Getting Organized
Assignment #1a
Let’s Begin
Where do you start? With the area that impacts your life the most – your scrap desk! You’ll feel the benefits of your efforts immediately.
To get started you will need:
• Boxes Clearly Labeled – Sell @ TCS Treasure to Treasure Sale, Trash, Storage,
ACTION and NOT IN HERE
• Post It Notes for temporarily assigning categories into piles.
• Pencil and notepad for writing notes to yourself about storage needs, zones you’d like,
actions to be taken, etc.
• Cleaning supplies for dusting off newly bare shelves and areas of rearranged furniture
• Beverages and snacks
YOUR MISSION: Sort • Purge • Assign • Containerize • Equalize
You must do every step in order. Many people purge without sorting and containerize without assigning items without realizing exactly what their needs are. They don’t have enough information to really get organized and maintain the system, but by following these steps you can create the system that works the best for you.
STEP 1: Sort
Time Commitment: Several hours to an entire day…or weekend!
This is the most intensive part of the organizational process and you need an unbroken chunk of time to fully focus on it. Get everyone else out of the house, turn off the phone, and don’t answer the door.
You probably have several related items scattered throughout your scrap area or even throughout your house. Bring it all together. Touch every single item and ask yourself “Do I use this? Do I love this? Does it make me happy or cost me space? What category does it belong in?”
Purging can be difficult for any area of our home, but scrap supply purging seems to be even more difficult. We liked it enough to buy it at one time, so why don’t we like it now? Maybe it will be a hot trend again one day (look at the corner rounder!), maybe we can use it for cards, maybe our kids might need it in the future, etc. When we look at each item on its own, we can always make excuses for why we might still need it. This is why we MUST begin with sorting.
1. Pull out five random items and lay them out in front of you.
2. Within the group, identify the one that you love the best and put that on your dominant side (one your right side if you’re right handed and visa versa if you are left handed).
3. Identify the one that you like the least, the one you know you can purge, and put that on your other side. Now you have items to compare to.
4. Compare the last three items to the first two and sort those into the appropriate piles (you are allowed to have a “maybe” pile in the middle).
5. Continue to sort this way through the rest of the items in that category.
When you’re finished, you will most likely have 20% that you absolutely love, 20% that you are immediately willing to part with, and 60% of maybes in the middle. What do you do with all of the maybe’s? Ask yourself why you’ve decided those yeses are so clear and the no’s are so clear. What makes them so clear to you? Use these criteria to help you decide on the maybe’s.
As you identify the things the things you want to keep, group them according to associations that make sense to you. You may want to group your embellishments by type (brads, buttons, letters), by color, theme (baby, boy, girl, spring, Halloween, etc.), brand (SEI, Memories, etc.) or maybe by albums you are working on.
Think about how you scrap and the things you search for when you put pages together. Think about what you reach for first when building your pages. What do you pick before you begin? Store your most essential items closest to you; this will give you more direction when you scrap. Whatever works intuitively for you is how you should organize it. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but you.
Tips for Sorting:
• Do not get sidetracked by items you’ve put aside for layouts, items you’ve been looking for, etc. If you absolutely have to, put these items in a box labeled ACTION so you can work on them when you are finished sorting. Do not stop the sorting process.
• Do not get sidetracked by things that don’t belong in your scrap room. Don’t stop to repair the shirt your daughter left you, reply to an invitation on your desk, or clip the coupons you stashed in a drawer. Put them in a box labeled NOT IN HERE and you can deal with them later.
• If you’re not sure what category an item should go into, create an “I DON’T KNOW” box. You can decide on these later when your categories have taken clear shapes. This also helps keep you from getting sidetracked.
• Make a promise to yourself to not hang onto something just because it was expensive or you’ll feel guilty throwing it away. It will cost you much more emotionally if you hang onto it!
At this point, remember – it gets worse before it gets better! Don’t be overwhelmed by the “mess” you’ve just created – you are in labor right now, preparing to give birth to your new and improved scrap room!
STEP 2: Purge
Time Commitment: A few hours
This may take a few hours to decide what needs to be purged, and it will also take time to get rid of these items. By all means, if it seems too cumbersome to sell your goods or drive them somewhere else, call Salvation Army and they will pick up for you – make it easy on yourself!
• Divide into groups: Sell, Cards, Trash, Storage
o Sell – Be sure to have a plan for selling…TCS Trash to Treasure Sale, or you’ll be in danger of having it add to your clutter or creeping back into your space. Also, be careful about donating to your children – scraping stickers off the walls may not be the best way to get rid of your stash!
o Cards – Have a box clearly marked for this and make a commitment that when
making cards, you’ll go to this box first before you go to your regular supplies.
o Trash– no brainer – ripped, broken, dried up, almost empty, etc.
o Storage – if you absolutely can’t part with it, box it up. Seal it, put a date on it – if you
don’t open the box in 6 months strongly consider getting rid of it.
