Sorting my Stash Part 2

And so the sorting began….

I literally started pulling out ‘piles’ of stuff and looked at what I had in front of me. If I wanted to keep my stash orderly, I knew that I had to sort it in a way which would work for me and the way I scrapbook.

Previously, I had kept my supplies in boxes according to what they were. I had a box for chipboard, jars of flowers, a box of tags, a box of stickers etc. I realised that the reason this wasn’t working for me was because my supplies were not sorted into categories which I search for when I am creating a page. When I need an embellishment, I never think “I want to use some chipboard” or “I need to use a sticker”. No, I find myself considering exactly what will help me tell the story on my page. I go searching for circles or hearts or stars or butterflies or flowers….

And so I started making piles. As my piles grew, I put them into plastic take away containers on my bed. By doing this I could see exactly what I had, what I obviously liked buying and what I use the most.

One of my biggest piles was for my words. Often I do a page, but find myself stuck on a title. Sometimes I don’t know what the title should be or discover that I don’t have the right alphabets to make it say what I want it to. Over the years I have collected masses of embellishments, stickers and rubons with words on them. I hardly ever use them because previously they have been packed away and mixed with my other supplies and I never thought to go searching for them. Now, with my words all together in one place, I plan to use them for titles and to help tell the story on my pages.

Other major piles I had were: journaling blocks, tags, flower shapes, photo corners (another item which I love but hardly used because I could never find them!) and ribbons. As you can see from my ‘before’ photos in my previous post, I have a HUGE ribbon collection. What can I say? I just love the textures, colours, look of ribbon on my pages…and I also like wearing them in my hair when the mood strikes! Lol!

I have always been stuck as to how to store my ribbons. The big tub which they were in was always overflowing, tangled and just too irritating to wade through if I was searching for a particular colour.  I had these big glass jars which I had been using to store my flowers in, however they weren’t working for me. The jars were too big for the amount of flowers I had and I couldn’t sort the colours properly in the 5 jars which I owned. If I wanted a single flower, I had to tip the entire contents of the jar out to find it. So, I decided to use these jars for my ribbons instead, sorted by colour groups. This has to be my favourite organisational choice so far. I will now be able to see exactly which ribbons I have and feel more inspired to use them on my pages. (And they look really pretttyyyy too!)

I spent a good two days sorting everything out. I went through my paper stash, putting papers by my favourite manufacturers together and then the other random sheets left over into piles sorted by colour. I also pulled out my scraps and put them together in a container. It is shocking the amount of scrap paper I have! I knew that I had to put it somewhere near where I would scrapbook, to ensure that I could use it up and access it freely when I am making pages. I found a blue plastic basket which I bought a few years ago for my paints and placed any scraps which were inspiring me in there. The rest got placed in the bottom drawer of my desk. As my blue basket gets empty, I will refill it with more scraps from the drawer. The basket can also hold new scraps which I create while scrapping.

It was a long, but enjoyable process and with everything sorted, it was time to work out how to display it!

(To be continued...)