Reduce, Reuse, Organize

The garbage hadn't been picked up for three weeks... I was going crazy. I love garbage day... it's a fresh start for me each week. Watching my garbage and recycling accumulate for three weeks disgusts me. I've been cleaning and organizing during our Arctic Blast these last weeks and generating more 'stuff' to get rid of. I was down to one of my last projects (not last projects in the house... don't get me wrong) to complete during vacation... the kids art supplies. I was ready to dump the crayon tub, the marker tub, paper tub and just start over. But, I thought of all of my garbage and recycling sitting at the curb and decided to be more frugal about the process.


I began with the crayons... do we need 10,000 crayons for three kids. NO... they don't appreciate their crayons. Why pick them or not break them when you have 10,000. So, I began sorting. I love crayola crayons, so I pulled all that was left out of the box. I was left with 9,000 crayons... so I sorted them back into their containers to drop off at an undisclosed location (thrift store). I wanted them to look nice so that they would get a new home (what's wrong with me). See the brown basket... I picked that up at the undisclosed location while dropping off a huge bag. I think it will work beautifully for the everyday art supplies.

• set of markers
• set of crayons
• scissors
• glue/ tape
• pencils / sharpener
• ruler
  

Don't you think that a child will love these organized crayons? I sure do. My kids are left with a manageable amount.

Same process with the markers. I really think that because we had so many, the kids didn't have a need to care for them. I was appalled by the number of markers that I had to throw away. Here is what we are left with... no pink, red, etc. In due time, I will buy a new set and we will have a set of markers. I'll let you know if my experiment works.

Ah... organized in the basket. But wait... I really thought that I'd be getting rid of the big organizer, but I couldn't justify it. I have it, it works... it just needed to be tweaked. It is now organized and labeled. I don't have a fancy label maker (would love one) so I used my handy pen and sticky notes cut in thirds with a fresh piece of tape. The art area is now the family art area... it's now just the kids. I've added some of my supplies... I let the kids use them anyway, we may as well store them together. I also moved the art area to the laundry room. They can do art at any time... maybe this will help all of us. I feel good about the things I got rid of and even better that I didn't dump the entire thing and start over. There is a time and a place to dump it all and begin again, but his wasn't one of those times. Reduce, reuse and organize!