You may have seen me refer to our office as my "craft room" here and there. I've been dreaming of having a dedicated spot for crafting practically my whole life. I'm a crafter at heart. I see inspiration everywhere. I always want to craft. I could spend hours and hours in any craft store. The problem is that for the past almost 8 years all of my craft supplies have been in storage bins making it difficult to craft. I insisted on packing it all into bins to take to my dorm room in college (and from time to time did actually pull it all out to use!), then I lived in a small basement apartment and then a small townhouse. So there has never been room for all of my stuff! Storage bins make it difficult to keep organized, difficult to see what supplies I actually have, and difficult to motivate myself to dig out everything I need for a project. Ugh!
But now... now I finally have a room all to my own. I've just been shoving all of my bins and boxes of supplies in the room as we slowly unpack and organize the house, so it hasn't really been used as a craft room quite yet. I finally had time to do some organizing and can't wait to start using the space!
(That's my saltwater tank on the left! We're working on updating the stand for a bigger tank. Pictures soon!)
(And yes... that is a cat door on the cabinet. Gotta hide that poop box somewhere!!)
I started by unpacking all the bins and boxes and sorting everything into piles by category... pens, markers, photos, scrapbooking supplies, paper, paints, glue, sewing, crocheting, general crafts, etc. I didn't take any pictures of my massive piles of junk because it was a little beyond ridiculous. I surprised myself by being able to purge a lot of things. I tested all of my markers, paints, and glues and threw out any that were dried out. I threw pictures that I had duplicates of or were photos of someones eyeball or the floor or random blurred images. I threw out lots of pictures and words from magazines that I had clipped out in high school and college for collages I used to make (realistically I probably won't be making any of those anytime soon, so I figured I could part ways with scraps).
After throwing out tons of terrible pictures, I sorted the ones I saved. I used to be a hard core scrapbooker, but I failed miserably at it during college since everything was packed away. Needless to say my photo collection got a little out of hand. I'll do further organizing later, but for now I divided pictures into piles based on elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and adult life. I made dividers for a photo box and put them all in one box. When I start scrapbooking again, I'll go by phases of my life until I get caught up. Elementary and middle school are pretty much done. It's the later years in my life that still need scrapbooked!
I bought a scrapbook organizer type thing from Hobby Lobby to organize all of my paper, stickers, letters, etc. Ah, it feels good to have paper organized. I also organized my large storage bins into a general crafts bin for all things that didn't have a specific category and a sewing bin for all of my fabric scraps, thread, yarn, needles, etc.
I bought photo boxes for a dollar at Hobby Lobby and used them for a few things. I need to buy one more for paints (do you love the Puma shoe box? This particular box held many random craft supplies since about the 10th grade!)
I decided to use some of our DIY wedding decorations in the craft room because a) they are my favorite colors and my craft room should definitely be my favorite colors!! and b) because I spent so much time on them and can't bring myself to tuck them away in a box somewhere. I love them!
I used one of the flower girl buckets to store all of my pens and permanent markers. I have a couple of bird cages around the room which I will show off when I have fully decorated the room. I hope to hang some frames and install some shelves sometime soon, so a few more wedding decorations will probably find their way in.
It feels SO good to finally have all of this stuff organized! Hopefully now I will be able to do more crafting!!
Stick around as I finish decorating this room too! Still need curtains, a rug, some wall frames, and shelves!
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