Kid’s Organizing Ideas: Schoolwork, Papers & Artwork

Alternative Title: The Great Linen Closet Massacre

In our last home, we had this wonderful thing called a Motherboard and it saved my life on a daily basis. It organized the artwork, newsletters and never-ending barrage of papers that came home from school.

(view more of the Motherboard here)

In our current home, the layout doesn’t allow for something like this as it’s an open layout and while I LOVE my kid’s artwork, I don’t love the schoolwork and papers that seem to barf out of their bags on a daily basis AND ON TO MY COUNTERTOP!

So, I was brainstorming with myself one day and trying to come up with some solutions that worked for me and the kids. I needed easy access to these papers without feeling the urge to just grab a torch and call it a day – and that was when I spotted our linen closet/pantry.

This lovely little closet used to be a pantry, but I found a better way to organize our pantry items so it became a de-glorified linen closet. It was narrow and held an assortment of blankets, sheets and random things that I really only used on a weekly basis – at best, and I knew it wouldn’t be hard to find more efficient and suitable spaces for these things.

So, here I had a closet that was close to the epi-centre of our home that had the potential to be highly functional for DAILY use – and I was opening those doors about once a week. Hmm…

Ya, you know what comes next – wine! Oh yeah, and demo (please note, wine always comes before demo)

As you can see, there was a ‘little bit’ of patching to do and FYI – I super suck at patching.

So, ONE bottle and TWO afternoons later…

The Control Center

The quasi-functional linen closet/pantry turned into a FULLY functional Control Center for the kid’s artwork, homework, backpacks and more!

The Ikea Raskog Cart (more on that handy lil’ bugger here) came in handy again. The top shelf is for papers and folders that need to go back to school the next day, the middle and bottom shelves are for colouring books and crayons.

The hooks are great as the kids hang their backpacks and lunch kits after school.

The board and batten were easy to install, even for a gal who was 2 glasses deep and using a yellow plastic mitre box.

The clipboards hold papers that need to be signed, upcoming events and long-term papers.

The corkboards (I painted the unfinished pine frames white with trim paint) are for artwork and things like spelling tests and report cards.

While I painted the frame of the kid’s corkboards (they each have one side of the closet), I decided to make my own beautiful corkboard by covering it with fabric, stapling the fabric to the backside of the frame and adding some decorative chrome furniture tacks around the perimeter (and I am just starting to get the feeling back in my thumb)

Control Center Costs

• Corkboards $12/$12/$16    Jysk
• Clipboards 7 @ $1.25 = $8.75    Dollar Store
• Fabric $11
• Trim for board and batten $14
• Raskog Cart $69    Ikea

Total Cost (before tax) $142.75

I am SUPER happy with this new arrangement and while I miss my Motherboard, I know that our new Control Center will save me a lot of grief over the years.

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