Never enough storage!!!

I have found over the years that it is so easy to get overwhelmed with all of the "goodies" purchased or items that "might get used".  All of a sudden you go to look for something - you know you have it - but where on earth is it??  As you look around your craft room or area you wish you could push a magic button & the tiny item or special sticker or special buttons would just start beeping to lead you to them.

But alas - no magic button, no beeping sound - just time spent hunting & searching.  Recently started to really organize my craft room.  This is like trying to organize a closet you have ignored for years!  Little by little I am making headway.  I have managed to get all of my scrapbooking & card making paper semi-organized - using big bins & separating the paper by occasion, gender, & color.  I'm sure as I continue my quest for better organization I will change it, but for now it's a start.

I have bought rolling craft drawers which have very quickly been filled with rubber wood block stamps.  My clear stamps I have put in big 3-inch binders using baseball card pages to store the smaller ones.  Of course they are divided by categories.  I still have a huge bag to put in the storage pages - need more binders.  They are easily stored on a bookshelf. You can put on the edge of the binder the type(s) stored in each binder.

And stickers & the 3-D puffy stickers (like Jolee - my favorites)!!! Oh my goodness I was not sure how to keep them straight.  Finally I found at WalMart some folder size plastic holders that had dividers built in.  They are great & came with the inserts to write each category on them.  The stickers are now grouped together and for really smaller ones you could use a coupon holder.  The ones that I found at WalMart were very colorful with multi-stripes on them & not expensive.  I was able to free up several drawers.  These also fit nicely on a bookshelf.

I have many colored pencils & markers.  I wanted to keep them separated by brand - some are watercolor pencils & markers, some permanent, & some that are more expensive like Copic markers.  I didn't want to put them all in a big bucker containor and then spend time hunting for which one I wanted to use.  I was throwing out a soup can the other day and I thought why not take the paper off & recover the can with decorative paper?  So I am now collecting soup cans to reuse.  I remember seeing one time that you could build a pyramid out of cans to use for a toss game for little kids.  I'm going to use the same idea & glue 3 cans on the bottom, then 2 in the middle, & 1 on the top to build my pencil/marker holder.  I will use hot glue to hold them together after I have recovered them.  I can sit them on a shelf or on my table when using - because they stack upwards they won't take up too much space.  I can keep them all separated much better now.

So what are some of your tips on storage?? What has worked for you in the past?? Please share with me so others can start to tidy up - afterall Spring is on the way!!!

Until the next "stitch" in time & we "scrap" our ideas together - Mary