STEP 3: Assign
Time Commitment: A few hours
Take the items you have decided to keep and assign them permanent homes. Don’t be too vague or noncommittal about where things are going. This is the time to decide if your furniture needs to be rearranged, if your work zones are best laid out for you, and whether you need to acquire any new furniture or containers for your items.
When you are assigning, consider these factors:
• Each container/drawer should serve only one purpose – don’t put stamps and eyelets in the same drawer. However, do group items according to associations that make sense to you – eyelets and setters and mat together; stamps, inks, embossing powders and heat gun together; paints and brushes together, etc.
• Make your most used items the easiest to get. Reserve your up high or deep underneath spaces for rarely used items.
• Your most essential items should be at eye level (think about the grocery store and how they have things arranged – eye level is the most prized shelving for a reason!).
As you put things away, you may realize you don’t have enough storage space. You can purge more or look for hidden storage spaces – look up, look under, consider other items of furniture for your storage.
STEP 4: Containerize
Time Commitment: Several hours to an entire day (this can be broken up into smaller chunks of time)
Containerizing is really important even if you have a drawer for your items – you need little boxes clearly labeled to put things back where they go when you’re done. Plus, containerizing is fun! It gives you a chance to make everything pretty and inspirational to you. Just as you do with your layouts, let your personality show through with your storage containers.
• Select appropriate containers – now is not the time to cheap out! They need to be
containers that you love, love to look at, and are sturdy enough to withstand repeated
openings and closings, and transportation to crops.
• Be sure to measure everything – measure at home and measure at the store. There’s
nothing more frustrating than bringing your new organizational purchases home and
realizing they don’t fit.
• Size – you don’t want them to be so big that they are too heavy to handle when full but they need to hold enough to be a help to the organization process.
• Prepare Your Shopping List: Make a list of all the containers you need according to zone – that way when you’re shopping, you can see how they all fit together.
• Label everything! You don’t have to have a label maker, but it does make everything
uniform and easy to read, and it’s addictive! ☺
STEP 5: Equalize
Time Commitment: This should take 10-15 minutes every time you finish a scrap session or bring new purchases into the home.
• Every few weeks check in with yourself. Make sure the zones are working for you, the
containers are right, the system makes clean up easy.
• Clean up – make a commitment not to leave your scrap table until you’ve cleaned up after yourself. It shouldn’t take long because everything has a place to go!
• When you bring home new supplies, put them away immediately! They must have a place to go the second you bring them home, or they will just stack up and create new clutter.
Let’s Begin
Where do you start? With the area that impacts your life the most – your scrap desk! You’ll feel the benefits of your efforts immediately.
To get started you will need:
• Boxes Clearly Labeled – Sell @ TCS Treasure to Treasure Sale, Trash, Storage,
ACTION and NOT IN HERE
• Post It Notes for temporarily assigning categories into piles.
• Pencil and notepad for writing notes to yourself about storage needs, zones you’d like,
actions to be taken, etc.
• Cleaning supplies for dusting off newly bare shelves and areas of rearranged furniture
• Beverages and snacks
YOUR MISSION: Sort • Purge • Assign • Containerize • Equalize
You must do every step in order. Many people purge without sorting and containerize without assigning items without realizing exactly what their needs are. They don’t have enough information to really get organized and maintain the system, but by following these steps you can create the system that works the best for you.
STEP 1: Sort
Time Commitment: Several hours to an entire day…or weekend!
This is the most intensive part of the organizational process and you need an unbroken chunk of time to fully focus on it. Get everyone else out of the house, turn off the phone, and don’t answer the door.
You probably have several related items scattered throughout your scrap area or even throughout your house. Bring it all together. Touch every single item and ask yourself “Do I use this? Do I love this? Does it make me happy or cost me space? What category does it belong in?”
Purging can be difficult for any area of our home, but scrap supply purging seems to be even more difficult. We liked it enough to buy it at one time, so why don’t we like it now? Maybe it will be a hot trend again one day (look at the corner rounder!), maybe we can use it for cards, maybe our kids might need it in the future, etc. When we look at each item on its own, we can always make excuses for why we might still need it. This is why we MUST begin with sorting.
1. Pull out five random items and lay them out in front of you.
2. Within the group, identify the one that you love the best and put that on your dominant side (one your right side if you’re right handed and visa versa if you are left handed).
3. Identify the one that you like the least, the one you know you can purge, and put that on your other side. Now you have items to compare to.
4. Compare the last three items to the first two and sort those into the appropriate piles (you are allowed to have a “maybe” pile in the middle).
