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The $10 Solution to Cluttered Craft Supplies

published Sep 20, 2021
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Credit: Nick Dekker

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Ours is a crafting family. Our two boys especially follow in their mother’s craft-oriented footsteps. Paints, glue, colored pencils, pipe cleaners, mounds of paper, the occasional flake of glitter — we’re used to finding it all over the house, and frankly, we encourage it.

But as our boys shifted to remote schooling in early 2020, we realized that the craft supplies were out of control. They would always be searching for tape, glue, scissors, the perfect marker, the exact color of construction paper. We’ve tried organizing crafts on the built-in shelves in our family room, but they always end up overflowing with materials. We’ve used bins and buckets, but inevitably that leads to fruitless digging or the eventual dumping out of contents to sift through the pile. (And guess who gets to clean that up?)

And then my wife came up with an ingenious solution to our craft supply storage problem: an over-the-door shoe holder slung on our office door.

The shoe holder features 24 different pockets that are the ideal height for collecting pencils and markers, paintbrushes and small paint bottles, glue sticks, notecards, staplers and hole punches, piles of paper clips and binder clips, rulers of all sizes, rolls of Scotch tape, even mini screwdriver sets.

Credit: Nick Dekker

The pockets are easily accessible, and best of all, they’re transparent, so finding the right tool doesn’t require a frustrating dig through bins and boxes. The organization has made it easier for the boys to return things to their proper place as well.

Credit: Nick Dekker

To be clear, not everything fits in the holders. We still have bins full of crayons and markers, as well as shelves to stock paper and hold heavier tools. And we’ve paired the craft holder with some IKEA rails and hooks for bigger pieces. But the door holder has saved us from having millions of little bins or piles of supplies scattered over multiple rooms. And truth be told, it’s helped me in organizing my own office supplies, too!