Friday, December 30, 2011

Organized Busy Boxes

I love pinterest. Love it! Thank-you Megan for showing it to me and bugging me until I figured it out.


Pinterest has lots of fun things to pin on your wall. . . recipes, photos, links to blogs, craft ideas for the home. I am having so much fun pinning great ideas on my wall from blogs I visit and from other walls.


I found a blog that I enjoy reading called Play at Home Mom. This mom has lots of fun ideas for your kids.

http://playathomemom3.blogspot.com/2011/12/busy-boxes.html

I read this post on her blog and loved the idea of making busy boxes for my girls. I had a large wicker basket full of craft supplies for my children. I liked having everything in one spot, but it was really hard to keep it organized. I like organized everything. So I decided to take the idea of busy boxes and run with it.

This mom made a bunch of boxes for her little one to play with while she was nursing her baby. They had simple things in each one so that a child could take the box and do the activity. One box had paper, water colors, a paint brush and a water container. Another had colored corn with little animals to play with. A third had paper, crayons and rubbing plates. I loved her ideas but I really wanted to have boxes that would help me get organized and make craft time easier. So I bought 6 boxes and started to fill them up. I ended up liking how organized and easy they would be to use that I went back and got 6 more bins the same size, plus one big one.

Here are the boxes that I made. This whole project (besides the driving to the store part) took me only an hour to do.

This was my "I don't know quite where to put this stuff so I'll throw it in here" box. There are supplies to make bubbles, some glitter, clothes pins, silly pudy extra glue. Stuff like that.


This is my cutting stuff up box. It has ribbons and scissors plus glue for doing something with the cut up things


This is the glueing box. I added feathers, pom poms, wooden peices, googly eyes, Christmas tree cut outs (on clearance) and popsicle sticks. Then I put in glue, glue sticks and glitter glue.


Here is the sticker box. I bought a bunch of foam stickers for the girls to use. They love them.


This is the bead box. I dumped all the beads in here for easy access. The girls love to sort the beads so there is an ice cube tray. Plus I added plastic string for making necklaces and bracelets.




Hannah got a present of pretend cookies for Christmas. It has lots of peices and is really fun to play with. However, we all know what happens when you take a toy with lots of peices and put it on the toy shelf-they all get lost and then you have only a part of the toy to play with. Now all the peices are in one box and it is super easy to play and put away.


We now keep all our puzzles in this box. When they are in a puzzle making mode, we get down the box and play.


I put all the toys for our Little People doll house in this box. The other little toys like dinosaurs, mice family and McDonalds toys got added to the box too. They are little and get lost in the toy basket, but will get played with in the doll house and put away if they are all together.


This is our play-doh box. I try to make all our own play-doh. It is super easy to make and saves for a long time. I added the slime we made the other day to our play-doh box too.


Bekah received the Emma and Abigail magnetic wooden dolls for Christmas. Again, a lot of little peices that can easily get lost. Hopefully this will let us have lots of fun and then put it away without loosing all the peices.


I really love having the craft supplies and all the toys with lots of little peices organized. This really only took an hour or so. I would love to hear your ideas for keeping a tidy house.