My kids have aged into more challenging puzzles, so we donated most of their “little kid” puzzles. They recently got quite a few new puzzles for Christmas and birthdays, so I decided it was the perfect time for me to show you my favorite storage solution for kids’ puzzles.

This is the stack of puzzles that I started with. That black box actually had five separate puzzles in it, and I knew it was going to be a mess with the pieces all mixed up if I didn’t do something about it soon!

This post contains some affiliate links. If you purchase something I recommend, you’ll pay the same price, but I may receive a small commission.

Years ago, I saw someone suggest storing puzzles in gallon-sized Ziploc bags and it sounded like a great idea, until I tried it. I liked that I could see easily see the puzzle pieces inside, but the bags were floppy and slippery, making it really hard to efficiently store them in a basket or bin without them just ending up in a pile.

Additionally my kids had a hard time securely closing the bags, so puzzle pieces would end up spilling out and I’d find myself reorganizing them over and over again.

After this experience, I went on the hunt for a similar – but better – way to organize my kids’ puzzles. I purchased and returned a few different options before I finally found these pouches that work perfectly because you can still see through them, but they are stiff enough to hold their shape, making them much easier to store and organize!

Purchased individually, the best deal I’ve found on these pouches is at The Container Store, but if you want to buy them in a larger quantity, you can get a great deal on sets of 16 or sets of 24 with a variety of rainbow colored zippers Amazon.

I’ve found that the Letter Size pouches are perfect for storing all of our jigsaw puzzles. The ones I’ve shown here are between 100 and 500 piece puzzles, but 1000 piece puzzles fit in these puzzles just as well because the pieces are smaller.

The larger legal size pouches work great for storing wooden kids’ puzzles and some larger preschool puzzles.

This is a quick and easy organizing project. Start by cutting the picture off of the front of the boxes.

Place the puzzle photo in the front of the pouch so that you can see which puzzle is inside at a glance, and then store the puzzle pieces behind the photo.

It’s easy to see how much space it saves to store jigsaw puzzles in these pouches. So much thinner than in the box!

Once you’ve transferred all of your puzzles from their boxes to the zippered pouches, you can file them into a basket or bin.

I love a good before and after, so here’s a side by side comparison to prove why this is the best way to store kids’ puzzles!

The puzzles fit perfectly in a basket, but let me show you where we are actually storing ours. The kids have a play table in the basement with a storage space built in under the table that’s the perfect size for our bags of puzzles. We’ve had this table for ages, and it’s no longer available where we bought it, but here’s a similar table.

Even though the sides of the storage bin under the table aren’t very high, you can see that the bags stay upright on their own – no flopping over like you’d have with Ziploc storage bags. This makes it so easy for my kids to flip through the puzzles to find the one they want to work on. And the zippers make it easy for them to put the puzzle away when they are done.

Here’s another fun side by side, space saving comparison…

This is a really quick and easy organizing project. It only takes about five minutes to transfer a stack of puzzles into the zippered pouches.

Looking for more tips to organize kids’ stuff? Check out these posts!

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KIDS’ COMMAND CENTER SUPPLY LIST: 

• Magnetic Strips
• White Animal Head Magnets
• Gold Animal Magnets
• Translucent File Boxes
• File Folders
• Command Picture Hanging Strips

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TIP #7: GIVE KIDS AGE APPROPRIATE CLEAN UP TASKS

The mess was a combination of books and toys. Beckett loves his books, but he is still young enough that he has a hard time getting all of his books back on his shelf with the spines facing forward and without pushing some books off the back of the shelf. So when we clean up his room, I put away the books, and he puts away the toys.

Beckett’s books don’t go in any special order on his shelves, which makes it quick and easy to put them away. As much as I love to organize, it’s important to be realistic about the level of organization that you can maintain. There is a part of me {the part my husband thinks is crazy} that wants to group his books by topic or color, but the fact is that I just don’t have time to reorganize them in such a detailed manner every single time I put them away. Going back to tip 3 – I have to resist the urge to over organize!

Because we also make frequent trips to the library, we always keep the library books separated in to a basket on the top of Beckett’s bookshelf. By returning books to the library book basket each time we clean up his room, we never have to search the shelves looking for the library books on the due date.

TIP #8: MAKE IT EASY FOR KIDS TO KNOW WHAT BELONGS WHERE

When we designed Beckett’s bedroom, we added enough shelf space to accommodate both books and toys. He loves sorting and putting things back in place, so the DIY numbered bins have been perfect for us. When we first organized his room, I let Beckett decide what toys would go in each bin, so now he knows, for example, that his Sesame Street playhouse and all the parts and pieces go in bin number 3, while all of his small animals go into the number 4 bin. Because he made the decision about what to put in each bin at the outset, he feels more ownership over putting his toys back in the correct bins.

