Decluttering: Art Closet | Raising Olives

Before:

This is a picture of my art closet. I really wanted to tidy it up before I took the picture, but Mark said that was cheating. So here it is in all of its cluttered glory. Yes, those are permanent markers on the floor. Yikes!

I knew that this area was going to be a special challenge for me. I love art and I love creating and I love for my children to create and explore with art. In my mind everything in this closet has potential and is valuable.

I have organized and reorganized and tidied and cleaned out this closet many, many times. Everything supposedly does have a place. So, why does it look like this? We just have too much stuff in this area.

So how do you tackle a more difficult task and push yourself to get rid of unnecessary clutter?

Have a specific and defined goal before you start. Consider what you want this area to accomplish.
Enlist an outsider to help. They are not attached to your junk.
Don’t change your goal. When you have more stuff than will fit, get rid of the stuff, don’t amend your goal.
Don’t move things to a different area unless they belong there or it is objectively justified. This just delays dealing with the issue.

I wanted an area to store our art and craft supplies that would be easily accessed and maintained by the children. I also wanted that desk space in the closet to be usable.

My goal was nothing stored on or under the table and everything on the shelves had to be easy for the children to get down and put back up.

Another thing that really helped me with this project is to remember that I can’t have so much stored in an area that it needs to be put back exactly as it is, in order for it to fit. The children won’t stack it just right and then I will be back to my before picture.

Case in point, do you see the fabric in the box and overflowing onto the floor? That does all fit in the box, if you fold it nicely. The children won’t look for a piece of fabric, find it, and then fold everything back nicely so it will fit back in the box, hence the overflow.

I gave away or threw out more than 5 large boxes of stuff from this one closet. Here are some of the ways that I encouraged myself to give away more things:

I defined a space for a category and then had to eliminate what would not fit into that space. (i.e. clay and play-dough)
I eliminated categories of items that no one is using, even if I thought that someday someone might be interested. (cross stitch items.)
I let the children vote on some of our craft items. Everyone loves the craft sticks, no one was big on the craft foam.
I was brutal in going through my craft idea books. (How many of the books do the children actually use? Don’t keep a whole book for just a few good ideas.)
Rather than eliminating a whole category (i.e. fabric) I slimmed down the amount of stuff I had in that category. I allowed the children to pick some of their favorites and then gave away the rest.
I used large trash and giveaway containers.
I didn’t keep things, just in case. Unless you have a specific purpose or you have proven that you regularly transform trash into treasure then don’t keep it for it’s potential.

In the interest of full disclosure I did move a couple of items out of this closet. I moved all of our paper out of the closet. It is now stored on shelves under our main school table that is right beside the art closet. This makes it much easier for my smaller children to get the paper that they want. The other items that I moved out of the closet are the art/craft bags. Each child has their own bag to store their current project in. We moved these to the shelves in their closets. Everything else-GONE!

Yeah, me! This closet is now used constantly. The children are creating and using more of the things in the closet because 1) they can get to and find everything and 2) they don’t get scolded for leaving a mess. The closet still looks like this after more than 2 weeks of use and I have not tidied it once.