Typically, a craft room is the one part of the house that can be left to a relatively disarray, at any given time. A crafter can just close the door to the room to hide any on-going projects they are working on. Yet sometimes it does help to be organised in the craft room, to be able to find supplies and have a clean workspace to work.
Organising the craft room can help you avoid losing crafting tools and wasting money, by the duplication of tools and supplies that cannot be found on hand. A craft room that is well organised will cultivate a crafter’s creativity, as opposed to suppressing inspiration, usually brought on by the frustration of working in a messy crafting room.
It is also safer to craft in a clean environment. In a clean crafting room, crafting supplies are not potential weapons ready to stick a crafter and crafting scraps are not turned into tripping hazards.
A good approach to starting the organisation of a craft room is to not only organise the contents, but give the room a once over cleaning. Take a cleaning tote and load it down with a sponge, paper towels, a garbage bag and a multi-purposed surface cleaner to clean the craft room. As the organisation of the room begins, clean surfaces as they are uncovered. Gather all similar craft supplies together and place them in a box or plastic bin. Continue this pattern until all supplies and materials are with in their assigned categories of likewise crafts. Any unusable craft supplies and scraps can go directly into a plastic garbage bag. When all items are in the bins and boxes, the room will have been cleaned and cleared of scraps and debris.
Make sure you label your different storage areas before placing your craft items, tools and supplies back into their assigned areas. Labeling these storage areas will assist you in keeping your craft room neat and tidy in the months ahead. Everything will have a place and nothing can be left out and lost, or inadvertently thrown away. All your tools should be placed according to function and how often they are used. Scissors, cutters, pattern marking tools and pliers can be safely stored together in a shallow plastic bin on the shelf. Paint brushes should be stored bristles up in jars and paints should be stored nearby and out of direct sunlight. Markers, pens and gel pens, glitter and glues should be stored near the paper supply.
Make sure your scrapbooking papers are stored neatly and in a way that won’t bend the corners. How you organise your papers is up to you. Personally, I like to organise by colour but many scrappers prefer to arrange them based on the manufacturer. Keep your cardstock nearby to make it easy for you to mix and match when you sit down to scrap.
How you arrange to rest of your supplies may be dependent on how many you actually have. For example, if you only have a few stickers, brads and ribbons and shallow drawer or two may be all you need. But, if you’re like me, you have lots of different embellishments to store.
Personally, I keep my ribbons in little plastic bags in drawers, my brads and eyelets in mini jars and my stickers and rub-ons in folders so I can easily flip through them.
No matter how you decide to organise your supplies, the main idea is to gather all the similar items together in one area where they are readily accessible when they are needed for your crafty project.
For the final touch, take the glass cleaner and wipe down the windows. Natural light is important to work by, especially with crafts.
Lots of good info there.
Re paper, I also like to arrange by colour in alphabetical order. But I also have particular topics in amongst them such as Christmas, Disney and School.
Some good tips, Jen. Certainly when you have as much stuff as I have organisation is the key – I particularly like the folder idea.
Cheers, Laura
great tips. my best buy was a second-hand filing cabinet, i store all my papers & images in it, i have my papers colour coded so i can find them quickly.ive also got kitchen cabinets fitted round my craft room & lots of shelves.
Labeling worked for me. I’ve been scrapbooking for ages and tons of supplies make my workspace disorganize. One time I decided to clean things, and since I have this terrible behavior of feeling sorry when throwing left over supplies I created cards for different occasion by cutting them into rectangles and pasting each decorative paper (left-over) after the other. At the end of the day I had a clean and organized room and VOILA I also had stack of cards ready to be shared anytime.
God Morgon; jag ar uppe med tuppen som vaglnit… Fantastiskt farglaggning och layout. Kul motiv ocksa med en lite tuffare tjej, du verkar gillar dessa.
Speciellt sa gillar jag dodskalle charmen; verkligen cool! Paskkort…ja det beror pa hur manga man ska gora pasken ar ju bara en manad bort. Tror jag kor den snala varianten i ar med bara narmaste familjen plus nagon van. Har manga fodelsedagskort att gora i mars-april samt att jag blivit tillfragad att gora nagra tack-kort.Ha det!Kram S.