Alice, from Falmouth, Cornwall, and her 3 children had a spring-clean and redecoration of their stationery cupboard. Let’s take a look at it…

What did you do?

Today myself and my 4 year old daughter looked at our rather glum dumping cuboard at the bottom of our stairs and she said it could be a teacher’s cuboard. We took everything out as a team and cleaned it, as we were painting ballerina pink on the walls my daughter said her stationary cuboard is going to be fantastic! We do love stationary in my house, so my daughter and I created her a stationary cuboard, in which will also help with home learning for all three of my children.

Over all this task went well, it is the first time my daughter has helped paint walls as she is only 4, because she did so well with the walls, I decided that she would do great painting a old wood box white, as the white stall I had wanted at the end of the cuboard was too long, it has to go against the longer wall.

We had space for the now newly upholstered white box. I had made a table cloth from an old blind so had a offcut of the material that just so happened to fit the lower section of our box, I had craft glued it securely while my daughter started to collect different craft items she wanted in her new space.

We used old jam and coffee jars to put yarn, lables, pens, pencils, rubbers etc and a old plastic toy tub for wrapping paper rolls and wall paper rolls we can craft with, paper lives on the left hand side, where I had re used some peach plastic tubs that hang on to a old coat hanger, the coat hanger also stores the scissors high enough to be not in a place of harm for my little girl.

We had part wall papered the ceiling to break the cuboard up visually, I had sprayed fabric glue onto the wall paper which worked to keep it in place. Everything we did today was at no cost. It took us 2 hours over all.

I even managed to fit a off-cut of carpet I had left over from when me and my son laid carpet in my bedroom not long ago, so it’s nice and cosy now in the stationary cuboard.

Do you have any other projects planned?

I am considering turning my upstairs cuboard into a fabric room, for my material I hoard 🙂

Tell the Housebound With Kids community a bit about yourself…

My name is Alice. I am a lone parent the three children between 4 and 11 years. I currently reside in Falmouth Cornwall!

How are you finding being housebound so far?

To be honest I love my children’s company, it can be hard being a lone parent, however, I’m extremely blessed with my three children, I cannot complain when I have such wonderful creative little people around me 24/7.

Do you have any tips for other parents?

Be patient no matter what your circumstances are. I had looked at what other families have been creating in gardens and homes over the lockdown period and if I’m honest I was sad that I hadn’t been able too. So today I managed to do a small project with my little girl and that is great for us all.
It doesn’t matter how small you may think your project is, to your family, your wonderful children, spending those creative moments working as a team mean more than anything.

I had created our little stationary cuboard for free, which shows me that I don’t need lots of money to make our home suitable for home learning and it can look creative. Patience I will say it again, just be patient with yourself.

Has being part of our community helped you?

It has been nice to see I am not completely alone, during a time we as adults can feel alone. It has been lovely to see so many parents working with there children and just being parents. Because being a parent is such a blessing.

We have to appreciate even the bad times and I can see it’s not just me who experiences those now. If we don’t experience the hard times we don’t appreciate the good times!