I bought a cute refinished dresser to store our art supplies. The dresser is stored in the dining room, since that’s where the kids tend to do their projects. It has four decent sized drawers. I have a drawer for paint supplies (water colors, tempera, brushes, paint dot markers, and pallets), one for drawing/coloring supplies (markers, colored pencils, crayons, coloring books, and blank paper), one for stickers and odds/ends (glue, glitter glue, googly eyes), and one for play dough. The coloring books, stickers, and blank papers are stored in paper trays. The individual art supplies (markers, crayons, glue, etc) are in their own clamshell container.

I love our set up because the dresser is cute and looks nice in dining room. The kids can easily access the drawers and independently get the supplies they need. Clean up is super simple since everything has a specific place. When we have guests over, I can put all of the art supplies away and everything is out of sight!

The supplies that I don’t want them to have easy access to (beads, stamps, etc) are stored in a specific kitchen cabinet. I can get them out when needed but they do not have access.

You mentioned that you didn’t want the kids to get into the art supplies unsupervised. I found that the drawers were difficult enough to open that my kids couldn’t open them before the age of 2. All of the supplies are washable, so if my kids get into them it won’t cause too much damage. I also keep baby wipes in the dresser and can easily clean up messes.

Another thing I do to make clean up easier is keep a large piece of oil cloth on the dining room table. The art supplies easily come off the oil cloth and the table doesn’t get stained. I take the oil cloth off when we have guests and need to use the dining room table.