Craft Supplies Organization

On a whim this past weekend, in a flash of craziness brilliance, I decided to organize my craft supplies. This task has been on my list for awhile (thanks to Operation {Re}Organization), and the reasons I decided to tack this past weekend were three-fold.

1. I had a couple of free hours with no obligations.

2. I was getting really tired of hauling supplies back and forth from their home in the bedroom to the dining room table all the time (more on this in a minute).

And...

3. I WON A DRAWER ORGANIZER GIVEAWAY! From...guess where? IHeart Organizing! One of my very favorite blogs! 

The giveaway included a set of acrylic drawer organizers and a silicone basemat from KMN Home. I received my prize on Friday afternoon, and of course wanted to use it right away. Honestly, this was the main motivation for getting my organizing bottom in gear. 

After brainstorming a couple of places I could use this organizers, it dawned on me that duh, I could use use them for my craft supplies!

Before I got to organizing, my craft supplies existed in this form:

Clearly, that's a jumbled mess. For awhile, this clear plastic drawer/bin worked well, but as my craft supplies grew in number, it became more of a mess and more of a pain to find things for projects. It also lived in our bedroom next to the desk, which is where I never worked on projects. I use the dining room table, almost exclusively, because of its larger surface area.

Then I remembered that I cleaned out a large drawer right next to the dining room table a month or so ago when I created our filing system. Perfect. I was thrilled to have a whole drawer to devote to all those crazy craft supplies!

So I hopped to it. I cleaned out, threw away, sorted and grouped all my supplies.

I used my new(!) basemat and acrylic organizers to corral all the small supplies that typically get lost in the shuffle. I "upcycled" a few old, small boxes to group like with like, and played around with a few configurations until I liked what I saw. This is the result:

It's certainly a FULL drawer, but you can see everything and access it all very easily. In an apartment of just over 600 square feet, I'd say gaining a whole drawer devoted exclusively to my craft supplies is a major win. Hoo-ray. It's a small victory in an ongoing storage war.

Since we all love a little more detail than just BOOM, done. I figured I'd show you a few photos of different sections of the drawer, starting with the materials I won in the giveaway.

The "basemat" is that blue, grid-looking piece (I removed one of the acrylic organizers temporarily so you could see it better). The folks over at KMN Home have a good thing going with these. The basemats are "sticky", so things don't slide around in the drawers. It's kind of like a drawer liner, but better. Even cardboard sticks to it. There's no adhesive though, so that means no residue, and things can be rearranged easily. 

I won't go into detail on what each of the acrylic organizers hold, but they're GREAT for keeping miscellaneous items in their place. May need to purchase more in the future. I tried to group some things by purpose/use (i.e. "supplies that have to do with sticking things together" - ha), but there's not much more to my organizing strategy than that.

Moving to the middle of the drawer, a couple of small cardboard boxes hold various glues and stamping supplies. My sewing box sits to the right of the stamping supplies. Rolls of patterned duct tape and ribbon spools live toward the top middle of this photo (this is the least organized part of the drawer, so they may end up moving to another spot).

Finally, on the right side of the drawer, you can see the edge of my sewing kit, hot glue gun, cutting mat (purple thingy), white string, ruler and paper trimmer.

That's it! This drawer has already made my crafting life easier. I'm in love with it. I've already pulled my sewing kit out once (for Jackson's dog bed), and used my paper trimmer several times. Easy access is everything when it comes to craft supplies. Each item has a home, and I'm really happy about the drawer's convenient location next to the dining room table. So thanks to KMN Home for supplying the giveaway so that I could get this little project done!


Linking up to: Blissfully Ever After

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This post is a part of the series "Operation {Re}Organization." To see other posts in the series, click the tab at the top of the page.