Need organizational idea for dd for Christmas

[Faithr]

My 11 yo's room is a mess. She loves American Girl dolls and is constantly making things for them or making movies of them (and then she has to make things for the movie and rearrange her room to shot scenes, etc. She loves to make other things as well. Lately she's been making incredibly cute things out of duct tape! Anyway, one of her very favorite videos to watch is My Froggy Stuff

. Anybody know of that? So you can have an idea of how much junk, pieces of cardboard, old socks, odds and ends, etc, etc. She saves everything and the thing is she comes up with really nifty things to do with it all. But her room is utter chaos. For Christmas I'd like to organize her room and all her many crafty supplies.

 

Any ideas? Right now she sort of has a system where she keeps things in a plastic milk crate, two desk drawers and a hassock that has storage in it. Then she has some open shelves but she needs a bunch of boxes or baskets that would fit on them. I bought her a shoe organizer for her door and that helps some. But it still isn't enough and every thing is so piecemeal. There's no rhyme or reason to where everything should go and she's constantly rummaging through stuff and rearranging things.

 

I don't have much of an organizational sense myself and am always fighting against clutter. I really need someone to just tell me what to do so I don't have to put much thought into it! So anybody here a major crafter with tons of supplies. We need heavy duty help!

 

Thanks!

[Freckles]

I would head on down to Target or Walmart and get several rubbermaid systems with the drawers in them. One can be filled with AG clothes and accessories. Another one could be filled with the craft supplies. You can take a picture of what belongs in each drawer and then use clear packing tape to attach the picture to the front of the drawer. That way even friends who come over to play know where things belong when it is time to pick up.

[magic]

First of all, I have to tell you thank you from both my daughter and I for posting that link. She has a list of items she wants to get started on now. We have several things that we use to organize her AG dolls and all their accessories as well as her multitude of craft items. I bought a cheap TV cabinet at Walmart that had a pair of doors(for DVDs and accessories), a shelf for dvd player, and top for tv. The shelf for the dvd player is the perfect size for a doll's bed. In the doors we put a couple of sterilite 3 drawer shelves to hold the doll clothes as well as some fishing lure boxes to hold her dolls shoes, food, and other items. On the top we have a couple of her doll dressers and other large items. We also have some sterilite drawers that hold craft supplies and more doll accessories. Finally, we got a 3 by 3 shelf from Target (the kind that hold the canvas bins) along with some canvas bins. The bins hold a variety of items and are easy to take out for a project and rearrange. I found some zippered canvas totes (the kind for storing dishes) and have those on top of the shelving unit- these hold a variety of items and look nice stacked neatly on her shelf.

[Tita Gidge]

I don't have much of an organizational sense myself and am always fighting against clutter. I really need someone to just tell me what to do so I don't have to put much thought into it! So anybody here a major crafter with tons of supplies. We need heavy duty help!

 

Thanks!

 

 

I'm a messy, so know in advance that my advice is biased in that favor.

 

In more than three decades of living and creating, I've yet to find an organizational system that works enough that it lasts. If that makes sense. I've spent days and dollars (generally once a decade) trying to organize my workspace into something worthy of a Martha Stewart spread, and it lasts .... oh, about a month. Maybe. It just seems to go against my creative nature to compartmentalize that way, into neat and separate piles.

 

I can't do individual baskets for ribbon, stamps, stickers, pipe cleaners, glue sticks. It has to be more like one basket for paper products (so stickers, stamps, glue sticks) and one basket for 3D stuff (pipe cleaners, ribbon, popsicle sticks). If it gets too segmented, it's overwhelming and I just end up dumping everything into the nearest basket so I can say I "cleaned up my mess" LOL.

 

This could be rationalization talking, but I think some of us are uber-organized and some of us couldn't organize ourselves out of an invisible box. Life requires some sort of organization, but don't waste a ton of time and money setting up a system she can't stick with. Can't; not won't. (There's that rationalization again!)

