Welcome back to week 2 of “Planting Creative Seeds” – a collaborative effort between Alissa fromCreative With Kids and I. Planting Creative Seeds is a challenge to spark up your creativity – be it for yourself or with your children.

Recap – Planning

Last week, we challenged you to think about what you would like to do more of and how you may go about achieving. We called it the “planning stage” and had a lovely number of posts link up, as well as dicussions on Facebook and Twitter.

The bottom line: creativity is everywhere. It doesn’t just mean being able to draw or paint, but being creative can take all forms. Don’t feel as if you “can’t”. You most definitely can!

Now to Organisation

There are two main things I would like to highlight on the topic of organisation… mainly because they are problems that I face:

1) Mess/ no space for crafting

2) Hoarding (eeek)

These are my particular organisation “problems” and I will ponder them a bit more below. Yours may be different – e.g.

3) Craft Space – you may not have an area that you can create art in without worrying about the carpet – i.e. you may need a craft “nook” or “table”.

4) Time – always busy, rushing from work, to school, to activity, to home. Still want to do more. Plan your activities accordingly. E.g. you can nurture creativity with a 10min drawing session before school and you can make something bigger at the weekend. Or maybe when you have a play date over.

Identify your “issue” and try and address it.

Mess

Creativity of course cannot “just be planned” or “organised”. But I do believe that both planning and organisation significantly contribute to allowing you to become more creative.

For example. My children and I craft on the kitchen table. I have art material in several messy boxes on the table, hanging from over-flowing pouches on the wall, in the cupboard and lots lots more upstairs in a chest of drawers in my bedroom (my first attempt at organisation). The result: spontaneous creativity is limited. As you have to clear clutter and find art materials first. Not only is spontaneous cerativity limited, but ordinary creativity too – I have to consciously say to myself “come, make some space, let’s do something with the children, now!” and sometimes the inner devil wins “argh, too much to clear!”. I know that if I had more space and less clutter we would do more, more often.

So. I NEED TO TIDY. Gulp.

Hoarding

I recently realised something – hording is not good for creativity. I always knew I was a bit of a horder, as well as a thrifty missus. I love collecting ribbons and old clothes and cardboard for crafting. I can’t wait to make something new out of something old. And when I do purchase materials, then I wait and wait and wait for that “perfect craft” – to make sure that I use said material “properly” and “justly”. The result? I don’t make the most of what I have.

In terms of the recycling – I have too much. which means things get lost. I have a HUGE bag of scrap fabric, how do I know what is at the bottom of it?

In terms of purchased items – it never gets used (e.g. I have some wonderful coloured clay.. and I dare not open in it, in case I don’t use it up and then the remainder dries out – how stupid is that? I hasten to add… that I DO have a plan for said clay and it will be used *soon*).

So. I need to start letting the kids use all those sequins, pipecleaners, beads and cloth pegs. I need to start using all that clay, those canvases and special paints and pens…. And I need to sort out my “recycled” craft resource bag – keeping the best items and clearing the lesser ones. If I have 100 lids, keep 20, throw out the rest. It will be a gain, not a loss.

Hoarding is no good. It is wasteful in a different way. Use your stuff or get rid off it.

I started tidying up this week.. and this is what helped me:

1) Get a set of boxes to sort your things into – I have 6 stackable ikea ones – and have sorted our crayons, pencils, lids, stones etc for crafting.

2) If the box is full, don’t add more – give it away or throw it away. Chances are you will never need more than fits into a medium size box.

3) If you have a lot of something, don’t buy or collect more until you have used it - i.e. those bottle top lids, must all now go in the bin, until there is space in the box and we actually “need more”. Ditto the fabric. Unless you very specifically want to make something that *needs* new fabric, don’t buy more until you have used things up.

4) Be brutal and throw things out. I have strips of paper that I cut for a craft almost 2 years ago. Yes. Really. I still have it. Know idea why.. but I do. Bin.

5) Have a small amount of staples ready to hand – in our case, this is  a pot with SOME pens & pencils, SOME glue, two scissors etc. If the kids get hold of the WHOLE box, they will just empty out anyway and not actually do any drawing! Ditto paints and other crafty bits and pieces.

6) Speciality craft material (e.g. my modelling clay) – plan crafts that you will make with it in the next 6 months. Use it up.

7) Re-visit your creative stash/ nook/ mess every 2-3 months and remember what you have, think about what you could make with it and tidy up again!

So. This week’s challenge:

1. What are your organisational challenges?
2. How will your organise yourself?
3. What do you need to tackle first?
4. What does a good result look like?

If you have great ideas for organisation – be it from storage to nooks and planning, please come and link up on the Creative Resource Page. Please link up to SECOND link up.