Organization - Free classes with The ScrapRack

I'm so excited to share with you my newest obsession... getting my craft room permanently organized!!! I took a live class on organization given by The ScrapRack at CKC Lancaster in July this year and it has changed my life forever! Right after class I went to the booth and bought the show special. It was the scraprack, the travel case and lots of pocket pages and divders. If you would like to get organized too, sign up for the next free online seminar starting Sept 11 2012. I couldn't wait so I purchased the recorded audio from the last seminar and listen at my leisure.

I also joined a facebook group based on the seminar called 2011 Get Organized Challenge Group. Shout out to all the ladies that have checked out my blog for the cuttlebug storage idea I scraplifted from my fav blog and for sharing such great support and ideas.

What I am about to show you is the horror of a craft room. This is where I started. My craft room had become a catch all for the whole house. Every time I wanted to clean up, more and more stuff would end up piled in my beloved craft space. Brace yourselves... ( I cannot believe I am showing y'all this...)

OK.... now that I have confessed, you can see why I desperately needed to organize. I could never find that special something I wanted for a project and I had been buying container after container and organizing for 6 months prior to taking the class. All the while I was buying more supplies like a crazy woman. Nothing was helping 'til I went to the ScrapRack class.

As they suggested I started by clearing a space that would only house organized items. I placed my empty ScrapRack on it. The organization system is made of a 4 section system to put everything in its place. Alpha/Numeric, Themes, Calendar and Rainbow. I started with my paper so there's only 3 sections for that (no alpha). My solid paper was already sorted by color so I needed to put it in alpha order and add the newest paper I bought over the past months. I had plastic paper storage holders from cropper hopper already so I used those to stand up my paper under my desk with the ScrapRack on it.

While I was pleased with my first bit of progress, I noticed that I did not have enough of the cropper hoppers and they did not stand independently. Aaaarrgghhh! The one thing about me is, when I start I want to finish and I want it to be done. I was very discouraged with not having every storage item I needed. So, I decided to go in a very different direction. I bought 3 of the shelf cubes and placed them under my desk so that the paper would still be stacked vertically.

Then it was off to sort all of my patterened paper and stacks. That was a major major undertaking. I put out sorting templates on the floor and sorted almost everything I own into the 3 categories. I found out that the most paper I have all have a floral design.

Once I sorted the paper and stacks, I incorporated the patterned paper with the solid. Now all my black patterened paper is behind my solid black in alpha order (chipboard, dotted, floral, striped, etc.) as suggested in the seminar. All of the paper stacks are in order by theme or calendar. Instead of taking them apart, I used 2 address labels and stuck them to the cover and each other. Using a sharpie I wrote the category on the label and placed it in shelving I already had. It is so easy to find all of my paper now based on this system. Here is a glimpse at my new storage solution. It is hard to take pics under the desk.... all of the dividers aren't showing in the picture as well.

 

 

 

At the end of my sorting, a week of work off and on, I ended up with my 8x8 stacks, 6x6 stacks, mat stacks a small amount of paper left to sort. But 96% of my paper is permanently organized!!! On to embellishments.... This process takes at least 8 weeks (most likely more) and bit by bit, I will finally get organized! Join me....





 

And here's some storage tips:

Embossing Folders -http://cestla-viedesigns.blogspot.com/2011/04/cricut-circle-magazine-march-spring.html

Ribbon storage - http://cestla-viedesigns.blogspot.com/2012/06/crafting-storage-my-ricracroller-is.html

 

La-Vie