Loving the Scraprack by Tiffany Spaulding

Anyone that has looked at my blog, has seen photos of my scraproom. I truly love my scraproom!!! I could live in this room. Especially when it is all clean and shiny, which is not too often, but even a cluttered room still can keep me happy for hours at a time. Everything has its place and is tucked away in drawers, cabinets, folders, etc... But, and this is a big BUT... I have not been doing any scrapping lately at all. Life does get in the way, I know, but even if I have a block of time to spare, I tend to just play with some of my gadgets and not do any really scrapbooking. Why is this?

I have decided because my room was on Organized Overload! Sounds crazy, right? How could there possibly be an overload of organization. Well, I will tell you. I want to say about 7 years ago, maybe more, maybe less, a woman by the name of Tiffany Spaulding came up with her own kind of scrapbook organization system. I had seen it several times but would walk right on by her. First the price tag was enough to keep on walking.  I never wanted to hear about her "System".  i had my own system and I loved it.    I was always on my own tune for how my supplies should be stored.

Well move forward to this past winter.  I signed up for Tiffany's Winter Organization Challenge 2011 on Facebook. It was offered free so why not?  Every week Tiffany puts out a webinar to the members on how her organizing system works. It is an 8 Week Challenge and there is homework each week.

Well, I listened faithfully each week to her webinars and did some of the challenges but could not get my brain around the whole concept or the benefits. So when the winter challenge ended I signed up, again, for the Spring Challenge. This one proved even more difficult for me then the winter one. The webinars did not start until 9 PM (EST) on Monday nights and I was too tired to tune in. So I only listened to one this time around but I did read all the tips from the Facebook group and was getting more interested.

Then about a month ago, I volunteered to help Tiffany at her booth at Creating Keepsakes Convention in Manchester, NH and got to meet her up close and personal. What a warm, inviting person she is, by the way. I ordered my Scraprack System and have been on an organizing frenzy ever since. Somewhere along the way a light bulb clicked and I realized why I love to sit in my room but do not get any scrapbooking done. Yes, my room is organized. I do know where all my 12x12 paper is. I know where all my buttons, and ribbons are. Yes, I know where I keep stickers and other embellishments. but this is the problem... If I found some photos of my son playing football, I would have to go to my paper storage and dig through 1,000's of sheets of paper to find where I put the sports paper. I would have to spin around my Clip-It-Up to finds football stickers. I would need to dig through my embellishment drawers to find the right color brads or fibers. Then dig through my photo drawers to find some more photos to go with the ones so I could put a layout together.

Just the thought of doing all that is exhausting. It was so much easier just to leave everything in its proper place and think about scrapping instead of actually doing it. Duh? How am I enjoying this hobby so much when I can't even get a simple page done without so much work involved. Lo and Behold...Now I understand the whole concept of the Scraprack. All "like items" should be stored together. So rather than storing all my paper over here, all my ribbons over there, all my stickers underneath there, etc... the Scraprack concept is to get away from that type of thinking and instead store all my "themed" items together. For example: all my travel items are now stored together, my travel papers, travel brads, travel ribbons, travel rub-ons, travel stickers, everything that has to do with travel is store together instead of all over my room.

My first thought back in the Winter Challenge was like "Oh NO!!! I can't be pulling everything out of where is belong!" If I am not getting any scrapping done, is it really stored in the right place? This is a work in progress but this is a photo of my Scraprack. I have way too many supplies to ever even conceive of the idea of putting everything into a Scraprack, and I have no intention of ever doing that, but I am putting a sampling of every theme that I scrapbook about into this Scraprack.

So the next time I want to throw a layout together from some photos I come across of the kids with their friends in the pool. I can now go to the Summer Section and then my Pool Section and I will find paper, stickers, titles, ribbons, brads, a little of everything I have that has to do with swimming pools. So I can actually get something accomplished even if I only have 30 minutes to put a page together.

Why didn't I get hooked to this system years ago.