Ribbon Storage - Before and After

You may or may not have noticed how my ribbon was stored in my before picture.  I picked up two cardboard ribbon display holders from JoAnn's one year at the end of the holiday season.  They just gave them to me, and they were great for storing my ribbon.

Until I ran out of places to put them.

I could have painted them a pretty color, but that would have been too much trouble, and I always viewed them as a temporary storage solution.  They were fine until I could figure out how I wanted to store my growing supply of ribbon.

This was the old way.  I put SU ribbon in one holder, and all other brands in the other one.  Once I ran out of room, they ended up stacked in front of each other.  No matter which one ended up in front, I always needed what was in the back.  Ugh!  I had the cardboard holders, SU ribbon storage thingys, and jars with ribbon in them.  Nothing but a big mess!!  My ribbon needed some serious help.

When I use ribbon, I like to have the whole spool out.  Once I decide what ribbon I am going to use, I tie it to my project and cut it from the spool.  I hate to waste ribbon.  Almost as much as I hate to waste paper.  For that reason, using a dowel system would never work.  I would be forever removing and replacing spools.

I considered using a gutter (or three), but didn't have the wall space.

The pretty little boxes with grommet holes wouldn't work for the same reason as the dowels.

I even tried wrapping my ribbon around clothespins that was all the rage a couple years ago.  Boy am I sorry I wasted my time on that!  I didn't like that system at all.

I tried wrapping the ribbon around large flat spools like the ones you can use for embroidery thread.  Even though the ribbon wasn't wrapped tightly, it still came out with creases.

One option that was left was to go back to storing them in drawers like I did when I first started accumulating ribbon.  Sometimes you don't know how good a system is until you try everything else.  Since I was planning my own storage, I made sure to include what I needed for my ribbon.

One thing I like about storing them in drawers is that they are protected from light and dust.  With the ScrapNcube drawers, I can organize them by color, and I put a divider made out of foam board between the rows to keep them tidy.  This is a QB3 drawer.

This is what my ribbon looks like now.  It's so much nicer this way!

I underestimated how much room I needed for my ribbon, and need another drawer or two, but I love this way of storing my ribbon.  It is all together, protected from light and dust, and I can get to it very easily.

I put tiny tags of each color of ribbon on the drawer handles, so I can tell at a glance what drawer I need to open.

Since the SU grosgrain spools are so large, I have all of them stored in one of the larger drawers you can see in the above picture.

All in all, I am very happy with this way of storing my ribbon.  It is everything I want and nothing I don't.

Hope you have a great weekend!

K