New year, new changes

For the better part of the past two days, I have been cleaning and organizing my scrap room. To say that it’s done is far from the truth. Since the past year consisted of two bridal showers, two weddings and one graduation in this family, life has been hectic. Not to mention my surgery at the beginning of the year that had me out of work for four months.  I haven’t been the best at keeping up with maintaining the organization of the house. (I will attribute that to the after effects of surgery : ) even though we all know the truth – I’m a terrible housekeeper!) 

But, recently I decided that I needed some major changes to this house if I was going to stay here. The first one was to reorganize the kitchen. That’s all done, with the exception of the new fridge, which will be here Wednesday. (Sad to say but I am very excited about this.) Next was to clean the hallway closet. Not an easy task by any means, seeing as though I probably haven’t cleaned it out since I moved in almost nine years ago. I found about 30 pairs of shoes to donate to GoodWill. Crazy right? Next I worked on the bedroom and started to clean out the closets to decide what to donate and what to keep. Not easy either since I am in between sizes and am trying to lose some weight. Do I keep my “fat” jeans that currently fit and give the “skinny” jeans away? Or vice versa, which might entice me to try and lose weight faster? Or do I keep both sizes and decide later? Decisions decisions! 

Now that the kitchen and closet were done and the bedroom is still a work in progress, I decided to tackle the craft room. One – because there aren’t really any rooms left, besides the living room and two – it’s probably the place that needs it most. So, my first task was to try and organize my stamps. I used whatever boxes and lids I had available and divided up the stamps by category. I have Christmas stamps, baby stamps, wedding stamps, word stamps, etc. I placed the cling and clear with the red rubber stamps. What I realized is that I have too many stamps! Where was I going to store all of theses? 

Pinterest to the rescue! I started looking on Pinterest for ideas and there are soooo many! My dream scrapbook room is on there, but I know that I won’t be able to get my room to look like that, without going broke. I need to use what I already have plus a few additional things I can purchase to make this room functional again. I really wanted an island workstation that doubles as storage as well. I also wanted to turn my closet into a storage place for my punches, ribbon, stamps, etc so that I can easily find what I am looking for. 

So, getting back to what I was doing for the past two days. I finished organizing the stamps and moved onto paper. Since I had a lot of projects to do in such short time spans (hello telling me I got accepted into a Saturday craft show the Monday before!!) I had scraps of paper EVERYWHERE! Since there were so many, I decided to divide them up into color families. I then placed them in those plastic sleeves that formerly held all my paper. (You know, until I went crazy at the 6/$1 Michael’s sale where I had to be rung up in multiple purchases because I exceeded the item count for the register. No lie – that happened on multiple shopping trips because I couldn’t pass up a deal like that!) Anyway, these turned out to be great for scraps and I put them in the blue bins that originally held the 12×12 paper. Now if I need a scrap of paper, I don’t have to cut up a large piece. I can just sort through the clear plastic packs and find what shade of the color I am looking for! 

With that complete, my next step was to organize the full sheets of paper. I took the solid colored sheets and put them into color family groups. I then put them away in the Recollections paper cubes I assembled a couple of months ago. I bought three more and I assembled those downstairs and sorted the patterned paper into the same family groups. I also made spots for special events that I scrapbook a lot or events I have lots of paper for – baby, wedding, birthdays, school, sports, etc. 

Now that I am finished with that, I need to start working on figuring out the shelving solution for the closet. I also want to purchase more of the paper storage cubes and fashion them into a desk by finding a table top to go over them, using the cubes as legs. (If that makes sense…..) 

i am a long way from finished, but this is a good start. I hope to have this accomplished in another month or so. I know this post may seem boring to some of you and you may have even stopped reading by now. That’s ok. This is more for me. If I ever decide to say at the end of the night, I’ll clean up tomorrow, I can think back about how much work it took to get my room this way. I am trying to be more aware and not leave things until tomorrow! 

Well, if you stuck this one out, thanks! I know it was a long one with no real tips or tricks. Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave a comment!