Organization is the key- How I Organize My Craft Room

Looking to "neaten" up my craft room I've been searching Pinterest for ideas and inspiration for creating my perfect space.

Sometimes I spend what feels like hours searching for the right color or pattern on a paper to go with the photos for a scrapbook page, or I'll end up ordering a tool, stamp set, or embellishment & end up realizing I already own it!

I thought my craft room was pretty well organized but it has never been "perfect."  In the beginning I was just to happy to have one I didn't mind that I didn't have much money left to spend on organizing it and I made do with bins and containers I found around the house.

Here we are several years later and I don't think I've purchased anything to help organize it yet.  I have, however, purchased a lot more "stuff" and now the room is looking very unorganized.  While I am usually pretty messy while I'm crafting and often thrive in the chaos it's starting to get to me.

Taking a page from almost ALL the rooms I looked at I decided to tackle one small corner of the room today.  My 12x 12 scrapbooking papers.

I decided to color code all my paper this morning. 

It took a little over an hour as I even went through all my bound "books" of paper like DCWV (Die cuts with a view) and pulled them apart page by page.  I thought it might get tough when they were heavily printed but I had read on one blog where she decided what stack to put it in based on what color she'd most likely use (or the color that inspired her to buy it).

It ended up being fairly simple as most pages had a color or two that really stood out.  I did keep a few "themes" separate though; Disney, Halloween, Christmas, and Wedding.  I did that only with paper that could not possibly be used as anything else.  If it was Disney paper but was just colors, dots or stripes I mixed it in with the color stacks but if it had a character on it or a ride pictured on it I left it in it's own stack (same goes for Christmas, Halloween, and Wedding).

I love how it looked in the end and used my label maker to further organize.   I think this should help cut down on the time I spend looking for just the right paper... if not at least it looks pretty!

I enjoyed this system so much I decided to do the same thing with all my paper scraps.

I had 4 drawers that were filled with scraps of all shapes, sizes and colors and I often pull all 4 of them out when looking for a specific piece or color of paper.

 It seems like I've gotten to the point where I don't want to throw any scraps away. 

But I'm starting to feel like scraps are taking over my room and most of my time too.

I finally decided to organize my scraps by color too so I dumped all the drawers out and started sorting.  I used my hanging file cart to store all the paper scraps once they were sorted.

 My room is now a much bigger mess than I started with as I promised myself I'd focus on one small area of the room each day and organize just that one small area.  It will take time (and money) but I think it's high time I dedicated myself to making the room all I want it to be.

I love the idea of sorting everything by color because 9 times out of 10 I know what color I want.  I also just love how pretty the rainbow of colors looks.

Perhaps one day my room will be so organized and pretty I won't want to leave it!