Get it Together: Week 4

Paper

Beautiful paper….

There is so much of it though.

Like most of you I have lots of paper.

But until it was organized I really didn’t know what I had.

Not a good thing!

What I did was sort, sort, sort.

My first sort was to divide the paper into three groups:

• 12x12 Solids

• 12x12 Prints

• Scraps

For the solids I divided them into color families,

getting rid of damaged or faded sheets.

Fortunately there was not that much to send to the recycle.

Here is my color order:

Black

White

Red

Yellow

Blue

Green

Brown

Purple

Orange
Pink

To store my solid cardstock I use Sterlite 3-drawer containers, labeled and stacked. I like the drawer system because I can still see the color but they are protected from dust and light to keep papers from fading.

My Printed cardstock is sorted further into general

and themed stacks. The general printed gets stored

in the same manner as the solid.

Themed papers are separated and filed in a 14x14 hanging file tote that I purchased from the local craft store. this makes it easy to pull when I am working on a project with a specific theme.

My file includes:

Christmas

Halloween

Birthday

Disney

Texas Tech-‘cause my son goes there

Fossil Ridge-‘cause I have two kids in high school

General school

Scouts

Of course your files will be sorted to what you may be working on like baby, anniversaries, wedding, graduations, or heritage. These will be temporary files and will change according to your current happenings.

When I was sorting the printed cardstock, I had to get a little choosy as to what I kept and what I sent to my blessings box. It was hard to do at first but I had to ask myself,

“Am I going to really use this paper on a current project?”

Some of the patterns were an absolute Yes!

But there were plenty of papers where the answer was NO.

Those papers I may have bought two and had

already used one of the sheets or had bought without

an intended use and still have no intended use for it.

(Impulsive shopping can get the best of us sometimes.)

Then there were those papers that no longer fit my scrapping style and would most likely not be pulled for a project anymore.  For whatever reason I had out grown it.  If that is the case then there is no reason to hold on to it.

When I was done with that sorting I had about a 1-1/2” stack for the blessings box. At first I was feeling like what a waste of money to give this away. But since it is going to a foundation that really needs the supplies for their mission work, how can I not be okay with helping out.

Then we have the Scraps. These are stored in an 11x14 hanging file tote by color. For the scraps I have not separated the solids and printed. Since most printed cardstock is double sided I file according to the color side I would use first.

A tip for this part of the sorting will be to only keep scraps that are a certain size and larger. For example, my first sort I only kept pieces that were 4x4 and larger. This got rid of a lot of pieces that took up too much space and allowed me to keep to one tote.

(That was the goal for me)

Because I had set a size minimum there was no second guessing which made the sorting go by quickly. I was also comfortable with my sizing because I know I will use pieces that small.

Pick a size that you can say you would defiantly use. If you’re a card maker your size choice may be smaller. If you do mostly Home Décor projects, your size choice may have you keeping a larger minimum.

After you have your scraps under control then you can start keeping smaller pieces if you find that you need to do so.

Once I had my system in working order and had been using it awhile I found myself keeping even the smallest of pieces.

(I will post later this week on how to maintain your scraps tote.)

Now that we have given you this information I will let you get to work.  Get it to the point where everything has a home and then I will tell you how my crazy brain uses these systems.  It won't be a good system if you can't work it, right?

I hope this helps you to

"Get It Together"

If you have any questions please ask in the comment area. 

Or call us at the Little Blue House

817-431-7930

For more information, tips and techniques,

don't forget to check out The Little Blue House blog.

Miss Tracy has more great information for you

and a few stylish goodies to put into your craft spaces. 

Plus, there are still some CHA posts to look for. 

We brought back some preat product to give away

so watch for those posts as well.

Merry Organizing Everyone!

Rhonda