July 5 Challenge - Organization

I was very nervous this morning because I had to go to court.  I do not handle authority very well. 

The last time I was in a courtroom was about 22 years ago and as soon as the judge called my name I cried.  It was a minor thing.  I had a speeding ticket because I was driving to see my father who was dying of cancer.  He called the priest in, this man who I had never seen in a church so I thought "This was it,  I need to get to him before I am too late!"  The hospital was about an hour's drive and I was just cruising along with no other thoughts in my head other than getting there to see my dad in time.

All of a sudden the car in front of me hit his brakes hard and moved over to the right hand lane.  I slowed down but before I did I looked at my speedometer.  I was cruising along with him at 90 MPH!  He ended p being a State trooper and pulled me over.  I was too concerned to get to my father to say anything.  I just let him write up the ticket and let me go.

Then I went to court to try to fight the ticket for entrapment.  It was the only time in my life I ever got a ticket.  The judge threw it out when he heard my story but I was still a wreck.  I never speed, steal, do anything bad, just so I never have to go in front of a judge again.

Then comes today.  I have been in a financial bind for the past 4 years.  Just seem to be sinking deeper and deeper with no end in sight.  So today I had to explain why I defaulted on a credit card.  I was nearly in tears just walking into the court room.  The judge seemed friendly enough with a few jokes to put everyone at ease.  I got called to talk to the attorney, again I feel my eyes watering.  He was so nice.  I am out of work and have no income.  He said we can't get money from someone that doesn't have any.  Call us when you are back to work and can get on a payment arrangement.

45 minutes I was there.  So much easier than I expected.  But back to that feeling of... I need to do whatever I can to never have to walk into a court room again.  I am such a baby when these things happen.

Anyway, after my long drawn out story that no one really wanted to hear.  I am not feeling too creative today so instead of a "Project -  Making Challenge"...  My challenge today is ORGANIZATION.

How do you organize your supplies.  I have posted some of my homemade systems in the past.  You can look up my Scraprack, ink pad storage, or Cricut cartridge storage but I will show you photos here of how I store supplies on my scrap room.  I actually need to make a new storage rack for my ink pads and markers.  So I will try to work on this today but in the meantime...

Here are some photos of my storage systems.

                     Marker Storage

Stampin' Up!, Close To My Heart, and Zig (these Zig markers are 15 years old and still work as well as I first got them.  I have always stored them on their sides to keep the ink even inside the markers.)

 

 Hand made Copic Marker Storage - made from foam board.   Copics do not need to be on their side but this is how I store all my markers so why change now.

 

 

 Handmade Ink pad Storage - made from foam board.  I did a tutorial on how to make this last year. I want to make a new one to add space for my markers to stay along with the ink pads.

 

How I keep track of what inks I have when shopping. I don't keep the paper with me.  I have a photo of it on my phone so it is always with me.

 

 

 This is just some of my paper.  I found these racks at a old run down building that used to be some kind of shop. I also got a lot of pegs and peg board, too.

 

  This is the overflow.   My room is full so this is how I store the Extras out in the hallway

  This is where I do my hand die cutting.  These are only my more popular dies.  I have another shelf of dies along the hallway.

 

This photo if of my original Scraprack.  It is rather small, so the photos below show the handmade one.  This smaller one I now keep in my Crop bag to take with my for day crops.  It is easy to set up and I only bring the spinders I need to work on whatever projects I have planned.

This is a little snippet of my new handmade Scraprack.  It is made out of wood with industrial strength Velcro on it.  I love this system to organize my Themes.

 This is part of my color section.  I only store a little of whatever I have in the color section just because I have way too much to put it all in here.  But if I am away at a day crop I can always find something I can use in this system.

 

 This is my Summer Section.  All my page kits, paper, stickers, embellishments, etc  that have to do with summer are all right here on this spinder.  I do not have to go looking anywhere else.

 Another photo.  This is my Scouting section.  Both children were in scouts.  I still have not finished all their scouting photos so I can find what I need in this section when I ever get around to doing those pages.

And here is a photo of the my handmade rack filled.  I can not imagine scrapping without this system now that I have it all organized.  Mind you, it took about 2 months to get everything sorted into categories, but so worth the time now that it is done.

These are the drawer units I have in my Jetmax cubes.  They are now called Recollection Storage cubes, but same thing.  The plastic drawers did not come with them even though they fit perfectly.  The drawers are from Target and by Itso.  For the photo above I made dividers for my Cricut cartridges.

These are just 2 drawers showing how I sort all my embellishments by color.  I used to sort all the buttons by colors, all the brads by color, etc. but I was pulling items from all these cute little jars and it took too long to get what I needed.  Now I just throw anything I have that is pink into the "pink drawer"  anything green in the "Green Drawer" so if I know I want to add something extra to my layout and my main color is purple, I just dig through the purple drawer until I find what works.  Easy!! I have a small sampling of colors in my Color Theme of my Scraprack but the majority is in these drawers.

 These plastic shoe boxes have ribbon, fibers, fabrics, etc  sorted my color.  I don't use these that much on scrapbook pages but I do go through these when making cards or other craft projects.

This is a close up of my ink storage.  They are not perfectly straight but I made them myself and they make it easy to find the ink pads I need.  The numbering system is so it is easy putting them back in order by color.

These drawers store the booklets for the Cricut Cartridges.  It is on the floor right next to my Cricut Expression that is on a shoe shelf.

 More drawers, again with handmade dividers.  Here I have my stickles and Alcohol inks.  I color coded the bottom of the Stickles bottles for 2 reasons, to see the colors and they are upside down so they are ready do use with out any air bubbles in the way.

 This drawer has sentiment stamps is it.  Again numbered, like my ink pads,  so they are easy to find.  I take the sentiments out of their designated stamp sets because I may not always want to use just "Happy Birthday" with that particular stamp set it came with.  I have a folder with the sentiments stamped on paper with their # so I can easily find the right sentiment I want to use quickly.

 

And this is a photo of one of my storage cubes with the plastic drawers in it.  I have these cubes all over my scrap room.

This is my new way of storing my punches. One of the photos above show them up on my shelves on the wall.  Now I have my rolls of ribbon up on the shelves and my punches are in the little cabinet.  I bought this from IKEA a few years ago.  I loved it for my ribbon storage.  But then we got a puppy and his favorite thing to do was grab the end of a ribbon spool and run all over my room until the ribbon stopped spinning, then he would grab another and so on and so on.  So time to change things up.  This cabinet has storage on all four side. It also has wheels so I can roll it closer to me when I need it.  It also fits perfectly under my work desk.  This is the from view.

 The left side view. 

And I store my large trimmer on top.  When I need to cut things I just roll the cabinet out next to me and have my trimmer right there at a perfect height.  I didn't take photos of the other two sides, the back has hangers to hang rulers or Cricut mats or whatever and the other side had three drawers for storage and a shelf where I hide some of my less used idea books.

 

So I apologize for the super long post but this is how I keep things organized in my scrap room.  I hope you found some ideas to help you get better organized.  If I get my new ink storage rack completed I will post photos of that later.

Sharon

http://sharonscraps.ctmh.com