TIP #9: HELP KIDS FOCUS ON THE TASK AT HAND

When we are trying to clean up his room in a hurry, Beckett sometimes gets a bit overwhelmed running back and forth from bin to bin putting away one toy at a time. When this happens, I make things easier on him {and me} by putting all of the numbered bins back on the shelf and give him just one at a time. I’ll hand him the number 4 bin, and tell him to fill it with all the animals. Once all of the animals are away, then I’ll hand him a different bin to fill. This helps him focus, and makes the clean up process much faster.

Even if all the toys are out of their bins, and books are spread all over the table and floor, between the two of us, Beckett and I can always get his room picked up in about five minutes.

TIP #10: TOYS STAY IN THE ROOM THEY CAME FROM


This last tip is definitely the most important one for making clean up quick and easy. In our house, we have a rule that toys have to stay in the room that they came from. This means that if the boys are playing in their bedrooms and decide they want to play in the living room instead, they have to leave their toys upstairs and pick different things to play with from the living room toy baskets. By keeping small baskets and bins of toys in each room of the house, there is always something new to entertain the kids, and they actually wind up playing with more of their toys than they might otherwise. I also rotate toys on occasion, which helps keep the kids’ interested!

This rule requires a lot of reminding, and, of course, sometimes results in whining, BUT it also makes life so much easier! There is no way that I could clean up all the toys in each room in just five minutes if half of the toys had to be carried up and down the stairs to reach the right rooms. As an added bonus, because toys always stay in the room that they came from, we lose far fewer!

Featured at: http://gracefulorder.com/2015/08/20/wayfair-housewarming-party-kids-bedroom-storage-ideas/

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• RIBBA Picture Frame from Ikea ($6.99)
• Sheet music copied on to colored cardstock
• Elmer’s Craft Bond
• Scissors
• Paint brushes
• Mod Podge
• Metal clips
• Black acrylic paint
• Gorilla Super Glue
• Command Picture Hanging Strips

Since the playroom is rock and roll themed, I wanted to incorporate music into the art display boards, as well as using them to add some color to the white wall. I downloaded the sheet music to four different Beatles songs, and printed each song on to a different bright color of cardstock.

Then I removed the glass and backer board from the Ikea picture frame, and safely discarded the glass.

Next I used Elmer’s Craft Bond to spray that back of the pages of sheet music, adhering them to the backer board one by one.

I overlapped the pages of sheet music at different angles to create a collage effect, and let the pages stick out past the edges of the backer board.

Once the entire backer board was covered in sheet music, I turned it upside down and used a pair of scissors to trim the excess from all of the edges.

Next, I used a large paint brush to give the sheet music a quick coat of Mod Podge.

The moisture of the Mod Podge caused the sheet music to ripples in a couple of places, but as the paper dried, the ripples disappeared, leaving a nice smooth surface.

I then place the sheet music covered backer board back into the picture frame.

I picked up four metal clips on Michael’s and gave each a quick coat of black acrylic paint.

As soon as the paint on the clips was dry, I Gorilla Super Glue to glue each clip to a music covered backer board, near the top center.

Finally the art display board were ready to be hung on the gallery wall, but I didn’t want to simply hang them using a nail at the top of each, because this would have allowed them to swing from side to side if bumped by the kids. Instead, I used Command Picture Hanging Strips. 

The other half of each strip is placed on the wall.

I used the Command Picture Hanging Strips.to hang all of the Ikea frames on the gallery wall, except for the largest poster frames {which are hung from nails, but with the picture hanging strips used to secure the bottom corners in place}.

Linked up at Remodelaholic

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Beckett goes to preschool two days a week, and they do an art project every day. That’s a lot of fabulous three-year old art that comes into our house! Right now I am keeping all of it in a bin, and I have ideas in mind for how I’ll decide what the keep, and how to document it without saving every piece of paper. But those are stories for other days. Today, I’m talking about displaying that art work in our home on a daily basis.

We have a magnetic chalkboard wall in our kitchen, and I like to hang the boys’ artwork right there for all to see. And while Beckett is proud to see his art in the kitchen, he often asks if he can please take it to his room. I love that he loves his room, and I love that he is proud of his art and wants it in his own space.

A few months ago I was flipping through the new Ikea catalog, and in one of the full room photos – the art display caught my eye… art hung from men’s pant hangers.

