Organizing: Craft Paper

For as long as I can remember people have told me I am good at organizing.  It's something I love to do and in another life, I would be a Professional Organizer.  I would love to go into peoples homes and help them organize their pantries, craft supplies, office areas, closets, cars, etc.  I would not be opposed to going to office buildings and organizing file rooms, desks, and supply closets.  Not only would I not be opposed to it, I would love it!  Maybe even so much that I would do it for F-R-E-E.

image found here

I really think that having everything in it's place makes life so easy.  Yes, it takes time to find a place, decide what to put there, pick a container (if needed) and put the items in their spots.  But once you have that area figured out and in an order that makes sense for you and your needs, it's done.  From then on you don't have to do anything other than remember to put things back in their place.  Sometimes you may not put an item back immediately after you use it, but you will eventually and you will know where it goes.

For my first "installment" of my "organizing series" I am showing all of you how I organize my craft papers.  I have a six drawer system which my mom got me a few years ago for Christmas.  Side note: Remember how I said people have told me I'm good at organizing?  Some of those people also know how much I like to do it and they know the way to my heart...buy me organizing supplies and I'll love you forever!!  The drawer unit I have it just like this one.  I'm pretty sure my mom got mine from Hobby Lobby and it has held up great, so I highly recommend it.

First I separated all of my craft papers into piles to decide how I needed to organize them.  I tried to keep the number of piles to five so I would have one extra drawer for supplies (mainly the wheels for the unit since I didn't intend to use them).  

Next I pulled out this great label maker.  It's the Brother P-touch Home & Hobby Label Machine.  I created labels for each of the drawers.  If you are interested these are the categories I came up with for my storage drawers: Travel, Holidays, Seasons, Dogs, Family, Friends, Patterned Paper, and Plain Card stock.  Some drawers have more than one category in them, either because they go together or because I only had a few of one type of paper and plenty of room in the drawer for multiple categories.  The drawers are clear so it's easy to tell what I am running low on.  Also, these drawers pull all the way out so when I'm working on a project, I can pull one drawer out completely and bring it to my desk to look at all the paper at once that I may need for that particular project.

Then I labeled the drawers and filled them up with all of my paper.  (I just noticed I forgot an "e" and it has since been fixed, can you spot it?  One million bonus points to you if you can!)  Another great feature of this storage unit is that it fits 12x12 paper.  If you do any kind of crafts, you know this is great.  I mix 8.5x11 with the 12x12, so this eliminates having two separate storage units.  

Storage Unit, I hope you're ready for your close up!! 

What have you organized lately?  I know getting organized is a popular New Year Resolution, so I'm sure there is some organizing going on out there! Spill all the details below in the comments!