My Scrap Book Nook

When we moved into this house, we were so happy to have an extra bedroom. We still are, but it's not as extra as we thought it would be. It has turned out to be our home school room, office, computer room, craft room, scrapbook room, library, and movie room. It has one small oddly shaped closet, that happens to perfectly fit a card table. So a while back, I decided to make it a scrap book nook, thinking to myself, I will just keep everything in there and then I can close the door until the next time I get a chance to work on it. But it turns out that I have been more of a collector of scrapbooking things than an actual scrapbooker as of late. I have been making an occasional card or small project here and there, but I get discouraged when I open the door to my scrapbook nook and can't even find a pair of scissors or glue. So I took everything off the table and under the table and off the shelf and then I remembered all my blogging friends. So here is the sort of before picture.

See why I was discouraged?
I'm embarrassed to say that I actually had done some sorting before I took this picture.
In my defense, I was a Creative Memories consultant for 7 years and accumulated a lot of tools and extra stuff during that time that is really very useful.

A while back, I bought this over the door shoe organizer to hang over the door so I could easily access all my smaller tools and punches and embellishments. It works really good, except for one minor thing . . . the door won't close. But, I have decided that until the Zookeeper gets a chance to screw it to the door, I will live with the door being slightly ajar.

See how cool it is. I can find all the things I have been looking for in my pile of stuff.

I also had a paper problem. I had all the paper from my Creative Memories days, which is 10x10 and my older Creative Memories days which is 8 1/2x11. Most of my scrapbooks are 12x12 and I have collected a lot of that size too. So I had to decide if I wanted to keep all the sizes separated, or put them together? What about the scraps? I decided to put it all together grouped nicely by colors, solid and patterned. I even put some of my bigger scraps in with the full sheets, so I will know what I have to work with when I sit down to scrapbook again. This was really hard for me to do. I don't know why. I had to consult my very organized cousin. (Thanks for the help Michelle.) This is how she has her paper organized and she is all up to date with her scrapbooks, so it must be working. I should be all caught up with the last 5 years by the end of the week now that I have my paper organized.

Once I realized how much paper I actually have, I decided to put it in one big file box and then I set it on it’s side so I can thumb through it easily. I kept the smaller scraps in another file, also separated by color.

So here is my newly organized desktop. I ran an extesion cord for my lamp. I have all my trimmers together. All the pages that are currently in the works are in the vertical storage. All my pens and scissors and whatever else I could possibly need are all within arms reach. I have all my stamps and ribbons and Quickutz right outside the closet in a set of plastic drawers, so everything is together.

Now I just need two more things.

1. 
   
   To stay away from the scrapbook store and use what I have.


2. 
   
   Time. If you have any extra would you send it my way?