One Little Word.... bringing it to life

The warm air today, along with some inspiring words from a fellow blogger, has brought me back to my One Little Word: Simplify. My main goal with the word was the make my life simple and less cluttered with the unnecessary. With the warm weather approuching slowly I need to begin to process of de-cluttering our home.

My reasons behind this are simple - I need more space. The reason for more space is due to our need to increase our family size. Yes, we want to have another baby this year and with the space and clutter we have now there is simply not enough room for even a tiny infant to come into our house to live.

So, my first mission is to find a corner and start small, and so far I have done that in Julia's closet and made it more friendly to her and gave her more space to play. But, now I need to move past that I begin in rooms that are in need of major reorganizing. The main spaces include my craft room and our basement! Now, I've written about my craft room before and have made dramatic changes to it for the better, but certainly not for the best. And, our basement is a disaster and fire hazard waiting to happen!

For the craft room I plan to keep 1 corner and the closet for my crafts and move all the play room toys and furniture into this room in order to make room upstairs next to the 2 bedrooms for a new mini-nursery.

So in order to make this room happen...
1. I need to clean out the closet
2. Move large table w/ computer and printers down into the basement area
3. Move all rolling charts and book cases into closet and make assessable.

This will be my work in progress for the next month. After I manage this task we (Jon and I and anyone willing to help) will be tackling the basement. The basement is a whole separate post, so watch for the workings of that to come.

Sorting Paper for the Craft Room....

Tonight I plan to sort through a box of paper that has not been organized in any way. Most of the paper was purchased at least 2 years ago and has just been floating around my room from one spot to another not having a home of its own. In order to find a home for this paper I had to clear out old magazines and other items not in use any longer. This reorganizing of my scrap room has taken on a new life and has become my daily adventure in organizing and sorting.

So how does one go about sorting paper? I’m sure you non scrapbookers are thinking that’s its just paper and has no real need for organization or proper storing, but you my friend are wrong. Scrapbook paper is much more meaningful then just your plain old printer paper. There is patterned paper, cardstock, two sided papers, paper packs from manufactures that match, and even embellishments that match papers! So much to go through, I better get started. I will add at the end this post how I sorted it and a picture of the pretty paper.

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The paper has been sorted and ogled well (I have some great paper I need to get some pictures onto). I decided to sort my manufacture like I had been doing in the past, since most of it was already sorted that way. I like to work with coordinating paper, so this works best for me. My card stock is sorted by color and by manufacturer (I have 3 different styles of cardstock).

Here are some of my techniques I used with the picture.

1). These are racks from Cropper Hopper with some of the paper sorted with 12X12 clear envelopes; clear 12X12 page dividers; or just labeled with a sticky note on the side.

*I wish I would have been able to change to the clear racks in order to see the paper better, but I have to use what I have. The paper packs in between the left side of racks are more basic grey paper packs that do not fit on the wire racks. I'll need to find a place for them ot purge more paper. *

2) Wire Wall Mounted racks that I found at The Container Store - 1 holds Basic Grey Paper and the 2nd holds Bazzill Cardstock.

*I love these racks, but they are $60 a piece and even on sale I have a hard time justifying such a purchase anymore*

Progress report on Scrapbook Room

Here's some progress on my scrapbook room. My wonderful niece, Katherine, came over for a couple of days and decided to help de-clutter my room for me. She was so organized and to the point, I was amazed at how fast she worked. I will most certainly be bring her back over for more work! She had fun too, looking at all my supplies. As you can see I used boxes and baskets to put things in and categorize them. Now I need some time to move stuff to their areas and continue to box stuff up.

You can see the desk finally!

The floor is almost clear!

The room that will never be.....for now!

I want to scrapbook so bad these past few days that my creative itch is just clawing at my fingers. My room though you see is in no way capable of allowing me to scrapbook anything organized. I wish I could have a group of friends come over and we could just pull it all back together. Unfortunately though my friends do not scrapbook like I do, most don’t even take anywhere close to the amount of pictures that I do. So, I am left with a sad and cluttered craft room for now. Maybe some time at the end of this month I can get some time to put it all together.

I have so much stuff that it’s just too difficult to organize in just one sitting. Three tables worth of products, several shelves of books, paper, embellishments, and then the amount of pictures I have boxed up is just outrageous. I know where I want to start, but it will take a full day of work to really get it all taken care of. I also have a whole bunch of Close to my Heart product that I don’t foresee ever using – like old catalogs! What do you do with that?

Here’s how I want to organize my room. Table #1 to the left of the entrance would be my main crafting space – also my hand made table from my hubby. It would include a 3-teir paper rack to hold current project and supplies; my cutting mat; tape gun; paper trimmer; cuddle bug die cut machine, and a cup of pens for journaling. If room I would also like this table to be the area I’d put my laptop when not in use and be able to use when I want to type out my journaling. On Table #2; located to the right of the closet; I would use for my computer table. This would house the main computer and 3 printers. Underneath I would have my storage ottoman filled with finished, older albums as well as a short 3 drawer storage shelf that olds tools and embellishments. Above the table would be the two wire rack paper holders that hold cardstock and basic gray collection patterned paper. Under the window area I would have my 2 multi-colored racks that hold all the rest of my collection of embellishments, tools, and some smaller sized paper. Against the 3rd wall and right to the entrance would be my final table, Table #3. This table is shorter then the others so would not have as much space. I would have this space be another crafting table with another paper trimmer, and would be used for the messier crafts such as painting or liquid gluing. The table would have house my second die cut machine, mini albums, and large projects in progress. Next to the table would be my shelf that holds the rest of the patterned paper, idea books, and cases of photos that are organized.

Now, this certainly sounds like I have a plan and just need to implement it, but when you walk into the room there is so much to do that it’s overwhelming for even the most organized person. First the floor is covered in stuff that does not belong in the room, the tables are overflowing with more stuff that doesn’t have a home, and then all the supplies I have left out have forgotten homes. Plus, don’t forget the stuff that does belong there, but because there’s so much of it I’ve ran out space for it. Yicks! Someone rescue me from the insanity!


Here are some photos of the room in it's current condition.