5 Cheap Methods to Keep Your Art Supplies OrganizedPosted by Huynh Flowers on May 17th, 2021 It's a myth that your work-area has to be a disaster. It is not impossible to keep your projects area clean. Certain forms of art are, by nature, messy (for instance, pottery). That doesn't have to mean that it must look like a kiln exploded in your workshop. It's a secret embarrassment of several artists, something that doesn't often appear for discussion. It gets written off as a subject more fitted to housecleaning than art. In the end, when you speak to other artists, you'd rather spend time discussing technique... not the truth that your work area is really a disaster. Whether you're a high-school art prodigy, a college student with a course-load of fine art classes, or a professional artist, managing your diverse and often-messy cache of art supplies may become a secret nightmare. art supply A messy work area can even be very frustrating. It really is impossible to get your work done quickly if you cannot find anything that you will need to get it done in the first place. This can have a poor impact on your important thing: your earnings. The faster, more efficiently, and better you get your projects done, the more money you will have the ability to make. Period. I'll also openly admit that Personally, i feel far less inclined to do work when doing work is inconvenient. The easier and more convenient you make it for yourself to do work, the more work you will do. The more cluttered and frustrating your projects space it is, the much more likely you're to go "I'll take action later" and walk away. The best way to get a large amount of work done is to make it as easy as possible on your own to do your work. This short article isn't just for those who have a dedicated workshop, though. It easily pertains to art students and hobbyists. It's a misconception that building a nice work area takes tons of money. While your equipment itself could be expensive, you don't need to spend a ton of money organizing your work area and art supplies. Actually, I'd advise against it - the less overall you spend getting everything to be able, the more you need to spend on the truly FUN things (like jigsaws). Listed below are five ways to cheaply organize your art supplies: 1. Set aside a separate work-area This is a location for art, and your art supplies. Only art supplies goes into this area, and art supplies usually do not go anywhere else. This consists of dedicated storage for your art supplies. The more they get mixed in with other things, the less likely it is that you will be able to find them when you actually need them. This doesn't must be another room, or the garage (although both these options are really nice if you have the luxury). It can just be a corner of a rec room, a bedroom, a closet. A particular table dedicated for these purposes will also help, as you won't have to be worried about destroying other furniture with paint, glue, clay, etc. Guarantee that the table is used limited to art, and art projects. It will make keeping it clear and protecting anything that is drying/curing/etcetera a easier task. 2. Make sure that you can easily see everything Many art supplies are costly - any broke college student knows that! Even the cheap ones accumulate after a while. How often is it you have desperately needed a particular tool and been unable to find it all of your toolboxes? How often has your artwork suffered due to this? For a long time, I kept the majority of my art supplies in opaque tackle-boxes. These were cheap, they had compartments, they did the work. The problem was that I would forget what was in my tackle-boxes, only to run into something that I really could have used months ago and didn't know that I had. This could be expensive, because you keep purchasing the same art supplies again and again, when you could have avoided the problem in the event that you had just remembered you had them to begin with - and knew how to locate them. Nobody can keep an ideal catalog of all of the supplies that they have within their head. Something of labeling your boxes or keeping inventory in some recoverable format is annoying, time-consuming, and ultimately unwieldy. Among the finest items that I ever did was to start keeping most of my tools and supplies in exclusively clear plastic bins and toolboxes. You don't need to buy special boxes for this task - a trip to the Dollar Store or Walmart will net you lots of cheap, clear plastic boxes. There is no need to go to a specialty art store and buy boxes and toolboxes focused on this task. Don't look for these in the arts & crafts section, as anything you find there is likely to be overpriced. Go to the Homes section, to check out the Hardware section aswell. Often, there are really cheap tool-boxes and tackle-boxes with some nifty clear compartments. Tackle-boxes are especially useful. Just because they were originally designed for fishing lures doesn't make them less ideal for storing art supplies. The compartments are great for organizing your odds and ends. Odds are, not all you have (or most things you have) will not fit neatly in a tackle-box. A slightly more costly option that has paid for itself in convenience would be to choose the small dresser-like plastic storage compartments with clear drawers you can find in the Homes section. They can be found in several sizes, and are useful for holding