A Tip to Help You Edit Your Craft Supplies

A few weeks ago I sorted, edited, and organized all my craft supplies.  I had tried many times over the past few years to tackle this project, but always without success.  Several times I have taken out the craft things, but not known what to get rid of and what to keep.  I have even gone so far as to buy plastic containers thinking that would be the magic bullet, but nothing worked.  Finally this time I realized how to tackle the sorting and editing and make the project work and that is why I'm sharing this with you.  It isn't a post full of pretty pictures, but rather just a useful tip in case you also suffer from editing paralysis and might benefit from my idea.

Before I started I sat down with a piece of paper and thought about what crafts I'm likely to do over the next few years.  As I sorted and edited the craft supplies, if they were things that I would need for something on my craft list then they stayed and if not they went.  It made it much easier to decide.  I sorted everything into KEEP, GIVE AWAY, and GARBAGE piles.  Then I was able to divide up my KEEP pile into containers and label them so the craft supplies would be easy to access.  

I was able to eliminate about half our craft supplies and the rest are all neatly stored away.  The funny thing was, that once I had this plan of action it really only took me a few hours to do the sorting and then a few more to get everything labelled and organized for the shelves.  


It was also good timing to edit my craft supplies because a good friend of mine is starting an art school and I was able to give her all the supplies I didn't want to keep.  It always feels better when you have a good place to donate your cast-offs, don't you think?


The photos below are the before photos - all those containers on the three shelves were full of craft things 

along with a trunk full of craft supplies upstairs under the sideboard.

Now the trunk is empty and the craft things take up only two shelves in the basement.  We even have room to store our coolers on the bottom shelf now - wahoo!

How do you decide what to keep and what to get rid of?  Do you have a separate craft room?  As you can see I just store mine on the storage shelves in the basement, but given the size of our house and the number of times I do craft projects it makes perfect sense.  Although it would be much nicer to have a gorgeous craft room like the one I showed you here.

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Also I want to remind you that today is the last day to enter to win the copy of the Canadian House and Home magazine (see here for details).  I have a fab giveaway coming up next week - stay tuned for details.

Linked to Home Decor and Organizing Link Party at Organize and Decorate Everything,
Link it up Thursday at These Peas Taste Funny