Giddy Up Friday: Craft Cabinet Organization

My little girls love to create just as much as I do. My oldest daughter has been drawing since she was only 14 months old on a Magna Doodle, no joke! My youngest daughter caught wind of the fun and started, just around 2 years old. It's been non-stop creating ever since. We learned early on that we needed a place where they could keep their coloring books and crayons, magna doodles, etc.  A place they could easily get to, without getting into the wrong things or getting hurt! Enter in the creation of the "craft cabinet".

This is the finished result

Their "craft cabinet" has been a great source of inspiration and has always been filled to the brim. We have filled it, emptied it, cleaned it and reorganized it, over and over many times. Finally we came up with a much better system that has kept it cleaner more times than not. Everything has a place and everything must be in that place or there is weeping and frustration from all members of the family when something can't be found.

These photos document the clean out process from last year! It's a very "Clean Sweep" style of organizing. The cabinet (in our needing to be remodeled kitchen) is used for their crafting supplies and measures 22"W x 23"D x 38"H total. A small space, organized really well, can house a ton of craft supplies! I promise! So here goes....

Clean Sweep - take everything out first!

Here's the panoramic view of the mess we created...

Here's Elephant joining in the sorting process!

I'm amazed at how much was eventually crammed in there!

All of the drawers were removed and emptied. Then sorted by labels.

Monkey & Elephant show off our amazing results!

We had the 4 larger bins already, as well as the 3 drawer pieces, but adding the labels, changing the layout a little and moving up the middle shelf level, helped tremendously. Although these pictures were from October of last year, I'm happy to say - it still looks this good!

In the bins, we have:
1) All play-doh
2) Coloring books (now for guests) or notebooks (which they use more often)
3) Wooden objects, googly eyes and other beading or fun kid projects
4) Felt, PomPoms, Pipe Cleaners, Foam stickers, etc.

The bins are standard plastic containers and the 3 Drawer units are 8 1/2 x 11. I have since bought them a standard 12 x 12 Scrapbooking tote, since the scrapbooking pads don't fit into either the bins or drawers.

I'm sharing the labels I made for the drawers, in a color version and in a black and white version (if you'd like to color your own). I used clear packing tape to "laminate" them and then stuck them to the inside of the drawers, where the handle of each drawer creates a curve. I only used 9, but I have added more so you can pick and choose which you need or prefer to use! Click on the image below to get to the Google Doc to download the PDF.

I hope you enjoy them. Let me know if I'm missing a really important label and I'll add some more later. Have a great weekend!