Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Organized
The dining table? It's a wide-open space that invites lots of uses--and for many families, it's a favorite spot to work on crafts projects.
Sewing or quilting, papercrafts or kids' projects, the table houses them all, along with the snips and scraps they leave behind.
How to keep order on the crafts front? Try these ideas to tame crafts clutter in the dining area today in the New Year Cleaning Challenge.
Controlling Crafts Clutter in the Dining Room
If your dining room table sees lots of crafts action, you know the problem: crafts clutter!
Watercolor masterpieces waiting for the paint to dry. A sewing project spilling scraps with abandon. The scrapbooking work-in-progress, which has progressed all over the table.
How to keep crafts clutter contained? Try these ideas to bring order to dining-table crafting.
Bring out the bins. Crafting is an activity that takes well to the concept of "divide and conquer", and the weapons of choice are plastic bins. Placing materials and supplies you need for a crafts project inside a lidded, stackable bin makes it easy to clear away the project at the end of each crafting session.
Store crafts bins on a nearby shelf, or in a closet when not in use to keep crafts organized and accessible.
Supplies on a roll. Children's arts and crafts supplies are easy to locate through the clear drawers of a rolling drawer cart. With crayons in one drawer, paper in another, and adhesives living in a third, materials are close at hand--and at the end of the day's creating, the cart can be rolled back to a closet or corner, out of the way.
Shoebag solution. A behind-the-door shoe bag works beautifully to store crafts materials and supplies. Hang one inside a coat closet for easy access to what you need for dining table arts and crafts.
Divide and defend a work area with screens. For some craft activities, like sewing, you'll need longer-term space for the sewing machine, cutting mat and ironing board. If you must work in a shared space like the dining room, try to screen off the crafts corner when not in use.
A simple shoji screen, unfolded to screen the view of the work area, keeps a "dining room" feel in the room, and hides the straggle of snips and threads.
Plan "put away" time into each crafting session. The simplest way to keep order in a shared space when crafting? Remember to include "put away" time at the end of each crafting session. A minute or two devoted to returning crafts supplies to their bins is the secret to keeping crafts clutter at bay in a multi-use space.