Once upon a time, my art and scrapbooking supplies were completely organized: tubes of watercolor nestled together agreeably , embossing powders were lined up in neat little rows. My scrapbooking paper was fanned out according to color family and I always knew where my eyelet maker was.
And then I went back to school.
Over the next two years, I used my supplies on almost daily; they proved to be useful in the art and design classes I took. But somewhere along the way, I developed the not-really-put-away technique whereby I would open the craft closet door and stack, in no particular order, new supplies and old, along with class projects, various drafts, reference materials, and all kinds of this-might-come-in-handy-some-day bits and pieces. And then I would shut the door.
It got to the point that I couldn't open any of the drawers without causing a chain-reaction avalanche requiring desperate, two-handed maneuvers to circumvent. Great fun for the kittens. Less fun for me.
So last week, after 30 panicked minutes in which I lost Lickity Split and finally found him tucked in the ribbon drawer only after Snapdragon ratted him out, I decided it was time to deal with the craft closet already. I figured it'd take me an hour, maybe two. It ended up taking 14 hours, but in the end, I'd gone through everything, threw out a ton and organized the rest. In the process, I switched things around so the ribbon drawer was higher and installed a drawer divider to make it a less appealing hiding place for a certain kitten.
Organizing the Craft Closet
