Diana Rene: 0:06
You're listening to the Decluttered Mom Podcast. A podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, Diana Rene. And in 2017, I had my second daughter, and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home. Okay, not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me. Over the next 10 months, I got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings, and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom system, and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks, and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show.

Julie: 0:52
Hi, my name is Julie, and I'm from Louisiana. My question is how do you organize things like toys and art supplies with very little space? My daughter does not even have a room. She shares a room with us, and she has a small part of my office as a playroom. So we have a lot of trouble organizing her toys and we have lots of art supplies. Help me.

Diana Rene: 1:16
Hey Julie, this is such a great question. I think that many people can relate to your question whether or not they have a small space that they're dealing with. Art supplies, craft supplies can get very out of hand very quickly. I know my girls are big time. My youngest draws from the time she gets home from school until I tell her it's time to go to bed. Um, and both of my girls have always been into crafting and have been very artsy and always want to express themselves that way. And that's the thing is that I don't want them, I don't want to suppress that for them. I want to encourage that for them. I want to honor that for them. Um so I always want to make sure that we have the supplies that they need so that they can they can continue to express themselves that way and have fun. And at the same time, I'm like, oh my gosh, all of the art supplies, right?

Okay, before I get into the actual advice, I just have to say we are a glitter-free household, and that has helped a lot. Like, glitter gets everywhere, and it is impossible to get out of your house. And my girls have like, I've had this rule from when they were babies, probably an insane rule, but it just is what it is. We do not allow glitter, like loose glitter in the house. They can have web like clothes with glitter or whatever. I'm talking about like the loose glitter. We don't do it, it's not a thing. But whether or not you are a glitter household or not, there are several things that you can do in a really small space to organize art supplies.

I know you asked about toys and art supplies. Some of these will also apply to toys, but that's a that's a I I feel like is a separate topic. And I think that the art supplies, um, if you can get those under control first, I think you'll feel a lot better, and then you can tackle the toys.

So the first thing that I would recommend is to take advantage of the vertical space in your home. It's really easy for us to forget that we have a lot of wall space because it's not in most homes, that's not like a typical thing to keep going up for storage. We typically tend to stay around closer to the floor with the types of furniture that we have and everything like that. For the most part, that normally works. However, sometimes we just have very small living spaces that we're trying to make work and we have to get a little more creative. And so installing some type of shelving that goes as high up as you can and take advan taking advantage of that vertical space that you can use for storage is going to be insanely helpful for you, especially in like an office setting, like you're talking about, because that's all unused space, and it's space that you can use to expand to uh store those art supplies. Sorry, I lost my train of thought there. So that is number one is taking advantage of vertical space. There are a bajillion and one um options out there for um shelving that you can install that can look all different sorts of ways, right? So that is number one.

Number two is actually this is this costs a bit more than what I was just talking about. So this may or may not be an option depending on um the budget, but there are many cool things that are almost like armoires. I don't know exactly what they're called, but essentially they're like craft or like hobby craft desks where you like pull out. This is gonna be really hard to explain without showing you a picture or a video. Um, but basically you you like it all folds up into like one big wall unit. Um, but then when you want to use it, you like pull out the doors and it like unfolds into all of the storage and like a desk area. And so that's really cool. They are pricey though. I've actually looked into them before for my for our craft room slash office slash fish home, and they are pretty pricey. And I also just the idea of putting one of those together makes me want to cry and hide in my bed all day long. And so I've never done it, but they are pretty cool. They're really, really cool. I think if I had someone else to build it for me in an unlimited budget, I would go for it. But that's that's a possible option also.

Another thing is to take advantage of under furniture storage, so under beds, especially, but sometimes even if you have like couches that are a little bit higher up off the floor, there's so many things that you can put underneath the bed. And there are really pricey containers that are like hard plastic bins that have rollers. I was trying to think, what is the word? Little like wheels on them that you can roll them in and out under your bed. So that's like a higher price version of what you could do. But you could also honestly just do um, you could get like packing, like moving packing bags and like put those and put those underneath the bed also. There's a lot of different things you could do. You could honestly even do just there's just underbed storage bins that are don't have the wheels on them, but they're less expensive, and you could just put slide those in and out. Um, and those could have different sections for her different craft supplies.

