home ideas

May 18, 2015

Clever ways to organize craft supplies

So my craft stuff had gotten a little out of control. I went looking for ideas on how to corral it, and I thought I’d share some of my faves with you. Because I’m guessing I’m not the only one with art or craft supplies run amok.

1. Multi-purpose craft room – I love the way Alexis (of Persia Lou) incorporated space for various types of craft, work, and for her kids to entertain themselves all in one room!

2. Repurposed containers – Put vintage finds you love to use as storage!

3. Convert a hutch to a sewing space!

4. Craft supply shelves – Matching glass jars give even a mishmash of supplies a uniform appearance a and allow you to see what you’ve got.

5. Craft closet makeover – one couple transformed a closet into a welcoming workspace.

6. DIY birch branch brush holder – Drill holes into a piece of branch to hold brushes, pens, or other tools.

7. Repurpose an old ironing board as a place to hold spools of thread.

8. Art journal cart – This IKEA cart is a great place to keep journals and supplies. And it’s mobile, so you can have a workspace anywhere in the house.

9. You can see the same rolling carts used for other types of supplies in this studio. Also love the 3-tiered metal lazy Susan!

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Photos via respective sites.

February 23, 2014February 23, 2014

The world over dinner

We have a world map over our kitchen table. It’s not on nice canvas or even framed. It’s covered with all these little white arrows pointing to different locations. People coming over the first time often ask if all those arrows point to the places we’ve traveled. I wish! They span much more of the globe than Phillip or I have ever visited.

world-map-3

In college, Phillip took an anthropology class called Peopling of the World. The final was a long list of places you had to find and label on a world map. This was pre-Google maps, so even as an open book test, it was surprisingly difficult. I barely knew Phillip at the time, but my roommate was in the same class. I remember her map stretched out across our living room floor, and Serenity furiously searching through a stack of books and notes to figure out where her little multicolored Post-it labels should go. Phillip printed out his list of places at the one of the school computing labs and cut them into arrows.

world-map-4

When we moved into our current home and he hung it up over our kitchen table, I wasn’t sure about it. I liked the world map, but did it need to be right there in our dining room?

But it grew on me. We find ourselves dreaming over Sunday morning coffee about places we’d like to visit. Or breaking a quiet moment at the dinner table with, “Did you know all of India is north of the equator? Why did I think it was farther south than that?” Or “Spain really does come close to northern Africa.” And we’re geeks so this gets us talking.

So, the map has stayed. One of these days, maybe we’ll even get around to framing it.

December 30, 2013December 30, 2013

Make a fort for kid guests

On Christmas Eve, we hosted an open-house style holiday buffet. While that may not seem to fit in with our theme of simplicity, it was actually a great way to see both sides of the family at once and then spend a quiet, unstructured no-freeway-driving Christmas Day.

We don’t have a ton of space, so making sure we had room for everyone required creative thinking and looking at our place from a different perspective.

There will be another post about how we made the buffet work. Today I just wanted to share the idea we came up with to give our littlest guests a space of their own during the party. We called it the Christmas Fort.

To make it happen, I cleared out everything under my desk (been needing to do that anyway), which is in the living room. I removed the power strip and covered the outlets on the wall behind it, put a blanket on the floor and threw in pillows to make it comfy cozy, and then added toys and books that were safe for the under 3 crowd. (Thanks to my mom for sorting our toy box, while I did some last-minute cleaning.) The final touch was a tablecloth over the top, both to increase the fort feel and because the desk doubled as a snack station.

You could do something similar with any very sturdy desk or table. Or you could create a kid nook in a little corner where there’s not stuff they could easily injure themselves with or damage. (I know. Kids are creative too – they’re great at inventing ways to get hurt and/or destroy things. Just try to make their space reasonably safe.)

In fact, I’d originally planned to move an end table and create a kid nook between our couch and some bookshelves, covering the shelves with either some festive fabric or drawing paper. Then I realized we’d have to lose that nook to make room for the Christmas tree, so I went looking for an alternative and decided to put the unused under-desk space to work.

Overall, the reactions to the Fort were pretty good. My 2-year-old nephews were in and out. My little cousin said it was an “awesome place” and was so excited about it she made her mom get in too. (I’m sorry I missed that!) Some friends we hadn’t seen in awhile stopped by later in the evening, and their kids basically had their own party in there, giving us adults a chance to catch up.

At the end of the day, after everyone had gone home, we had to try it out ourselves.

It was a nice place to be.

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P.S. When I was looking for under-desk fort inspiration, I came across this more long-term solution, using the same Expedit bookshelf/desk combo I have. If you’re interested, you’ll find it on Ikea hackers.