I have a major organization project that has been hanging over my head the past few weeks while I've been doing other things, such as preparing for our yard sale.
My daughter loves to make crafts, and loves to make a mess doing it. When she asks if she can paint and I say no, she'll go ask her dad, and he'll say, "Sure," and she'll go and do it herself. Same with playdough, glueing, cutting, you name it. Fortunately, she's reasonably neat:
We've been storing our craft supplies in the buffet cabinet in the dining room, and all crafts are supposed to be done in the dining room (we don't have a separate breakfast table, our house is on the smaller side). Since my daughter's birthday in August, the crafting situation has gotten a little out of control. Not everything is fitting in the cabinets, and what's worse, all the fun new craft supplies are mixing in with the broken crayons, dry markers, and empty glue sticks. My procrastination on the project has just given it time to get worse and worse!
Today, time was running out before I host a family get-together tomorrow. I just didn't have time to go through all the supplies, sort them, and get rid of the dried yucky playdough and the markers that don't work anymore.
My friend recently gave us gifts inside two reusable shopping bags from Ikea:
The best thing about these bags is that one of them zips closed. I decided to use the zipping bag to store all the nice fresh craft supplies that aren't fitting in the cabinet. The black and white bag would hold the completed projects (mostly paintings, but a few 3-dimensional endeavors as well. (The interior of the cabinet will have to wait for another day, as well as a plan for storing completed works, which are in several locations throughout the house currently...) The rest of the items were either put away, recycled, or trashed.
My other organization tool was a basket that I originally bought to store items on top of our refrigerator. It was just a bit too tall to fit between the fridge and the cabinet, so I had to put it aside. I decided to use it to store my daughter's current craft project: a princess storybook.
It fits underneath the buffet, and now I have a place to quickly pitch all the supplies and bits of paper that she is using for the project when it is time for dinner and I want to clear the table. There's even extra space for all the new things she thinks of to add to the book next time she works on it!
Narrowing this project down to the very simple step of clearing the area helped me overcome my procrastination and make some small progress on the project. I handled the mess while still giving my daughter access to her current project!
Linked to 52 Weeks of Organizing at orgjunkie.com!
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