 

So! Here's what we did, and what I think could also work for your daughter. We built floor to ceiling adjustable, open shelving on two walls in our workroom. I originally planned to build cabinet doors (with chicken wire cutouts for airflow and so I could still "see" my stuff without it being totally open) but never did get around to that. Instead I hung a tension rod along the top and now we just hang sheer curtains ($15/Target) in front of them. The panels are easy to push to the side or to tie back, and one day I'll make them nicer by removing the tension rod and adding a valance across the top shelf. Now I can still easily get to my stuff, but it doesn't look like a hurricane tore through the room.

 

I don't use baskets because they scratch up my wood shelves, but I do use old tin cans to hold brushes, stamps, etc. and those sit open on my shelves. I find these easy to keep organized because I just transport the tin from the shelf to my table, then back when I'm done. It's almost mindless, and not at all feeling like one big clean at the end of my project. I do have a few old shoeboxes labeled with messier things (paper scraps, bottle caps and other things I don't want open with little kids around) but they're basically "junk boxes" that stuff gets thrown into sort of like what your DD has going on now with her milkcrates and drawers.

 

I vote you find a solution that works with her piecemeal organizational tendancies, rather than try to overhaul her sense of organization. Does she mind the constant re-arranging? (I don't, so thus far I've assumed she doesn't; I should have asked that first LOL.) I like to rummage, for the most part. It's like a treasure hunt because "Oh yeah, I forgot I had this!" and it's a fun part of creating. If it's about you having to look at a mess, definitely consider the curtain panels or something similar. It may be a good compromise between each of your needs and styles.

[Faithr]

Tita Gidge you are right that the rummaging is part of the creativity for her! She does however often lose things and then gets really frustrated when she can't find whatever the tiny thing is, as well, so I think a balance needs to be maintained here. I am totally with you that constitutionally, neither she nor I could ever be those types that have all their supplies broken down into really organized pieces. I think we'd be happy to have more general divisions, if just for the fact that the project of getting to that level of organization would take forever! My problem is I don't ever plan big enough, I am realizing. I'll go get one or two things to help organize things but it isn't enough and there really is so little system to begin with that, I don't think I'm really helping. I think I am contributing to the piecemeal factor. One thing she definitely needs is a much bigger bookcase in her room. I wanted her father and brother to build her one but my dh got very busy at work and now I realize that plan fell by the wayside, oh about a year ago!. So I need to do something about that.

 

I love the idea of repurposing something or maybe buying a used piece of furniture. I am trying not to buy more plastic stuff. I'm growing increasingly anti-plastic.

 

I love, love, love the idea of taking a picture of what is supposed to be in each box or drawer. That's a cool idea. I can see her wanting to take the pictures herself. I think would encourage her to think about how to store things and then to think about putting things away when she needs to clean up.

 

Thanks all for your words of wisdom. If anyone else has anything to advise, I am all ears!

 

And magic, I apologize for exposing you to My Froggy Place. There is no turning back! LOL!

[Tita Gidge]

I love the idea of repurposing something or maybe buying a used piece of furniture. I am trying not to buy more plastic stuff. I'm growing increasingly anti-plastic.

 

I love, love, love the idea of taking a picture of what is supposed to be in each box or drawer. That's a cool idea. I can see her wanting to take the pictures herself. I think would encourage her to think about how to store things and then to think about putting things away when she needs to clean up.

 

 

I bet you can find an inexpensive, wood dresser or highboy by thrifting or searching craigslist -- the drawers would be perfect because you'd have some smaller and some larger; they could be removed from the dresser to use in-project and returned post-project; when she's not creating, the room still looks neat because everything is in drawers; and she could customize the look of it with paint, decoupage, and the pictures she takes of the each drawer's things.

 

I'm with you on the anti-plastic.

 

This could be a fun project for the two of you :)

 

Here's a bump for more ideas. I can always use some, too!

[Desert Rat]

I would use an old dresser. Preferably a low one with 2 sets of 3 drawers. For teeny-tiny things, I got one of those organizers for screws and nuts that hangs on the wall. I have a boy who likes to collect....things. :)

Another idea is hat boxes or photo boxes that you can pick up at Michaels. These have a little card holder in front for labels. You can get coordinating colors and stack them on shelves.

Or you can do wicker baskets and hang label tags on them and fit them on shelves.

 

Any of these help?