Organising my Cupboard

My lovely friend Ani asked me to write about how I organise my cupboard. Since I collect all sorts of boxes, bottle tops, odds and ends, it is rather an effort to keep my craft cupboard tidy. I try really hard not to cram things in, but when I am in a rush that is what happens.

Here is my cupboard. The top part with the lock is for the things that need an adult to supervise or I have collected for a particular purpose. The children have the bottom part of the cupboard and are allowed to use anything from there whenever they want. 

This is inside the children's part of the craft cupboard. It does need a bit more of a tidy up, but it gives you an idea of the way in which I organise it.

The bottom shelf is scrap paper and cardboard. My mother keeps all the coloured cardboard dividers when she has to shred documents for work. They are fantastic for drawing pictures on. There are also old newspapers and foam sheets.

The middle shelf is full of shoe boxes. Each shoe box is labelled with its contents. One has cardboard rolls, another has stamps, another has egg cartons, ribbons, matchsticks and so on. It makes it easy to know where everything is.

The top shelf has bags of material scraps on the left, empty boxes on the right and a red plastic box in the middle. This is the shelf that is in daily use and the contents of it are rarely the same two weeks in a row. If I was to take a photo of it next week then I have no doubt that the boxes would have been used and most of the material scraps. Then it would be a case of the types of recyclable materials we collect to replace them with.

The red box is the children's quick craft box. It has a selection of paper, ribbons, bottle tops, interesting pictures, scissors and glue. This is what they pull out every day and the rest of the craft items are used when they are making something in particular. I find if the container is too full, then the children become overwhelmed and don't make anything. I try and change the contents of the box regularly so that the children will have different items to inspire their artwork.It is our version of Play School's useful box.