5. Continue to sort this way through the rest of the items in that category.
When you’re finished, you will most likely have 20% that you absolutely love, 20% that you are immediately willing to part with, and 60% of maybes in the middle. What do you do with all of the maybe’s? Ask yourself why you’ve decided those yeses are so clear and the no’s are so clear. What makes them so clear to you? Use these criteria to help you decide on the maybe’s.
As you identify the things the things you want to keep, group them according to associations that make sense to you. You may want to group your embellishments by type (brads, buttons, letters), by color, theme (baby, boy, girl, spring, Halloween, etc.), brand (SEI, Memories, etc.) or maybe by albums you are working on.
Think about how you scrap and the things you search for when you put pages together. Think about what you reach for first when building your pages. What do you pick before you begin? Store your most essential items closest to you; this will give you more direction when you scrap. Whatever works intuitively for you is how you should organize it. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but you.
Tips for Sorting:
• Do not get sidetracked by items you’ve put aside for layouts, items you’ve been looking for, etc. If you absolutely have to, put these items in a box labeled ACTION so you can work on them when you are finished sorting. Do not stop the sorting process.
• Do not get sidetracked by things that don’t belong in your scrap room. Don’t stop to repair the shirt your daughter left you, reply to an invitation on your desk, or clip the coupons you stashed in a drawer. Put them in a box labeled NOT IN HERE and you can deal with them later.
• If you’re not sure what category an item should go into, create an “I DON’T KNOW” box. You can decide on these later when your categories have taken clear shapes. This also helps keep you from getting sidetracked.
• Make a promise to yourself to not hang onto something just because it was expensive or you’ll feel guilty throwing it away. It will cost you much more emotionally if you hang onto it!
At this point, remember – it gets worse before it gets better! Don’t be overwhelmed by the “mess” you’ve just created – you are in labor right now, preparing to give birth to your new and improved scrap room!
STEP 2: Purge
Time Commitment: A few hours
This may take a few hours to decide what needs to be purged, and it will also take time to get rid of these items. By all means, if it seems too cumbersome to sell your goods or drive them somewhere else, call Salvation Army and they will pick up for you – make it easy on yourself!
• Divide into groups: Sell, Cards, Trash, Storage
o Sell – Be sure to have a plan for selling…TCS Trash to Treasure Sale, or you’ll be in danger of having it add to your clutter or creeping back into your space. Also, be careful about donating to your children – scraping stickers off the walls may not be the best way to get rid of your stash!
o Cards – Have a box clearly marked for this and make a commitment that when
making cards, you’ll go to this box first before you go to your regular supplies.
o Trash– no brainer – ripped, broken, dried up, almost empty, etc.
o Storage – if you absolutely can’t part with it, box it up. Seal it, put a date on it – if you
don’t open the box in 6 months strongly consider getting rid of it.
STEP 3: Assign
Time Commitment: A few hours
Take the items you have decided to keep and assign them permanent homes. Don’t be too vague or noncommittal about where things are going. This is the time to decide if your furniture needs to be rearranged, if your work zones are best laid out for you, and whether you need to acquire any new furniture or containers for your items.
When you are assigning, consider these factors:
• Each container/drawer should serve only one purpose – don’t put stamps and eyelets in the same drawer. However, do group items according to associations that make sense to you – eyelets and setters and mat together; stamps, inks, embossing powders and heat gun together; paints and brushes together, etc.
• Make your most used items the easiest to get. Reserve your up high or deep underneath spaces for rarely used items.
• Your most essential items should be at eye level (think about the grocery store and how they have things arranged – eye level is the most prized shelving for a reason!).
As you put things away, you may realize you don’t have enough storage space. You can purge more or look for hidden storage spaces – look up, look under, consider other items of furniture for your storage.
STEP 4: Containerize
Time Commitment: Several hours to an entire day (this can be broken up into smaller chunks of time)
Containerizing is really important even if you have a drawer for your items – you need little boxes clearly labeled to put things back where they go when you’re done. Plus, containerizing is fun! It gives you a chance to make everything pretty and inspirational to you. Just as you do with your layouts, let your personality show through with your storage containers.
• Select appropriate containers – now is not the time to cheap out! They need to be
containers that you love, love to look at, and are sturdy enough to withstand repeated
openings and closings, and transportation to crops.
• Be sure to measure everything – measure at home and measure at the store. There’s
nothing more frustrating than bringing your new organizational purchases home and
realizing they don’t fit.
• Size – you don’t want them to be so big that they are too heavy to handle when full but they need to hold enough to be a help to the organization process.
• Prepare Your Shopping List: Make a list of all the containers you need according to zone – that way when you’re shopping, you can see how they all fit together.
