My niece is 18 months older than Master O. Apart from being purely delightful she has also been my ‘man on the ground’ so to speak, showing me what is coming around the bend in the parenting game.
Miss L loves to draw. When you walk into her bedroom the floor is littered with crayons, felts and pencils. And when you open her cupboard doors, pens fly at you like little ninja weapons and you spend the next 5 minutes collecting them up. She has an array of pencil cases but in all the play and hurried clean ups before dinner, the pens don’t always make their way back to their home and lids are lost, felts dry out and frustration ensues next time she wants to draw.
My sister seems to cope with this, but I am not as patient. So I started my search for a way to store our drawing tools home.
I would never contemplate leaving Master O with easy access to his pens. I would prefer he ask for them so I know exactly when and where he is using them. He is not super fond of drawing so if they were packed up out of sight, there could be days go by without us encouraging his creative side. I needed storage that could be put up and out of his way and look good in his play room where I would prefer he drew.
For the set up I purchased the Ikea Asker rail and matching hooks, which I also used in creating my command centre. From the local two dollar store, I picked up a few brightly coloured buckets to hang of the hooks.
In a few quick minutes I had attached the rail to the wall above my other Ikea purchases, Trofast storage units and the pens and pencils were safely about of reach of sneaky little hands.
I couldn’t believe how well the colours of the buckets matched the trofast tubs!
Now Master O only needs to ask if he wants to draw and I can get down the bucket containing his preferred writing implement and can keep an eye on what is going on.
Linking up with some of these great parties.
There Was a Crooked House 
I love this! Where do you keep this storage? In Ollies room? If Lexi had more space in her room- id get her something like this. She has the purple draws instead next to her bed and has a whole draw now soley dedicated for her pens. This has made things so much easier without the hassle of her pulling everything out of her pencil cases because she can’t find what she wants and packing them away is easy for her. When her desk arrives- I think I may get a silver rail and these buckets to put beside it on the wall. I love it! We can then store other stuff in her purple draw! Thanks for the idea!
This is in the study/playroom. I think this would be great for Lexi’s room. You can buy buckets on a lazy Susan to store pens at Pillowtalk if you didn’t want to attach anything to the wall. It is good to be able to carry the pens elsewhere and they are easy to dump back in.
What a wonderful solution! The colors match so well, and those buckets are awesome. I have some pink ones that I’d found at Dollar General, and they’re so well enameled that ink from pens just rinses right away. (Rubbing alcohol takes care of any spots that don’t wash off.) Going to Pin this idea because I think it’d be a great solution for my son’s Pokemon card storage as soon as I find some BLUE buckets. (He’d freak over the pink ones.)
You definitely have a good eye for storage that is not only useful but cool to look at. I have been struggling with ways to organize my son’s bedroom. Everytime you enter there is lego scattered everywhere. My fear is even after getting the containers he would still continue to throw his toys all over the ground. But I have to start somewhere so thanks for the ideas.
Jillian
Good luck with the organising. I must say this has helped my son clean up, although he has a pop up tent in his room at the moment and it seems to be harbouring a lot of çleaned up’ toys.
What size are the buckets?
Hi Angelica, they are craft buckets so significantly smaller than the regular garden bucket. They are probably about 15 centimetres high