12 Tips for Setting up a Hobby and Craft Room

Check out these great ideas for outfitting your new work space.

If you're setting aside a space for hobbies and crafts, here's everything you need to know about stocking it.

  1. A sturdy work table with a lot of work space is the key to a productive craft room. Choose a large, durable table-either metal or wooden is ideal.

  2. If you want to add height to a table you already have, use blocks under the legs, or put PVC pipe on the legs. A good height is about 31 inches. If you'll be sitting for a long time, use a stool with a back support.

  3. Glue or tape a measuring tape to the edge of your work table for easy sizing.

  4. Use unused pizza boxes to store rubber stamps. Color-code the boxes (orange for Halloween stamps and green for plants, for example) to make them easy to locate. Stamp the bottom of the box with the stamp that belongs in that spot and stack them.

  5. A sink is important to have in a craft room. This makes cleanup easy and convenient, and you're not toting messy materials all over the house. If you don't have access to a sink, use a container with a spout and a bucket for dirty water.

  6. Store paintbrushes in empty soup cans and insert corrugated cardboard to keep them separate. Cleaned-out baby-food or margarine containers make excellent paint holders or can be filled with water for rinsing paintbrushes.

  7. Store craft supplies in kitchen canisters. Fill them with materials such as cotton balls, ribbon, felt scraps and yarn.

  8. Glue magnetic strips to a wall and hang scissors and other metal tools on them, or mount a piece of Peg-Board and hooks. You'll never have to dig around in a drawer again.

  9. Keep an old magazine/newspaper rack in the craft room for messy projects. Old place mats can also be used as a table guard when working with messy materials.

  10. Keep a hat tree or coat rack in the craft room for hanging up smocks.

  11. Decorate the shelves in your craft room. Attach the fabric to the top of the shelf, and then make two holes in the fabric, one on each side. Put ribbon through so that when you roll it up, you can hold the fabric out of the way.

  12. Coordinate shoe boxes by covering them with the same material used on the shelf. Spray adhesive works best for this.

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