the better of you. but this simple and easy solution has made our crafting time easier.
and for the proof….here is my 1 year old testing out the new crayon bin. she was a happy girl!
no more awkward arm reaches…
would love to hear how you are organizing your children’s craft supplies!
OMG! I was looking for that exact thing for that exact reason! I will get myself to Target tonight!
Thanks! Emma
I wish that we had Target here! Those would be perfect for our house, as you said for many different areas!!
I am glad to hear there is someone else that is a control freak when it comes to kid craft supplies. 🙂 I love all your storage ideas.
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