Scrapbook Room Clean Up

Between the end of October and Christmas Eve, I pretty much live in the two room suite that serves as my crafting home. The scrapbook room and crop room receive a ton of abuse during this short sixty days. Over the years, I have overhauled the scrapbook room a couple of times in order to make myself more organized space for my crafting.

As January is Organization and Planning month, I took the time to clean up the scrapbook room and do a makeover of the scrapbook closet. I also moved scrapbooking supplies out of the crop room in preparation for this year's planned crop room redo. I plan on officially changing the crop room into my sewing room and redoing both the room and the closet in order to better organize my fabric and supplies. That means that completely separating out the two rooms is the first step I needed to take.

For as organized as my scrapbook room usually is, the end of the year always makes it look like a bomb went off. It was a pretty good disaster when I started working on the clean up last week. I promised to show off the ugly yesterday. So...here's what I started with.

Isn't it pretty?

I like an open concept since I work with the theory that I won't use my supplies unless I can see them. This means that any organizing I do has to either leave things out in the open or put them in labeled containers. Most of this has already been completed in prior reorganizations, but things needed put back in their homes.

I was almost too overwhelmed to get started. But...I fired up the Spotify and started mentally dividing the room.

My first stop was paper organization. I found a link to I Love My Three Sons a while back for organizing paper scraps into magazine holders. I loved the idea since it seemed a lot more manageable than  my scrap drawer.

Cramped drawer that was too small for any 12" scraps.

I had previously sorted my unbound patterned paper into Cropper Hoppers on a rolling cart. I decided that I could condense some of the colors together and use excess Cropper Hoppers to reorganize my scrap storage. Patterned paper was moved to the lower shelf and scraps took up a new home on the top shelf. 

Much better access to scrap paper.

Once I had the paper wrangled, it was time to start working one desk at a time.

With the computer desk, I used a previously empty plastic storage box to make a home for my loose vinyl. I also cleaned out the out of control photo paper drawer and stack my 4x6" photo paper above the printer for easier access.

The west side desk didn't need a lot of overhaul, mostly just a clean up. I did ditch my old homemade light box and instead moved all of my Project Life materials to the top of the plastic drawers. I plan on making a new, sturdier lightbox some time this year. I also emptied and put away my rolling cart, and purged some products that I know I won't use from the desk basket.

The east side desk was the easiest out of the whole room. I just had to clean up the detritus on the counter top. Most of it was projects in progress that got reorganized and relocated to the newly organized closet. I also hung my magnetic strip between the desk and the hanging cabinet for easier storage of some of the metal tins.

Just for fun...a low resolution panoramic photo of the finished scrap room.

The closet was a bit more work. In all honesty, it's still not quite done. I have some shopping to do during the year to streamline a few ideas.

By the way, nothing sucks more than trying to take pictures of a closet...except for maybe working in that closet. I got a bit claustrophobic a couple of times.

The closet has been full of odds and ends for the last few years. A lot of the things are pieces and parts from previous scrap room remodels. I have more plastic tackle boxes than any one person would know what to do with and a nearly equal number of stacking plastic shelves. I relocated all of that to the two top side shelves to get it out of my way.

My primary goal was to reorganize the closet to make storing photos and memorabilia easier. I needed to get it all out of the crop room so that I will have an easier time with that remodel down the line. 

I moved the boxes of my own personal memorabilia to the upper shelf at the west side wall (pictured above). I still need to go through my memorabilia boxes and get things organized within them, but this is a good start.

The east wall (pictured above) will still need some work, but it's on the right track. I plan on using the main shelf for memorabilia storage. I'll be getting more containers to stack in this area, but for now it's holding photo albums that need photos scanned. Once scanning is complete, these go back to my parents' house and the room on the shelf will be freed up for my memorabilia boxes.

The boxes and totes on the ground below the shelf are full of memorabilia. Those will get reorganized into the new boxes later this year as well. I'm excited for it to all look neat and tidy and matching.

The center shelving units took the most work. I cleaned out several random boxes and organized the user's manuals that remained. I relocated all of my empty albums to the right side shelving unit in order free up the left for photo storage. I plan to get more of the black boxes to unify the look. Photos will then be stored on the second through fourth shelves of the right side unit.

The memorabilia currently stored in the baskets on the left side will be moved to the east wall shelf once I get the boxes for that area. The bottom shelf will be used to hold projects in progress. Right now they're kind of in a piled mess, but they too will be stored in memorabilia boxes while I'm putting them together.

Currently I have cards for the date night box that need cut, pet photo albums that need completing and three in progress Project Life albums.

In addition to the empty albums and album kits I'm storing on the right side, I relocated all of my magazines to this area. These are all of my back issues of Creating Keepsakes and other magazines that I use for layout ideas.

And there you have it. A much cleaner scrapbook room and closet. I'll be even happier when I get the storage boxes I need to organize and store the photos and memorabilia. That will be yet another fun organizing project. But...I have some good ideas on how to get started there.

How do you keep your craft supplies organized?