Okay, so that's another one. Or let me take that back one second. So that it could be for her craft supplies, or if there's somewhere else in your home that makes sense for her craft supplies, but it already has other stuff in it, then you can put that stuff under the bed. And I would look for that's actually one of my other tips is to use living spaces in your home uniquely. And what I mean by that is like your uh TV stand might um in a very small living space, your TV stand might be like a pantry, and that's okay because it might be right off the kitchen and it might have the most space, like storage space for your canned goods or something like that. Like it's okay to use a TV stand for a different purpose if it makes sense for your specific home, is what I'm trying to say. So, and obviously this applies to any furniture in your home, not just the TV stand, that's just an example.

But maybe like the TV stand is right off your dining room, and it that's where she really likes to craft. And so it would make sense to put all of her craft supplies in an organized fashion in the TV stand, but right now you have all your books in there. Well, you could put your books in a bin under your bed, right? So you have to think through where does it make most sense for you in your home and for her, um, and what will make the least amount of mess, what will require her to not, you know, move things through the entire living space, but that's another thing that you can do.

Okay, and then the last one is we love a rolling art cart in our house. We we actually we we have a rolling art cart that we used to use all the time for art supplies. It was very well organized. It had all, you know, it had like scissors, glue, glue sticks, tape, uh, markers, crayons, colored pencils, pom-poms, like feathers, like all the random like craft supplies, right? And it worked really well. We did that in our old house where we didn't have much space for craft supplies. And that worked because they were able to keep it pretty organized because everything had a home. They were able to wheel it over to the dining room table if they wanted to do crafts there. They were able to wheel it back into the little play area if they wanted to do crafts there, or that's actually where it lived.

So, like if they weren't using it, we put it in a specific spot against the wall in there. And that worked really well for that season in our lives. And in this house, we have my office, which we've turned into an office slash craft space. So I have a cabinet in there, and that's where all the craft supplies go now. And now our art cart is actually turned into a rolling beverage table for us on the couch because with the mold and everything, we are still slowly adding furniture and we have not yet added side tables in our family room. And so we have our rolling cart that like I will sit down and I will watch a show and eat dinner, and I have my um drink on the art cart.

So they have many purposes, but um, I do love an art cart for a small living space because I think it's it's doesn't take up, it's a small footprint, right? It doesn't take up a lot of space. You can move it as needed, which typically with smaller living spaces, you need to be able to use different parts of your home for different things. And it's pretty easy to keep it tidy and organized because you can um you can go all out at the container store and buy all the little containers that go inside to organize, or you could put shoeboxes and like empty pickle jars that are washed out in there. Like there's so many different ways that you can organize it, but it's but it's a visually easy thing to keep organized because you're using a marker, you know where to put the marker back into the art cart.

So those are my ideas off the cuff without being able to see your actual home. Um, I hope that's helpful and for you specifically, Julie, and I hope it's helpful for anyone else that's listening that's maybe trying to figure it out. If you have a question for me, I would love to hear it. Uh, we have a link in the show notes where you can actually go. All you do is you click the button, you say your first name, the state you're calling from, or if you're outside the United States, the country you're calling from, and then you just leave me your question, and then you hit and you're you're done, you hit end, and it sends it to me, and we're off to the races.

So it's we made it as super simple as possible for you because we love doing these episodes. We get really good feedback about these episodes also. Um, and we're always looking for more questions to go off of. So I hope that's helpful. If this episode was helpful, or if any of my episodes have been helpful, can you just share it with one friend that really helps us with the algorithm? I know I sound like a broken record, but following the podcast, leaving a review, and sharing with a friend, those things all help us so, so, so much. And the only way we get in front of new busy moms is by being in favor of the algorithm gods. And so I always appreciate when you are able to do that.

And we will see you next week. Thanks for hanging out and listening to the Decluttered Mom podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could write a review or share this episode with a friend or your Instagram stories. And if you're on Instagram, be sure to follow me at the.decluttered.mom and send me a DM to say hi. I'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. I hope you'll come back next week and hang out with us again.