Organized Art and School Supplies

Updated on August 23, 2024

With many kids going back to school (mine included) I thought I would share with you how I organize our arts, crafts, and school supplies.

We don’t have a lot of storage space in our home. It isn’t terrible, but definitely not as much as I would like. I have a 5 and a 2 year old and we do a lot of arts and crafts in our house. My 5 year old is pretty responsible, but my 2 year old has to be supervised with things like crayons, glue, scissors, etc. I can’t have these items too easily accessible to her.

Since there are so many different types of art supplies and most of them are pretty small, I was able to use a hanging shoe organizer for almost all of our arts and crafts supplies. I purposely bought a clear one so I could see what we have and what we are running low on. This made it really easy when going school shopping for my son this year. We were able to shop our closet for about 75% of what he needed.

As a side note – now is the time to stock up on school supplies. You won’t find better deals. Even before my son started school, I would shop for art supplies for the kids around this time every year. I try to purchase enough to get us through a whole year. Also, I am a bit of an office/school supply hoarder myself and now is the perfect time to stock up!

In the first two rows we store art supplies:

• paint and paint brushes, glue sticks, glue, and scissors
• markers, colored pencils, extra crayon boxes

In the second two rows we store craft supplies:

• googly eyes and popsicle sticks, pom poms, window glass kit, pipe cleaners
• foam kits, foam stickers and shapes 

In the bottom two rows we store school supplies and items for projects:

• protractor, compass, pens, pencils
• empty paint sticks and dried markers, beads and bottle caps, an idea book, broken crayons and my star mold

My kids do a lot of coloring with crayons. These all get dumped in a small rubbermaid bin. This is much easier for my 2 year old than trying to navigate the cardboard boxes they come in. Underneath that you will see a bin containing coloring books, stickers, and a few miscellaneous supplies.

You can see I hang our large paper from a child’s pants hanger from one of the shelves. I also purchased a roll of craft paper from the hardware store. I can pull off large pieces and the whole roll was only a couple of dollars.

Lastly, I have my own office supply cabinet. I have a plastic crate in there that stores extra notebooks, folders, paper, , binder dividers, sheet protectors, etc. These are mostly for my use, but if my kids need something I have it readily available for them.

I hope this has given you some ideas as to how to organize all those glue sticks and markers and gets your kids off on the right foot for school! How do you store your art supplies for your kids?

Linking up here:
Delightful Order, The Shabby Nest, Tatertots and Jello, Not Just a Housewife, Tip Junkie, Sugar Bee Crafts, Clean and Scentsible, I’m an Organizing Junkie, A Bowl Full of Lemons, I Heart Organizing, Project Inspire: Best of 2012