Crafts Articles
Organizing Craft Supplies
by Paul J. Easton
Craft supplies organized in 3 simple steps.
Do you find yourself looking at a room with bits everywhere, let alone a house with knitting in one room, Painting gear in another, card making supplies in another? Does this sound like you? If so lets look at a 3 step plan to get you and your craft gear organized....
1. Start by collecting all your craft supplies into one room, I mean everything! If you have the space then at the same time, put like with like ie Paint brushes with your paints and canvases. Wool and needles together with patterns. Card, cutting pads, embellishment's and the like for card making all together and like wise with scrap booking supplies and any other craft that you par take in. Whilst doing this, take time to get rid of things that you don't use anymore. If you haven't used it in six months, out it goes. If you have a lot of magazines on crafts that you enjoy, keep them together as well.
2. Now that you have all your craft supplies in one room and organized into piles, its time to look at what you have around the house to tidy them into. If you can afford it, then maybe its time to go and have a look at Target or Walmart for some storage containers. If your like me and have a lot of little embellishment's then a lot of small plastic containers is perfect. What you can do is put all like small supplies into these containers and then keep them together in a larger container (this can be a shoe box). Keep all your scrap booking papers together (I have an open file that I keep all of mine it, makes it easy to see what you have too) The other option is if you have a filing cabinet, you can use one draw for papers, patterns, cutting pads, and even canvases and another for all the other more bulky supplies. The idea is to keep it simple, but all together and easy to access. You don't need to spend a lot of money doing this, you can even cover a few boxes with pretty paper and keep supplies in these.
3. Lastly, make sure you keep your craft supplies where you can access it easily. After all, its really not worth it to put these things that you use at least once or twice a week on the top shelf of a storage cupboard. If you are lucky enough to have a room that has space then make the most of it. I have a desk in the spare room, and under it I have a plastic wheelie bin, with the things I use lest often, on top of that I have my canvases so they are easier to get hold of. Next to the desk I have a set of plastic coated baskets, which hold all my main craft supplies in shoe size boxes, and a few other containers I found around the house. It really does work, because you come to learn where everything is. It also means that if you run out of something its easy to see that its not there....you don't find yourself running around looking for the particular item for days on end, swearing you had it the other day.
Good luck with sorting out your supplies.
Paul Easton is a home organizing professional and the owner of a Home Organizing Blog, which helps anyone looking to organize their home environment and get more out of life, by providing helpful free idea's and ways of clearing the clutter from your home. You can instantly download a copy of the 7 lemon scented home organizing idea's by visiting http://www.completehomeorganizing.com.