I immediately flagged the page and mentally added it to my to do list, thinking that not only would this solution inexpensive and easy, it would also a perfect fit for Beckett’s vintage preppy, menswear inspired bedroom.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Michaels and came across an aisle display of denim craft products, and mixed in with the denim stretched canvases were some very nice looking beige linen canvases with a nail head detail around the edges. I picked up two of the large canvases and some denim supplies to make a fun organizing project for Beckett’s closet {which I blogged about earlier this week}. I was headed to the register when it dawned on me that the stretched linen canvases {in the 16×20 inch size} would allow me to create a pant hanger art display that would have a bit of a higher-end, framed out feel.

I could picture the finished project in my head, but I could quite work out the details of how I would hang the hangers on the canvas. I wandered up and down a hardware aisle waiting for something to jump out at me – and finally it did. I picked up a small package of picture hangers. So my short supply list looked like this:

SUPPLY LIST
16″x20″ stretched canvas {I used linen from Michaels}
D-Ring Picture Frame Hangers and screws {one per canvas}
Trouser Clamp Hangers
Drill or screwdriver
Command Picture Hanging Strips {the Velcro-like strips}

TUTORIAL
Attach on D-Ring Picture Frame Hanger to the top center of each canvas.

Make sure the place the picture hanger far enough forward that the D-Ring can hang down in front of the canvas,

With the D-Ring picture hanger in place, I was able to simply put the hanger through the ring, allowing the hanger to hang right in front of the canvas, but making it easy to take the hanger off in order to change out the art display.

There wasn’t a lot of available wall space in Beckett’s room for three big canvases, so I decided to create his art gallery right behind his bedroom door. We often close the door when we play in his room {his preference} and he sleeps with the door closed at night – so his art display will be visible often.

We picked three pieces of his artwork, clamped them in the pant hangers, and hung the pant hangers back on the D-Rings.

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After the boys finished their drawings, it was naptime. And while they napped, I quickly turned their art into chalkboards. 

Each clipboard had a photo image clipped to it, so I removed one of these photos and traced it around my favorite portion of each boys’ scribbles.

And then I cut each out and laid them on the clipboards to see how they looked.

I love the way the bright colored paper pops against the black clipboards.

I wanted the drawings to be permanently affixed to the clipboards, so I sprayed the back of each with a coat of spray adhesive and then smoothed them in place.

Finally, I covered the front of each clipboard in a coat of clear chalkboard paint. Yep, you read that right. CLEAR chalkboard paint!

The chalkboard paint did smear the marker lines a bit, which I suspect happened because the drawings were done with washable Crayola’s. I haven’t tested it yet, but would guess that he same smearing would not occur if you used permanent markers, like Sharpies. For obvious reasons I don’t let my boys draw with anything permanent. Fortunately, the little bit of smearing didn’t bother me at all.

I covered the drawings and all of the exposed black areas on the front of the clipboards in the chalkboard paint. Don’t be alarmed that in some areas, where the paint is applied a bit thicker, it will go on looking white. But it all dries smooth and clear.

And that’s all there is to it! Each chalkboard took less than 5 minutes to make. I didn’t count the time that the boys spent coloring, of course, because they would have been doing that anyway.

Here’s the breakdown:
-Tracing and cutting out paper: 1 minute
-Affixing paper with spray adhesive: 30 seconds
-Covering art and front of clipboard with clear chalkboard paint: 3 minutes

I allowed the paint on the clipboards to dry for a full 24 hours, and then began making notes on them using a chalk bistro marker. When I need to write new notes, all I have to do is wipe the chalk away with a barely damp tissue or rag.

Just as I had originally planned, I mounted the two chalkboards on the wall of our pantry right between the hooks where we hang the boys’ lunch bags. I used two 3M Command Velcro Strips on the back of each chalkboard, with corresponding velcro strips affixed to the pantry wall.

I already keep a chalk marker in a holder next to the pantry door bulletin board, so it’s quick and easy to grab the marker and make notes on the chalkboards anytime.

I wanted to make good use of every available space in our pantry, and the addition of these clipboards does just that.

Not only are these DIY chalkboards perfect for jotting down notes and reminders for the boys’ school, they are also great for clipping up papers to be returned to school. Currently I have a class picture order form clipped to Beckett’s clipboard, and a sheet of name labels clipped to Cooper’s {since he started school just a few weeks ago, I am still working on adding these labels to all of his clothes, sippy cups, and reusable lunch containers}.

Hanging these chalkboards right inside the pantry between the lunch boxes ensures that we see them each morning as we pack the boys’ lunches, so we’ll never miss those important reminder notes.

Not bad for a five minute project, right?!

Don’t forget to check out all of the other five minute back to school projects that my friends are sharing today! From organization to teacher gifts – we’ve got you covered!

Simple Book Covers by A Prudent Life | Apple Teacher Gift by Dolen Diaries Chalkboard Clipboards by Blue i Style | School Files by Addicted 2 DIY

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