Use Up Leftover Paint with a Little Creativity

I recently converted a space in our house into a closet (full article on that next month). It was another If You Give a Mouse a Cookie project, which started with wanting to paint the upstairs landing and ended with gutting cabinets, framing, and drywalling. As with any house project, go big or stay home!

I was working on using up the grey paint that I used on most of our house, and after 1200 square feet of various shades of grey I started to feel like I was in a Tim Burton movie. Don't get me wrong, I like the colors that we used in our house. But after months of painting with it I was ready for a little splash of color.


When it came time to install the shelves in the closet, I didn't have enough grey for them. I looked through my cans of paint, and questioned when I would ever use some of them. Then I decided it was time for a little paint project with my son.

We took our four shelves outside (I've painted with him before; he's a bit like the Tasmanian Devil, so outside was a good place for him). Each of the shelves got a base coat, and then we went to town with the colors. We splattered, we streaked (the paint), we swizzled. We went through five different colors of paint, laughing, painting, and enjoying the not-too-hot weather. He enjoyed making designs, and I didn't really care what he did since most people won't be looking at the bottom of the shelves in our linen closet. We didn't use up nearly as much paint as I was hoping (maybe I need to work on adding shelves to more closets), but we still got a little bit of our creativity out. 

Now my son has ownership in the project, I got an excuse to messy-paint, and we had an afternoon of bonding time. As Michael Scott would say, it was a win-win-win situation. So dust off those old garage paints (or look at the clearance paint at your paint supply store), pull out those closet shelves, don your old tee shirts, and enjoy some time with your kids as your inner Jackson Pollock is released.