• Label everything! You don’t have to have a label maker, but it does make everything
uniform and easy to read, and it’s addictive! ☺
STEP 5: Equalize
Time Commitment: This should take 10-15 minutes every time you finish a scrap session or bring new purchases into the home.
• Every few weeks check in with yourself. Make sure the zones are working for you, the
containers are right, the system makes clean up easy.
• Clean up – make a commitment not to leave your scrap table until you’ve cleaned up after yourself. It shouldn’t take long because everything has a place to go!
• When you bring home new supplies, put them away immediately! They must have a place to go the second you bring them home, or they will just stack up and create new clutter.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Jackie on -
Assignment #1b
Organizing Basic Supplies, Tools
and Adhesives
Tools and adhesives are some of the most important items in scrapbooking. There are many things that you don’t necessarily need to create a page, but these are essential to each and every layout you do. So, how to store them so that they are always at your
fingertips but not in the way?
First, decide what tools are the most essential to you, and also which adhesives you can’t live without. Think about the things that you reach for every single time you scrap. Those things need to be the closest to you, while the things you use occasionally are placed a bit further out of reach, and the items you use the least often are stored away or purged. Here are some ideas for each of those types of supplies:
Most often used:
• Use an All My Memories Totally Cool Tote or similar. This will store your trimmer, scissors, pens, and adhesive and still have room for your most used embellishments. You can store this on your desk, and when it’s time to leave for a crop, just grab it and go! With an organized tote – you can easily carry all you need for crops and classes.
• Store in a basket on your desk. Whether one small basket or a silverware-type basket with dividers or a Making Memories Carousel, this will keep your most-used items right in front of you.
Occasional use:
• A peg board or wall system is also good for these items, keeping them accessible but
out of the way.
• Eye-level drawer of your storage unit, whether it’s an Iris cart, a dresser, or your
shelving unit. The closer the drawer or shelf is to eye level; the easier it will be to
retrieve these items.
Rarely used:
• Store these items (extra trimmers, gadgets used infrequently, extra adhesives) up on your highest shelf or down below your desk or on your lowest shelf. These items should be stored in the most inconvenient place; so that they don’t get in the way of the things you use the most. Use a Cropper Hopper Supply Case to store these items.
• Consider purging some of these items. If you tried embossing but find it’s not your cup of tea, sell your heat gun. If you are hanging on to that adhesive you don’t really like just in case you run out of your favorite, give it to your friend, your child, or your local school and stock up on the supplies you’ll actually want to use. Now is the time to purge those supplies that are just taking up space. You’ll be glad you did!
Once you have a system in place for your essentials, putting them back in the same place every time will become a reflex, and you will never have to hunt for your favorite scissors again!
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Permalink Reply by Sue on
-
This is great advise. I wish I had an area to do scrapbooking. Maybe my husband will be able to finish the garage off this summer and I can have a small corner!!
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Permalink Reply by Tamie (mom of Michael) on -
this is so cool thank you for sharing i will totally use it. maybe start this weekend. what a nice thing to share, when it costed you money and we get it for free. thank you thank you Tamie
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Permalink Reply by Susan mom to Niko on -
Thanks for sharing the tips... I feel inspired and may just tackle the mess on my desk this weekend! I love the ideas of the different piles!
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Permalink Reply by Lori Jake's mom on -
I send it to my e-mail so I can print it... it will be easier for me to follow.. thanks Jackie.
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Permalink Reply by Ingrid-Armando's mom on -
thanks jackie, my daughter just moved out last week and today i finished cleaning everything out and its now ready to be turned into my scrapbooking room. all these tips will be very helpful.
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Permalink Reply by Susan mom to Niko on
-
my favorite storage tip is the wire cubes for storing paper... you make one or two cubes (I have two, as I love different types of paper) and then insert the other pieces as shelves. Use zip ties to hold the extra shelves at the right intervals. The paper (even 12 x 12) slides right in and out... I have mine sorted by color (patterns on top) just like at the store! Was way less expensive than some of the shelves you can buy.
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Permalink Reply by Sheila Clark on -
Thank you! I'm printing for full utilization! Just in the beginning stages of organizing 21 years of pictures, memorabilia and now Navy stuff (for Son), and 19 years of pictures and stuff (for Daughter). I've begun with my scrapbooking papers, etc...., but this is a big job!
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Permalink Reply by Jackie on
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I should be getting the next assignment tomorrow. Happy sorting to you all !!!
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Permalink Reply by Shelley on -
Hi, Thank you for this info I can DEFINITLY use this! I am having one problem though. My ribbons and fibers! I have sooo much they are getting out of control! I use all of them, so no purging is needed. I used to have them in a pull-eze, but couln't see what I had. I made my own bigger version, but it is just too bulky and not practical. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you Shelley
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