I think my 3-year-old got a little too excited about what she saw on the TV show “Little Einsteins” and tried to recreate it – on my wall. While her creation is no Monet or Picasso, it is extraordinary, and I’d love to hang it on my wall if it weren’t already permanently muralized there. Usually I only allow washable markers in our house, but somehow a few permanent ones snuck through the system from school, and you’d know my Disney Channel-addicted artist would stumble upon the handful of non-washable markers.

My older children love creating artistic masterpieces as well and we’ve accumulated a lot of supplies over the years to give them an outlet for their creative side. I can’t draw two straight lines without having a panic attack, so I think they get this from their father or some recessive gene that skipped over me.

However, the down side to having these little artistic geniuses running loose in our house is that their stuff piles up, and as you can see in the photo, it can do property damage. Here’s my system on keeping unauthorized art projects to a minimum, but, as you can, see it’s not a fail-proof system.

1) Isolate all of the art supplies to a limited area. We have two art tables in our house. One is our small table for our youngest to have access to limited supplies. She can work independently with limited supervision and it gives her something else to do when others are working on homework. The other area is a student desk with everything the older girls need to complete homework projects as well as hobbies. The higher shelves are a great way to keep glitter glue and other messy supplies out of reach of younger siblings.

2) Organize the instruments. I repurposed a kitchen tool from Pampered Chef to be my art caddy. It spins on a lazy susan and has plenty of spots for lots of crayons, markers, pencils and scissors. I took everything out of the large Crayola boxes and now the girls can easily have everything they need at their fingertips. It’s also portable if we need to bring it to the kitchen table for a larger project.

3) Keep the trash handy. It seems so obvious to say you need a trash can near the desk, but it’s amazing how often pencil shavings or broken crayons are still found on the top of the desk. However, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. You can provide a garbage can, but you can’t make the kids use it. But it certainly will help increase the chances that they’ll toss more in the trash can if there is actually one there, though.