Creating Space in Small Places

One remodel challenge: Since my church's classrooms were built in the 1940s, they are small. Very small. I think kids just sat at tables back then and never moved, so you could cram a bunch of them into a small room.

One of the first issues I addressed was how to make the most out of my small space. I decided to make one of the organizational pins from Burton Avenue that I had seen on Pinterest. It was a magnetic board with little metal boxes stuck to it to hold crayons, scissors, glue sticks, and all the other stuff that had been in my cupboard.

The items came from Ikea. I googled it and the closest one was 3 hours away in Pittsburgh. Since my husband is the world’s biggest Steelers fan, it was no problem to convince him to take a trip down to the city. To tour Heinz Field, of course. And oh, by the way, while we are here honey, let’s go to Ikea!

We found the metal board just like I’d seen on Pinterest, but Ikea did not have the magnetic boxes to put on the board. So I hunted all over the internet and found some organizer boxes made for kids to put in their lockers. You could spray paint them different colors if you wanted to make it more lively.

It took effort to hunt down the supplies, but the finished product is worth it. I like it for so much more than its space-saving ability: The kids love taking the boxes off the board when we need them for crafts. And they even like cleaning up afterward because they get to put them back on the wall.

Moderator's note: This resource is from Rotation.org member Joan Eppehimer's KidFrugal blog, which she is sharing here at Rotation.org in order to preserve it for posterity and make it available more widely with our community.  It is part of a large group of lessons and resources that she developed to make "ministry happen when there are no resources to make it happen." Thank you, Joan, for sharing your creativity with our community!

You can read more about Joan and her ministry here.