{"id":910,"date":"2012-03-07T19:03:56","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T01:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/?p=910"},"modified":"2012-03-07T18:16:47","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T00:16:47","slug":"organizing-art-craft-supplies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/2012\/03\/organizing-art-craft-supplies\/","title":{"rendered":"Organizing Art & Craft Supplies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whether you have one hobby or many, organizing the supplies that go along with it can be challenging.\u00a0 There are very specific tools as well as the more universal tools that function for different aspects.\u00a0 You might have a whole room dedicated to this or you might have only a small space.\u00a0 Nevertheless, there are usually many tools that go along with this, things that need to be organized and accessible.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been one room in my house that has repeatedly caused challenges for me \u2013 it\u2019s the room I call the craft room.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just a craft room for me; it\u2019s where I exercise, where the movies live, I used to watch TV, and now where most of my business stuff lives.\u00a0 It has a walk-in closet where I housed a lot of the craft supplies, as well as many other items.\u00a0 This closet keeps getting cluttered and I have re-vamped it several times over the years we\u2019ve lived here.<\/p>\n

There are many different ways to organize such various, yet related supplies.\u00a0 What will work for you will likely vary depending on your space, your supplies, and how you use your things.\u00a0 Quite randomly one day when I was waiting for someone, I did some brainstorming about my closet.\u00a0 This can be useful for us \u2013 just thinking about what we need to deal with.\u00a0 What are the categories we think of for this space\/stuff?\u00a0 What kind of things do we have \u2013 generally, specific types, general types?\u00a0 What ideas do we have for organizing them?\u00a0 (You can see my notes typed up here<\/a> and how I moved through some processing of ideas.)<\/p>\n

For the closet, I got a closet system with a section of drawers.\u00a0 I already had some products I liked for organizing \u2013 mainly the 6-drawer unit that holds scrapbook paper.\u00a0 The complete overhaul of the closet was a daunting process \u2013 there was so much to go through and too many things I found that I\u2019d wasted money on that I accepted needed to just be donated.<\/p>\n

Although every situation is different, what I discovered for myself was that I would use \u201crules\u201d for most of the supplies, yet there would be exceptions.\u00a0 Let me use the scrapbook paper as an example.<\/p>\n

I knew I had 6 drawers that I liked for storing the paper, and I started organizing it.\u00a0 Some of drawers had been storing stickers and stamps.\u00a0 It took me about 4 hours to sort my scrapbook papers.\u00a0 I initially started with solids and patterns as a division.\u00a0 This gave me a better idea what I was dealing with.\u00a0 Then I sorted the solids: pink, red, orange, and yellow into one drawer; green, blue, and purple into another; then brown, black, gray, and white into another.\u00a0 This left the patterned paper.\u00a0 I wanted to keep the Halloween papers separate since I make Halloween cards every year and the easier it is to get at those, the better.\u00a0 The other patterned paper could be broken into two groups \u2013 those I had collected for quite specific themes and then \u201crandom\u201d other patterns.\u00a0 The specific paper for specific projects was not a huge amount, the drawer had plenty of room left in it, yet I decided this was an opportunity to group some other related supplies with the paper.\u00a0 When I am ready to do one of those projects, having the embellishments right there will simplify the project.\u00a0 If someone were to come in and look at this drawer, they might think it was a hodge-podge of things since it\u2019s got some honeymoon supplies as well as graduation and some kid stuff.\u00a0 Yet for me this works best \u2013 it\u2019s the exception to the \u201crules\u201d I established for the \u201cpaper drawers\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"6-drawer<\/a>

My scrapbook paper "drawers"<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n

I used this idea throughout \u2013 so most stickers are in a general sticker container, yet I also made some containers for wedding and Christmas\/winter.\u00a0 Those themed containers have all sorts of supplies that are specific to them, while keeping the quite general containers for types of things (embellishments, stamps, templates, etc.).\u00a0 This makes sense for me and the things I have to work with \u2013 what will work for you might be completely different.<\/p>\n

There are any numbers of ways to organize such a plethora of supplies and you need to think about how you use your supplies.\u00a0 What do you want to be able to find when? It needs to make sense for you, both when and where you will look to use specific things and how many you have of certain things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a plethora of ways to organize craft supplies (or really any things that have a large number of things within the category) and following some rules can be a good thing. Then again, there is a time and place to break those rules and maybe only for certain aspects. See what I mean\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,18,5,22,17],"class_list":["post-910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organizing","tag-behavior","tag-goals","tag-household","tag-productivity","tag-spaces"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-eG","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":925,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions\/925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}