Organized

There are few things I enjoy doing more than organizing things. I know -- it's a sickness. Next to a scrapbook store, one of my favorite places to go is the office supply store. Or Organizer Heaven, otherwise known as The Container Store! When I read that the challenge on Heart 2 Heart this week was all about organizing, I knew I had to post!

My scrapbook room was my daughter's bedroom until she moved into her own apartment a year ago. I lost no time in staking my claim and was all set up before the weekend ended. I love my cozy little space.

This is the view from the doorway.

And the view from the opposite corner:

Now for some close-ups of my favorite organizational items:

Let's start with paper. I organize my cardstock by color families because that works for me. I am slowly getting each color in a zip-top bag so I can keep the scraps in the bag with the color. I tend to use them up that way. I used to throw them in 12x12 plastic drawers, sorted by color but accumulated WAY too many. To overcome that, I went through all the scraps while recovering from surgery a few years ago and cut the pieces first into a standard card size if it was big enough, then a standard size card front, then 4 x 6 pieces, all the way down to 3 x 3. I didn't keep smaller pieces, and those card bases and fronts have really come in handy! I'm in the process of sorting my retired B&T into color families, too, once I get down to a few smaller pieces. Until then, the retired paper packets are kept alphabetically in a plastic crate.

My current paper packets are kept on this wire paper tower I bought from a going-out-of-business scrapbook store. One slot has the Level 2 Paper Packet, and the next one has the Level 1 kit. The paper packs are kept alphabetically so I can find them easily.

There are a few extra slots for pages in progress.

I found these cute little pink containers at Wal Mart. I bought them in several sizes and have several items sorted into them, labeled with my handy label maker. The deeper ones hold Petite Perks stamp sets and white self-stick notes; the shallow ones hold things like tape runners.

I love using this larger container for my blocks. The handles latch to the lid, so it's easy to take the blocks to crops. It fits on one of the shallow shelves in my black desk from Target for easy access.

Let's talk stamps. I have tried every way I can think of to organize my stamps, and I always come back to my reliable old cd baskets that I bought several years ago at Target. I keep them organized alpha numerically. Ignore the numbers written in the corners -- it was from a different system I tried. Fail.

What I ran into with keeping them organized this way was how to find what I needed and how to remember what I have. I finally decided to create a topical index of each stamp set. I wrote down every category I could think of and printed a label for each one. I also created pages for A - Z (words and sentiments), specific common phrases like "Happy Birthday" and "Thank You," and alphabets. I used old non-CTMH cardstock and just 3-hole punched it. I spent a weekend stamping and only got about halfway through. So now, if I use a stamp set that hasn't been entered in the index, I make myself stamp each image in the book before I use it. I also take the tiny stamp number and stamp it right next to the image. Makes it so easy to find what I'm looking for! Here's an example using the "Frames/Tags" page:

Another organizing item I'm proud of is the way I keep my Nesties and embossing folders. One day I looked at the My Acrylix stamp box and thought, "Perfect!" I dug out some self-adhesive magnet strips, cut down the Nestabilities cardboard insert and attached the magnets right to the insert. You have to use several strips to catch all the small inner dies. I can just flip through to see what I have! Plus it's very portable.

I like to use things that are pretty as well as practical, like the 3-tier wire basket (Target) and buttons by color families in glass jars:

I love my Ikea drawers, covered in Basic Grey paper. These hold my chipboard alphabet letters and numbers.

And last, but not least, is my beloved labeler. I couldn't organize without it! Well, I guess I could organize - I just couldn't find anything.

Thanks for visiting my scrapbook room! I hope you took away an idea or two to use in your own organizing. Have fun!