Our new art area

For at least a couple years I had been meaning to turn part of my cluttered mudroom-slash-laundry room into a more useful space - specifically an art area for the kids and myself. Finally getting down to doing it was inspired by 3 things: 1) this post on a blog that I love, 2) my recent acquisition of a used Cricut machine -YAY!- and my desire to make a home for it, and 3) the fact that I felt that some dedicated art space was critical for homeschooling. First, I completely cleaned everything out of the room, which has been functioning as a catch-all area for everything we want to keep out of Emmett's hands, since he is denied access to this room by a baby gate. Then, I got some cheap organizers (hooray for back to school sales) and gathered all art- and scrapbooking- related materials from around the house and, well... organized them. Here is what my mudroom looked like Before. (Yeah it's a mess. Don't judge me):


Before I was even done working, Max kept coming in to draw and to play with his Legos, for which he has recently discovered a passion. We are also keeping all Legos in this area so Emmett can't get ahold of them. Max loves this space and has already been spending lots of time there.


Finally, here it is, (mostly) all done. We still need to get a tall, comfy stool. For now, we just put one of the dining room chairs in there, even though it's too short for the countertop. I taped down some brown kraft paper to protect the countertop, and I can change it whenever it starts getting torn or yucky.


So, I turned some poorly-used space in my house into a spot that's inviting and inspiring, and everything is visible and right within easy hands' reach. Success!