The Craft Closet Concept

For the first few years of The Peanut's life, we pretty much had toys everywhere in our house.  It was as if a toy store had exploded and filled every nook and cranny of our home with plastic bits and pieces that wanted nothing more than to be stepped on painfully in the dark.

I'm talking about you, little lego pieces.

As she has gotten older, we've started working on "project pick up your own crap," which now works about fifty percent of the time in any given week.  I end up being the other 50 percent if I want things tidy.  But we're working on it -- and luckily, those little lego pieces have become so precious that she makes sure they get put away these days lest her Westie puppy, Roxie, chew them to bits.

The Peanut has always loved to do little craft projects -- artwork, coloring, making little books by stapling paper together and then writing a story and illustrating it...you name a fun crafty thing to do, and she adores it.

So we have tried to foster that creativity as much as possible.  Which means we have a lot of colored paper, glitter glue and assorted types of markers here, there and everywhere as well.

A few months ago, my friend Julie Mills -- who is a fabu professional organizer, btw -- came up with a great concept for me:  the craft closet.  And it is working so well for us, I wanted to pass the idea along.

But let me start at the beginning. Several years ago, my friend Fiona Avery sent me a book that I absolutely loved called Sarah Ban Breathnach's Mrs. Sharp's Traditions: Reviving Victorian Family Celebrations Of Comfort and Joy.

I loved it so much that "comfort and joy" became a sort of personal mantra that is reflected even in this blog title. For me, it means finding the joy and happiness in the little, everyday things -- a warm cuppa tea and a good book, a cozy chair and a snuggle after school with The Peanut as we talk about her day, the times when our little family enjoys a hearty laugh together over something silly.


One of the ideas in the book was called a "rainy day cupboard."  It was a Victorian idea that the book updated about having a cubby in the house filled with colored paper, cloth scraps, coloring implements, and other assorted goodies so that kids would have something to do when playing outside was impossible due to inclement weather.

We hadn't had any children at the time I first read this, but I tucked the idea away in my brain for when we finally got our little miracle.

It took a few more years of fertility hell, but when we did, I set up a little "rainy day" cubby for her in an entry hall cabinet.  It was mostly filled with flash cards with fun pictures that she liked to look at and little plastic animals that we made up stories about as she got older, but it was her little corner of the house when the gloom of a gray day got too much to stand.

As she's gotten older, though, the craft projects have gotten more elaborate because she's learned about paints and joy that is glitter glue, that stickers must come in all shapes and sizes and degrees of shininess, and all sorts of other aesthetically pleasing awesomeness from her 7-year-old perspective.  Plus, since family and friends know she likes little art projects, she gets kits and things for presents from them when she visits and that begins to add up after a while.

Long story short, we were being overrun by craft supplies, and something had to be done.  And that's where Julie's genius idea of a "craft closet" was born.

We live in an old home -- it's about 107 years old, and has all the character of built-in bookshelves and deliberate nooks and crannies that you get with an older home.  Unlike a lot of them, though, ours has lots of closet space.  Including in our sun room, which was built with a pull-down Murphy bed flanked by two closets which we really weren't using except as a place to pile unwanted junk.

Julie and I cleaned out the left-hand closet and I got a small, free-standing bookshelf to put in it along with a couple of plastic drawer containers that would fit construction and colored paper.  We took some other organizer bins that I already had on hand, and got to work sorting and pruning the craft supplies down to a workable, usable mishmash.  And then it was just a matter of arranging them on the shelf.

The best part is being able to find things when we want to do something.

Need a colored pencil?  We have a whole bin of them ready to go.  We've got a second of washable markers.

Crayons?  Ditto.

What sort of paper do you need?  We have three drawers full:  colored, lined notebook, and construction, all easy to reach and find for small hands.  Along with another bin of craft scissors and paper punches that do different shapes and squiggles, and one of washable glue sticks.  And loads of stickers ready for the using.

Next to the closet, I've got The Peanut's craft table -- which is actually the very first coffee table Mr. ReddHedd and I ever bought for ourselves after we first got married.  It's the perfect height for her now with a few little chairs we got from Ikea for her and any friends to sit at it and play.

The Peanut's table is just across the room from my computer/work area, so we can both sit together and hum right along.  Which has been so nice on snow days home from school or this past summer when the heat was too much for everyone at times.  It's also where she does her homework most days, so I like her having the association of that area with fun -- it makes the schoolwork easier to get done when you aren't having to go to a drudgery corner, I think.

The room is sunny and cheery most days, and even on a dreary day it's nice to sit in here and watch the birds huddle on the large bird feeder right outside the front windows.

And so, I bequeath to you our lovely craft closet idea.  It would be easily scalable for smaller apartments or larger spaces -- you just pop in whatever works for your family.

Having a designated area for everything keeps the mounds of crap in check at our house, and it really helps that The Peanut knows she can reach whatever she wants or needs at any time, so most crafts and artwork are really self-starting (except for paint, which she has to ask to do since it requires a ton of newspaper to be spread about for everyone's safety.


(Great photo via Very Little Dave.)