Monday, July 20, 2009

Organizing by color

My scrapbooking embellishments, that is. Anyone else do this? Have pictures of your storage? Right now, I've got them organized by color in baskets. But I've combined more than one color per basket, putting items in Ziploc baggies. I also have a metal and clear category. Oh, and I have two baskets for theme products: Halloween, Christmas, baby, other holidays, sports. Here's what I'm worried about - finding what I need easily. Obviously, I can just pull the basket/baggie with the color item I need, but everything is just thrown in the bags. So I'll have to dump everything out to find what I need. Which could be annoying, plus a pain to clean up. I need to figure out a way to sort within color, but still keep things in the baskets, but again, make it easy to find. I don't want to buy anything, since I just bought all the baskets last year. They're cute little IKEA baskets that fit perfectly on my shelf.

I did the same with my ribbon tonight. I went through all my AC ribbon, purging some of it, with the rest going in to these categories: by color, ribbon with words, striped ribbon, patterned, Christmas, polka dot. I never use ribbon and I think it's because I'm just overwhelmed with the whole drawer full of American Crafts ribbon packs. I think this will inspire me to use it more often since I can now find what I'm looking for easier.

I haven't tackled the rest of AC product yet. I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do. I know there are plenty of House items I would use more often if I knew they were there, but I'm not sure about mixing them all up and taking them out of their cans/boxes. I also need to go through my AC Thickers Accents. My Thicker alphabets are already sorted by color.

I'm trying to do a major purge because I know I have product I'm not going to use anymore. I just have a hard time getting rid of things. But I'd like to sell what I'm not using at a garage sale, so I think I need to get ruthless.

So that's it. Still a work in progress. I might have to change some things around after I've scrapped with it for a while.

Anyone have any tips? Pictures to share? Regrets after switching to organizing by color? ;)

4 comments:

Katy said...

NO regrets, although my scrapping has been limited lately.
I don't have any pictures, maybe tomorrow I can take some.
Mine are in drawers, by color (like your baskets), but within the drawer I have it sorted it a bit by type.
So, baggies of brads on one side, felt flowers in a tin on the other. The hard part is the embellishments with multiple colors, so I sort by how it 'reads' visually... is it a "cool" or "warm" accent and what is the predominate color. MY ribbons are in a big jar by cool or warm, unless they are one color, then they are in the drawers. It is still a work in progress.
I do like it because I tend to think, while scrappin, I need something red/blue/indigo. This has opened me up to being more creative about what I put where.

Missy said...

I don't have any organization to my accessories sort of...brads have their own section on my hutch as does ribbon, but that's it...Don't have enough yet, I guess....although you're right, some of it I haven't used for years, and I won't..

Marie said...

i have not done by color but by type, but i like the color concept. i'm sure i will get antsy soon and feel a need for some change!

Angie Ulseth said...

I sorted my small embellishments like buttons, brads, etc. and ribbons by color. I store them in the small boxes in the cropper hopper blue case. Each small container is about 2 inches square. It was an investment in both time and money, but now I actually use my embellishments. It's so easy to find what I'm looking for.