Welcome back to day 17 of our Craft Room Organization Challenge.
Shelves and drawers are great, but they are still pretty large spaces — and many of our craft supplies and tools are small. It’s likely you’re going to need to further organize your drawers and shelves with bins and boxes!
I think most of us are already storing things in storage bins, boxes, big plastic containers, and so on. They are inexpensive, plentiful at most stores, and easy to stack. BUT (you knew this was coming) I think we all need to be careful about our usage of bins and boxes. I think it’s really easy to fall into the trap of just buying more bins and putting all of our stuff in them, stacking them up as we go. This is a danger because we often cannot see what is inside, making it hard to actually use our stuff, and once we start stacking the likelihood of our opening them drops precipitously.
I am all for bins and boxes, but we need to use them WISELY. I want you to avoid just stacking up your plastic boxes, unless these are things for long-term storage you have no need to get into very often.
But what should you do instead? Here are my tips…
Challenge 17: Get Your Bins and Boxes
When you’re looking for new bins and boxes, you want to think accessibility.
If you have shelves upon which to put your bins and boxes, as I do, I recommend handles so you can pull them out easily, open tops so you can get in and out quickly, and some color-coding and labels (we’ll talk about more labeling next week).
If you have no shelves for your bins and boxes, look for new ones that stack but allow you access without needed to unstack. So front-access bins are a much better solution, as they allow you to get in and get to your stuff when you need it. And in this case, transparent bins can be useful, too!
Do you best to avoid the big, giant storage bins and boxes. I KNOW they are so tempting. I have been guilty on a number of occasions of getting the giant ones, shoveling everything in, and calling it a day. But you know what happens. The stuff just sits in there, I find it years later, realize where it all went, and often just toss it. Don’t repeat my mistake.
In my new craft room, I purposefully designed it to have a LOT of shelves for my boxes. I want to force myself to use small boxes based around specific crafts. My intention is to keep the supplies and tools for specific crafts in their own boxes, whenever possible. Then when I am working on a craft, I pull out that box and get my stuff. Finding the boxes for my IKEA shelves is easy, as IKEA sells a lot of boxes that fit those shelves. So far my favorite boxes are the soft-sided nylon boxes that have a pull handle—I like these because they are SO easy to get in and out of, and have that open-top.
The boxes for the built-in shelves on either side of my craft room are going to be trickier, however. The shelves are only about 11.5″ high and 8″ deep. So I am looking for boxes that fit those dimensions. Alternatively, I can get smaller plastic “shoe” boxes and stack them, as I’ve done in this photo. These boxes are NOT new, but are just something I was experimenting with. I like that they stack and allow me to store project-based supplies inside. But my labels need much improvement still — I’ll be getting to that next week.
Day 17 Assignment: Determine if you need more bins and boxes for your craft space. If you find a new bin or box to store your stuff in, take a picture and share it on Facebook. If you have a plan for something, draw it out or find a photo of something similar and share it with us.
Until tomorrow,
