In recent months, Noelle has taken less of an interest in her toys, and more of an interest in art, and being the little brother he is, Jaren has followed along! Before she even gets dressed in the morning, she’ll head directly for her papers and markers.  Right when she comes back from school, the first words out of her mouth is, “Mommy, can you draw/color/craft with me?” The struggle is real for this non-artist mom whose best work is little more than a dressed up stick figure (can I get some commiseration here??).

As much as I want to cultivate and nurture her love for the arts, the amount of clutter and chaos that comes with it can be overwhelming at times (err.. most of the time). Markers and pens stuffed in different drawers around the house, papers of all kinds hastily stacked together and set on any counter space available  I needed a solution!!

Well, let me introduce you to my solution – The IKEA Raskog Utility Cart

Raskog_Utility

It comes in three colors – beige, charcoal, and turquoise.  But you can also paint it yourself as a DIY option like they’ve done here. I went with the turquoise because I already have hints of blue peppered all over my house, and I think it’s such a fun, beautiful, bright blue for adults and children alike!

This is how our cart looks today…

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Raskog Utility Cart

On the top row, we keep our scissors, colored pencils, markers, and glitter glues in the IKEA steel pencil holders. I also had several IKEA Glis boxes at home, so I thought they were perfect for crayons. Then, I used empty, clean Talenti (yes, as in the ice cream!!) tubs to house adhesive jewels and foam stickers. If I ever need more space on the top row, I’m thinking I can get some of these IKEA BYGEL hanging containers to store stuff too.

I already owned a divider (also from IKEA), that fit into the cart perfectly. I put that in the middle row, and am using it to store, tape, washi tape, a stapler, glue/gluesticks, ribbon, and cookie cutters. Off to the side, I’m storing sticker sheets.  Finally, the bottom row is for all their paper, paper scraps, and coloring books.

This has been a great solution for us because now their art is in one place instead of strewn all over the house, and it makes clean-up easy too. They now know exactly where everything belongs, and can quickly put all their supplies back in their given containers instead of just sticking them in the first random drawer they see.

I can see this cart evolving as the kids grow too, though I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot of art from them for years to come!

Do you have a little artist on your hands?  How do you handle all their art supplies?