Organizing Craft Supplies

Craft supplies organized in 3 easy steps.

Do you find yourself looking at a room with bits everywhere, let alone a house with knitting in one room, painting equipment in another, card-making supplies in another? Does this ring a bell? If so, let’s look at a 3-step plan to get you and your craft team organized…

1. Start by gathering all your craft supplies in one room—I mean everything! If you have the space, at the same time, put like with like, that is, brushes with your paints and canvas. Wool and needles along with patterns. Cards, cutting pads, embellishments and the like for card making all together and in the same way with scrapbooking supplies and any other crafts you make. While you’re doing this, take time to get rid of things you no longer use. If you haven’t used it in six months, it’s gone. If you have a lot of craft magazines that you like, save those too.

2. Now that you have all your craft supplies in one room and organized in stacks, it’s time to look at what you have around the house to sort them out. If you can afford it, then maybe it’s time to go and check out Target or Walmart for some storage bins. If you like me and have a lot of small decorations, then many small plastic containers are perfect. What you can do is put all the small supplies in these bins, and then store them together in a larger bin (can be a shoebox). Keep all your scrap booking papers together (I have an open file I keep all of mine in which makes it easy to see what you have too) The other option is if you have a filing cabinet you can use a draw for papers, patterns, pads cutting and even canvases and another for all other bulkier supplies. The idea is to keep it simple, but everything together and easily accessible. You don’t need to spend a lot of money doing this, you can even cover some boxes with pretty paper and store supplies in them.

3. Lastly, be sure to keep your craft supplies where you can easily access them. After all, it really isn’t worth putting these things you use at least once or twice a week on the top shelf of a storage cabinet. If you are lucky enough to have a room with space, make the most of it. I have a desk in the guest room, and under it I have a plastic basket with wheels, with the things that I use less, on top I have my canvases so that they are easier to grip. Next to my desk I keep a set of plastic-lined baskets, which hold all my main craft supplies in shoe-sized boxes, and a few other containers I found around the house. It really works, because you get to learn where everything is. It also means that if you run out of something, it’s easy to see that it’s not there…you don’t find yourself running around looking for the particular item for days on end, using it like you had it the other day.

Good luck sorting your supplies.