Organising Craft Supplies (Part 1): Getting Started

I spent the last week of the summer holidays bringing some much needed order to my craft supplies. It was so much work but I can’t tell you how happy I am that now all my craft supplies are neat and easy to access.  Every time I look at my shelves I feel so happy♥.

Bookshelf number one and….

Bookshelf number two. I will go into more detail about what is actually in each bookshelf in the next post.

The photo below was the mess I had before I started.  Yes, those are actually my good fabrics thrown carelessly on the floor.  The cubby holes were not being used well.  Some had one thing in them (in the hope that I would not lose it) while others were packed to the brim with paints and canvases or fabrics or papers.

Before I started I googled ‘organising craft supplies’ and looked at a few websites. for ideas. My favourite website for organising is by far Chez Larsson. I love the way Benita organised her Expedit (the wonderful cubby hole bookshelves from Ikea – they are the BEST!).  Since I already owned two Expedit (four by four) I decided that all my craft supplies (including books) would have to fit into two Expedit. Anything that didn’t fit just had to go because owning more than that is just stupid (even if you do run a craft website and write craft books for a living).

I had a number of challenges organising my supplies.  They were:

• How to organise the amount of supplies I have.  I have so much stuff and want to be able to access all of it quickly and easily.
• How to organise so many different craft supplies.  I sew, embroider, knit, felt, make jewellery, use clay, make cards etc.  I also have a load of craft books, a huge collection of vintage dress patterns, over 60 CD’s which contain all the text and photos for my book.  The list just goes on and on…
• How to store my fabrics.  When mum came over a while ago she (being a quilting goddess) said that I have to get my fabrics well away from the sun so that they don’t fade.  As any good quilter knows, fabric can remain in your stash for well over a decade, waiting for the perfect moment to be sewn.  I also know that fabrics cannot be stored in plastic tubs.  Cottons need to breathe.
• How to organise so many little things.  I have thousands of tiny glass beads and findings, buttons, sewing needles, cottons, little scraps of fabric and card that I wanted to keep.
• How to label everything clearly so that it was easy to find.
• How to store paper
• How to store ideas.  I love clipping ideas from magazines.  Sometimes I get ideas from the most unlikely magazines.  I often find that Vogue magazines trigger great ideas but I wanted a way of keeping all those ideas together for a rainy day.

So, how did I get started?

• Firstly I needed to work out what I had.  It turns out I had my craft supplies spread over five rooms in my house.  I got everything and put it in this room to sort out.   It was completely overwhelming.  I wondered at this point how I would organise it all but realised that it would take a lot of determination to get through the piles.  I also knew that I wanted everything to fit into two bookshelves that I already owned.  The storage units you own already will determine what sort of containers you use.
• When I could see what I had I realised that some of my organisation was already working.  For example, my beads were already organised into plastic containers with little compartments and these were perfect.  So, I grouped together all the things which were working, like my beads and my jewellery tool box.
• Then I made another (large) group of all the things which were either not containerised (not my favourite word in the world) or in the wrong containers.  My laces, rickrack, ribbons and bias tape were in containers that were more than twice as large as they needed to be.
• I then went shopping.  Ikea was the first stop and at this point I just had to make guesstimates (another interesting word?) about how many containers I would need.  At Ikea I bought nine fabric boxes made to fit into Expedit.   I bought four woven baskets which I completely love also.  I also bought eight magazine files, four plastic containers with compartments (the ones for beads and small things).   This was not my last trip to a shop for containers.  I filled these containers and then realised that I needed many more so went to a container store and back to Ikea (twice).  I have decided that organising is a very messy task.  Like most complex tasks it is not linear.  I kept reaching dead ends when I didn’t think I could do any more.  Usually these were overcome by finding the right storage boxes!

Well, when you have organised your stuff into the same room, sorted into groups of things that are working and things that aren’t, bought some more storage containers, then you can begin the mammoth task of putting everything into those containers…  At this point I called it a day…

Back with more organisational tips tomorrow.

Have fun cleaning out.

Mia

Related posts:

1. One Hour Craft – Book Launch Finally, i
2. One Hour Craft (the book) Q & A I have had
3. How & Why to Start a Craft Blog! (One Hour
4. 50 Reasons to Keep Making Stuff! (Homemade
5. How to Start Teaching Craft Classes (Part 1) In the las

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