Hello,
I live in a small apartment with a very limited space. My dream is to find a new home with a space for all my crafting stuff in one room, but that is not happening probably any time soon. And yes I do scroll through Instagram and Pinterest and see these lovely sewing spaces and then the reality hits me: my sewing machine is at my parents place sitting neatly on my little brother's school table and my fabrics are stored in a wardrobe closet.
So this November (and continuing in December) I wanted to organize my supplies and stash in a logical way where even others can figure out where to putin case they find knitting needles or something like that from the floor.
I have an Ikea Kallax shelf for my boxes at home and it is quite good for my stuff at home. It has nice boxes that match with our interior and top shelves have doors inserted to prevent stuff from falling down. Most homes do fit a small shelf or a drawer in which to store the supplies I think.
So how do I use the shelf for my supplies: the top shelves with doors hold books and patterns in them and stuff that is totally prohibited from kids/toddlers like sewing machine oils and needles, or a project that is extremly fragile.
Then I have an empty shelf for my work in progress or just projects that are in a top priority to be finished.
So my tips for organizing the supplies and how I organized my supplies:
1) Start with an iventory of your stuff
What do you actually have and is there something crucial missing. I spread my stuff on the living room floor and table along with the empty boxes, and then started filling the boxes. BUT leave the box including pencils on the floor with the lid open as the last box :)
I know it looks messy at first, but it is so nice to see how the supplies find right boxes.
2) Label your boxes, it helps cleaning up and even others know where is your stuff
The first box is called "Crafting"
It is filled with scrapbook papers, stickers, pencils, watercolors, paper glue. Everything that you need for doing birthday cards or present tags.
The second box is called "Toy-Making"
I had all my toymaking supplies stored in different boxes before, but now I moved them to a one box, with a good lid on it.
The third box is my "button box"
I have so much different kinds of buttons that I had to put my buttons in one box. It also includes the snap buttons, spare buttons for clothes and the tools for inserting snap buttons. Inside of the box I've organized the buttons in old film roll cases, toolboxes from hardware stores or just in small paper bags that you receive from the counter when you find buttons.
The fourth is "The rest or I don't know how to categorize these yet" box
It has knitting needles, crochet hooks, zippers, scissors and ribbons. The kind of supplies that are required in doing many kinds of crafts.
3) Remember safety:if you have a small home and you have kids or your friends birng kids over use boxes that have some sort locking mechanism or store the unsafe items on top shelves. I'm comfortable with having the ribbons and zippers, or yarn in the bottom part of the shelf, but fabric scissors and pins (and stuff like that) have to be stored in a kid-proof place.
4) Make it easy to use:
what are the supplies you need the most, place them in a place where you can reach them easily.
My next project is to get my yarns organized better (again).
