A Long Overdue Project!

Something that was long overdue in my house was cleaning up (and out) my craft room. When we built this house, Cecil really wanted a nice fireproof gun safe in our closet (you know the kind that has a humidifier and such in it...) and I really wanted a craft room. The easiest way for this to happen was for me to say to him that he could have all that "man" stuff if I could have the "fru-fru" craft room. It worked.

Only one problem. I had 2 small BOYS and no time to actually craft. Hence the reason I'm about ummm.....5 years behind on Nolan's albums and well...poor Carter's baby book isn't even done yet. Those that know me know that this is just about too much for me. I'm an extremely organized, controlled, errr...controlling person and to be that far behind on my kids' albums is just pathetic. I keep saying that when hunting season starts and their daddy takes them hunting, I'm going to sit down and scrapbook the nights away....I'll have to keep you updated on that (if it actually happens).

Back to the main idea here. I need to clean-up the craft room! It was atrocious! Here's a few pictures of the room and what it looked like before clean up. (keep in mind these pictures were taken half-way through clean up and it looked worse than this).



A few more pictures from the doorway showing just how bad it really was.



I love this room. (when it's clean). I love the purple walls and the white cabinets with purple/blue countertops. Yes, people. I said purple. I LOVE PURPLE. Since I only had boys and would never get to do a fru-fru room, I figured this was as close as it was going to get. So...I painted the walls a very light purple and made it girly. Two of my favorite items in the room are this swag with 3 wreaths that I found years ago at Lands' End and this purple/white wreath that I found recently at Michael's.




One of the best tips I can give you for organization is to get a box of Ziploc bags and stuff them with grouped items. For example, what I do is for Nolan's 5th birthday, I'll get a baggie and put all the bday cards in it along with an invitation or other knick-knacks from the party and label the bag. This helps me to easily locate all the "5th bday items" when I'm ready to scrapbook that page. You'll see in the above pictures that I have a ScrapRack system, so that's where all my stickers and paper are, but if you don't have that kind of system, you can put bday scrapbook paper, etc. in the baggie so you can do the whole page all at once! See examples below......



After a few hours of sorting pictures into stacks and filing them to the appropriate person's box and bagging up events (see paragraph above), putting ribbon in the drawers, glitter away in the cabinets and filing away paper and stickers, etc. , here's what I'm left with!!


Looks pretty good if I sayso myself. Whew! That was hard work, but it sure was a nice walk down memory lane when I saw old pictures of Disney trips, etc.!! What about you girls? Any tips and tricks for massive organization?

~CB~