Getting Organized

A couple weeks ago, I passed a garage sale on my way home from work.  I found an old '70's dresser that was exactly what I was looking for to use as a sofa table.  It was in pretty good shape, and since it wouldn't fit in my car, I sent my husband back with his truck to pick it up.

He came home with TWO truckloads of stuff!  What?!  I thought we were trying to get rid of stuff!!!  But he was only thinking of me, and since he knew I wanted to get my craft room reorganized, he thought this massive sectional piece might work.  Isn't he awesome?

I finally got it moved in to my craft room, and it is, well, massive.  Not exactly what I was looking for, but the file drawers are just what I wanted to store my massive paper collection.

Shall I say massive again?

Massive.

Okay, I promise I won't say it any more.

Up until last night, I had all of my full pieces of cardstock stored together by SU! color families in cropper hopper bins in my closet.  All of my scraps were also stored by color families in hanging file folders in a file box that used to live in my closet.  I save all of my scraps, so the box was full!  This was a huge improvement over the 3 ring binders that I used to keep my scraps in.  But since there is no light in my closet, the box was on the floor and under a shelf,  I always had to pull the box out to see the color I wanted.  The file box eventually moved to a new home in the middle of my craft room.  And that wasn't working.

I came to the conclusion a while ago that it would be best to store my scraps and full sheets together.  Why go to two different places for the same thing?  Duh!  And it wasn't until hubby came home with that massive storage unit, that I could finally execute my plan.  I haven't even used any paper from my new system yet, but I know I am going to love it.

The top file drawer contains the brights, subtles, and regals collections.

The bottom drawer has the In Colors, neutrals, GKD and PTI cardstock, and all the other SU! cardstock.

Almost every hanging file folder has a full pack of cardstock plus a few full sheets and all my scraps for that color.  So there is more than enough room for my massive collection.  Oops, there I go again.  Sorry.

I used the file box to store all the retired SU! colors.  Each color already had a file folder with scraps, so I just slipped the full sheets in, and now I have them all together.  I am going to keep them for a while because I still like some of the colors.  I'll treat them like my clothes, though, and if I don't use them in the next year (or five!), they're gone!

Here is the space that I freed up in my closet.  I think I may use my empty bins for some of the craft magazines I save but never look at.  I do need a nice place to keep them!

Now I need a good way to store all my 12x12 papers. They are in the larger cropper hopper bins in my closet begging to be used.  You can see them peeking out at the bottom of the last picture.  How do you store your 12x12 papers?

I'm off to try out my new system...

K