From a very young age, my daughter showed a strong interest in art. She’d choose scribbling away on a paper towel roll or gluing a million buttons on a piece of paper over anything else. It felt important to me to create a kid’s art space for her creativity in our small home.
It’s easy for me to get carried away with looking at dreamy rooms dedicated entirely to art, play, and homeschool on Instagram or Pinterest, but the reality is our choice to live small doesn’t allow for that. While I love pretty things, living small has taught me I truly value simplicity and function. I can’t dedicate an entire room to art for my kiddo, but I can make space for it.
When we lived in our Casita Camper full-time having a truly dedicated art space was admittedly not in the cards for us. But we did make room for art, however messy it got. The most important thing to me in creating a space for art for my daughter was that it was accessible. I wanted her to be able to take out items without having to ask for them to foster independence, trust and creativity.
With little room to spare, in our less than 100-sq.-ft. of living space, simplicity was key. So all of her art supplies lived in a bin which fit in a low cabinet she could reach. She could pull the entire thing out and take out what she wanted to enjoy at the table or we could take the whole bin outside.
When she was younger, I included things like paper and crayons or markers, glue sticks and pom-poms. As she has gotten older, it has included things like beads, paint, clay and colored pencils. From time to time, I would switch up what was in the bin to vary the experience for her and introduce her to different mediums.
When we bought our cabin, it felt like a mansion. But at only 575-sq.-ft., it’s still small living by pretty much anyone’s standards. While we weren’t able to have a dedicated creative space in our camper, I wanted to have one in our cabin. With no rooms to spare for anything but sleeping, I thought I would carve out a little creative corner in my kiddo’s bedroom.
Then, I had two realizations.
The first was that with wood paneled walls that couldn’t really be cleaned I wasn’t sure I was comfortable allowing her full access to supplies like paint where I couldn’t see her. The second is the reality that she likes to be where her Papa and I are. She’d use the space less if it was tucked away in a corner of her room than if she could create while chatting away incessantly to me while I do the dishes.
So her creative space sits right outside our bedrooms, in-between the bathroom door and the end of the kitchen counter. It consists of a kid’s size table, two stools, and a cart that holds all her supplies. It is simple, functional, and when it doesn’t look like a tornado has hit, kind of cute.
Since she is 4 years old, I chose a kid’s table for the space because it’s the perfect size for her and our space. It also allows her to leave a project there that she is working on and come back to it later in the day without me feeling the need to have her clean it. As she gets older, I envision getting a taller folding table like this one from IKEA that also has storage for the space.
Our art cart has three sections. The top level holds things like markers, colored pencils, craft sticks, embellishments, glue and scissors. The middle level holds all the paper. I provide a mix of white watercolor paper for painting, construction paper, printed paper and blank note cards. Next to the cart, there is a roll of paper, a giant pad and a couple small blank canvases. The bottom level holds watercolor paints, paint sticks, acrylic paints, paint brushes/sponges and water containers–as well as a smock and a foldable easel.
My daughter uses this space every day, multiple times a day when we are at our cabin. I love the freedom it brings her to create when the mood strikes, to make a mess without her worrying about getting something on the table or waiting for me to finish what I am doing in order to get out her paints. With this joyful freedom to create also comes a prolific amount of brilliant 4-year-old art. And while part of me would love to keep the 500 masterpieces that are created each day, I just can’t.
We hang some up near her table, which we rotate with her latest works. I encourage her to make art for others. Our family loves this, our friends who already have their own kiddo’s art to deal with- maybe not so much. I take pictures of the things I really love, or that have a fun/sentimental story attached to them. I have big plans to turn them into a photo album but haven’t gotten my act together to do this yet. Then, with the exception of a few canvases I have kept, whatever isn’t hanging gets tossed out. And I feel okay with that. The reality is, at 4, all her joy and skill building is in the process of creating and then giving/showing it to others. After some time she forgets about it, and it’s okay if I do, too.
What have you created space for in your home?
