Nightmare Drawer

Gah.

This drawer drives me wacko.  I mean, I don't expect perfection, but surely the kids could do a smidge better than this?

In considering my strategy for making the art drawer less chaotic, I also had to take into account the cupboard below it where we keep play-doh and a few other art supplies.  

Art Cupboard

Art Drawer

There is a 2 drawer storage unit in the cupboard behind the large pad of paper that I thought I might be able to use to coral a bit of the clutter from the drawer.

So, I got my timer, garbage bag, and give away bag and got to work.

When I started emptying the drawer, this is what I found.  

Under the garbage and colouring books...a big ol' load of pens, pencils, pencil crayons and markers.  But we had a pencil crayon container and a pencil case for crayons.  Another zip up bag was supposed to store markers...so what I realized was that our system was not working because it was too complicated.  And really not necessary.  

I grabbed all the colouring stuff and put it in one of the big drawers from the cupboard.  Now the kids can just grab it and bring it right up to the counter when they need it.  Clean up will be easy because there won't be any sorting.

The other issue seemed to be that we had way too many pens and pencils.  I cannot tell you where they all came from, but look how many I was able to take out of the drawer.  

With the main problems solved, the rest was easy.  I purged some items that the kids never used and got rid of a shopping bag full of garbage.

I sorted items like stamps and stickers and gave them each a container.  I put the pens and pencils in their own box but if I find that it's not working, I will just put them in with the colouring implements as well.

Cupboard After

Drawer After

As I said at the beginning, I don't expect perfection and I do not imagine that it will look exactly like this all the time.  But keeping some general sense of order in here so that the kids can have find what they need when they are working on homework or doing a craft just makes sense.  I gave them a tour of the new space when they arrived home from school so that they can take responsibility for ensuring that things get put back in their place.

What drawer causes nightmares at your house??