A Place to Create

The quest to organize our house and create functional and fun spaces continues this week.  My husband Phil has done an amazing job putting things together for me but the room I am most proud of is our new craft room.

 

In our old house we had a super functional craft room space that was set up in the unfinished basement portion of our house.  Keelyn spent many hours in that room and William was starting to use it too.  We set up a temporary space in this house but it was not very efficient so I dreaded when Keelyn asked to do crafts.    We decided that needed to change so Phil and I set to work.  Our new spot is set up in the front room of our house officially labelled the “den”.  To date, we’ve had it filled with our sofa from the old house we couldn’t sell and random boxes that we hadn’t unpacked because they were the boxes filled with things we didn’t really know what to do with.  Our plan for this space was to set it up as a really nice office for Phil and I as we’ve never had a great work space.  But what we want isn’t totally in the budget yet (not a priority) and we don’t want to just do something temporary office wise.  We also planned to do a small space for the children to have as a craft room, games room and when they are older homework space.  We decided to clean out the boxes and set up the room as a functional space for the kids.  We had all the shelving from our old house craft room so this wasn’t really an investment.  I did find a great round adjustable table from Kijji  for $20.00 only and I have ordered some colourful school chairs from School Speciality in singles.  The kids were lucky to get some Christmas money so we used it to get our chairs.  I’m so excited for the chairs to arrive as it will complete the room.  

We also need to hang out Keelyn’s first painting and fame and hang William’s first and over the summer I found some large picture frames from Value Village that I spray painted green, pink and blue so the kids could display their own art work.  

Like the playroom, all materials are organized in bins so it makes tidy up time really easy.  We also hung a magnet/white board for each child which we purchased (previously) from Ikea right now they can play with it, draw on it, hang art work up and I figure once they are older it will be a great spot to hang homework assignments, and “to do” lists.  

We also have a bar with cups from Ikea hanging for gluing materials.  Foam stickers, beads, popsicle sticks etc the materials never last long they get consumed by our little creators pretty fast.  I was going to put crayons and markers in the cups but my little ones are in the draw on the wall/table/floor stage right now so those are all in bins on a shelf up high until they are bigger. 

 

 

I love, love this space.  It’s a lot of fun and super functional and will really grow with my children.  We are fortunate to have the room in our house for this but it’s not necessary.  A craft, creative space can be created in any small corner in any sized space.  Like I mentioned previously we made it work in an unfinished corner in the basement of our old home.  A bedroom closet would work, a corner in the living room or mudroom entryway would be perfect. The size of the space isn’t what makes it a functional space it’s how you organize it that counts!