Kerry’s Paper Crafts

WARNING: the contents of this blog posting are somewhat scary. Yikes.

This weekend I knew I had to start tackling my re-organization project. See, there’s a guest bedroom off my craft room - it’s a great room. The problem is that it’s been sort of a catch all for my crafting CRAP. In other words: this past season on Craft Fair Madness was NOT kind to this room. LOTS of things were dumped here. Various unfinished craft projects, craft mistakes & disasters….unused boxes…shipping boxes that I *might* use someday…random unused craft materials, etc.

This shelf was the worst. It was where most EVERYTHING got thrown. To add to the madness, I still had Christmas wrapping paper & accessories sitting in this room - just hadn’t gotten around to lugging them back up to the attic. ARGH.

So this weekend I tackled the beast:

*shudders*

So, what did I do? Well, here are a few tips that I can pass along from my weekend:

• THROW THINGS OUT. Seriously. Are you going to use that? Have you touched it in the last 6 months? Take a long hard look at that crafting project that you THOUGHT you could salvage. Chances are you should cut your losses & move on - it will allow for a new spiffy project to make it’s way into your crafting life…
• Boxes - do you really need them? I was saving some empty boxes for potential shipping purposes. But really - all they do is take up LOTS of space - and looks really ugly. The Post Office has boxes - so why am I saving these?
• Wasted space: certain items were taking up silly amounts of space - simply because I didn’t have them sorted properly. I took all of my “Craft Fair” type alterables & materials & placed them all together. I grouped them into baskets & boxes so they are all in one place. Now I know what I have - and they are easy to find. (ex: wooden purses, little clay pots, chipboard books, etc.)
• Sell old items you no longer use. I have a whole box full of stamps & other crafty tools that I no longer use. They were great - but I’m ready to make room for more new stuff. I hope to post them on here soon so if any of you are interested in a good deal on stamps - check back soon!

The above strategy produced A LOT of trash. This is just a small sampling…

And after all that…I give you…the newly organized shelf that I so bravely tackled:

TA DA!!! - I’m so proud!

I really hope to keep it this way. You do not want to even know how many bags of crap I really had. There was a lot more: so much more that we couldn’t fit it all in this weeks outgoing trash. LOL. (in my defense - what started out as my one shelf turned into my shelf, plus the closet…plus the computer desk, plus another closet….Pete got into it too!)

So there you have it. I cannot believe I’m actually showing these photos on my blog - but at the same time I want you to know that I’m a real person & my craft space does NOT always look clean (in fact, clean is pretty rare). I don’t think it needs to always be 100% clean - but it does help to have some organization.

While we’re on the topic - I thought I’d share this again. I twittered about it last week but wanted to post here too in case you missed it. The lovely ladies over at the Crafty Storage Blog have a great thing going. They feature all kinds of creative rooms & ideas. I’ve seen some really neat things on there. They were kind enough to feature my space last week. Be sure to check them out & leave ‘em some love! (my FAVE was this idea that I saw HERE.)

thanks for stopping by!!

Craft Room, Organization