Madly Trying to Organize the Craft Supplies

Now you know why I chose Mad Crafter for this blog.  Trying to organize the ton of craft supplies is a constant battle.  So today I got some small trash bags and I'm just roughly sorting the piles of stuff.  Then once I have the piles of bags I will do more detailed sorting.  The biggest issue is that I need containers that can hold all of the sorting.  I use a tool box for all my rubber stamps but now I have to many stamps.  So it is an unending struggle going up a container size.  I have gotten a few cool ideas of how to store supplies and even make it decorative.

At first I would purchase suitcase ensembles and break up the supplies per bag.  This worked great because I would just wheel around my supplies to craft meetings and when I occasionally taught.  But that ended and so it seemed to bulky using the suitcase since I wasn't taking them anywhere.  So I found things over time to hold the stuff.

For my linen fabrics I have a beautiful treasure chest.  When even weave linen goes for $55 a yard and up it is really holding treasure!  It also holds lavender which is nice when you open the lid.  It is quite large and hold a lot of fabric.

 

Treasure Chest.

 

 

Treasure chest open to show some of the fabric.

 

 

I have 5 foot high paper racks for storing paper and card stock.

 

There is a large filing cabinet that holds projects that have been organized in large plastic bags.  At first I didn't want the cabinet but there was no where else to put it in the house.  So I didn't have enough papers to really use the amount of cabinet space.  Then I started putting projects in it and it really works great!  It is worth the space it takes up.

 

There is a room divider/television holder in the room behind the paper racks.  The treasure chest is where a television would be placed.  So I use the structure to hold tool boxes and cardboard boxes of supplies. 

 

I have a lovely set of decorative boxes.  The hat box was a paper box from the craft store that I painted and decorated it with Japanese prints.

 

 

 

Decorative boxes.

 

The pink and green boxes were already decorated when I bought them.  The pink box holds cotton embroidery threads.   Then green holds needle weaving supplies and projects.

 

 

 

 

This plastic box has three shelves and contains unused perle cotton and instruction books for my tools.

 

 

 

 

The house is where I keep used balls of perle cotton.  I'm not sure how to decorate it yet!  But I think a small print fabric or even paper would be nice.

 

 

 

 

There are several tool drawers in the craft room.  This one hold brads and other paper supplies.  Another one holds most of my seed beads.

 

 

 

 

Seed beads.

 

 

 

 

Paper and book binding supplies.

 

 

This is a tall slender shelf.  I keep finished books, cardboard, tiles and other stuff I used for book binding.  This shelf is very handy.

 

 

 

 

This is the new shelf for my craft books.  Some of the shelves are rather short so I also store fabric and card stock to recycle into other projects.  Also the bottom of the self holds some of the tool boxes for crocheting and knitting supplies.

  

 

 

 

Spice rack.

 

 

We got a nice wooden spice rack that we never used.  So I put beads in the bottles.  This works great as long as the beads aren't fragile.  Glass beads will eventually break against the bottles.

 

 

 

Pink Basil?

 

Thank you for taking the tour and I hope this helps someone else with storage needs.