from pencils to electronic parts. One of the things that I did to make my sketch-pads more manageable was to place them in a clear plastic dresser. A few of the organizers have drawers which are an ideal size for printer paper and notebooks. To control my many drawing pens, pencils, and markers, which long languished in underneath of a tackle-box, I bought some pencil cases from Walmart for 50 cents apiece and dedicated an incident to each sort of drawing implement. The cases fit nicely in the drawers of the organizer, and stack nicely in plastic bins. When you can find clear or semitransparent cases, even better. I label the exterior of the cases in order that I know what is in each pencil case. Finding the right pen or pencil used to take a while, now it requires about 15 seconds. You don't have to buy special cases because of this though, even though hard cases will protect your more delicate pencils better. Large zip-lock bags are also excellent because of this task. They're also great for storing your tubes of paint, erasers, etc. An exception to the "put everything in clear bins" rule is some paints. A number of them are light-sensitive and must not be out sitting in the light all of the time. My solution was to place them in clear bins and drape a dark cloth over them. Better still when you have a cupboard you can put them in. In this manner, I can open my cupboard and peek beneath the cloth to see just what paint I have, without worrying about light destroying the pigments. 3. Label everything clearly Even if you can see into your drawers, label what is in them anyway. Get yourself a piece of masking tape and write a list of the things within your drawer or bin - "Micron Pens, Prismacolors, Grease Pencils". Affix this to leading of every drawer, and the top and side of each bin. It seems pretty dumb - in the end, you remember what's in your bins, and you may see what's inside them, right? Well, when you have 20 bins and 16 drawers and you're trying to find something quickly, these labels can help you find it much more quickly than your memory can. People may touch upon it, they may make an effort to make fun of you. It doesn't matter, let 'em. Exactly the same friends who thought that my labeled drawers were silly are the ones who marvel at how quickly I can get things done. 4. Get a peg-board, and a cork-board or dry-erase board A peg-board doesn't cost much, nonetheless it keeps your tools from the tables/counters and in plain sight. Both of these things are important. You should be able to grab a decent-sized peg board at a hardware store for -20. It is just a more flexible alternative than screwing hooks into your walls, is easy to install, and will save a lot of grief if you are looking through all of your toolboxes something and can't think it is. A peg-board is useful for more than just things such as hammers and drills. It really is awesome for hanging rulers, T-squares, L-squares, and larger-sized paint brushes. You don't need to be worried about your rulers getting bent, and you won't be panicking because you can't find your French Curve. The cork-board is great for pinning up things like lists, notes, and reference pictures. It generally does not seem all that important, but it's valuable if you want to keep track of things like schedules and appointments, and is really as much a part of your work area as your pens and pencils. A dry-erase board can serve the same function, helping you keep track of your schedule and projects. The reason why this is important is basically because your To-Do list and projects are there before you constantly, and it keeps projects from "slipping between the cracks" and getting forgotten about (a thing that can cost you money and reputation). 5. Always keep your table/counters/work surfaces CLEAR I know that sounds basic, nonetheless it gets ignored so often: when you are finished with something, put it away! Some things should be left alone up for grabs so that you can set, dry, etc. That's fine. What isn't fine is hammers, glue, tubes of paint, brushes, etc. A tube of paint here, several pencils there -- "you'll put them away later" -- and, suddenly, you've got a mountain of miscellaneous art supplies sitting right on top of the work area you need to use. You'll feel much less inclined to get your work done if you have to clear a heap of junk off of your work space rather than just being able to sit back and finish your task. After you've gone to your time and effort of arranging them, 90% of maintaining your supplies organized is just picking up after yourself. The simplest way to stay organized would be to not have to help keep organizing your things in the first place. Putting something away immediately when you are done with it will save you time down the road, because you will remember exactly where it goes in the event that you just used it. Putting away a whole heap of things once you can't quite remember wherever each one goes will eat up more time. A messy work-space is really a slippery slope - the messier it gets, the more quickly it gets messier. Cleaning it up becomes a serious chore. Save yourself the grief, and just put your pens away while you are done with them - even though you're going to utilize them again later today, or tomorrow. Sometimes things come up and you don't get right back to work, and that's once the mess starts creeping inLike it? Share it! More by this author |