stash

Organization, Part 2: By Supply Type, Theme or Company?

So, you’ve gone through the painful process of purging your stash of scrapbook supplies down to a more manageable size. Now you have remaining a pile of paper, stickers and embellishments to organize…but how? There are several basic sorting methods to use and each one may be best for different scrappers.

The first method of sorting scrapbook supplies would be by type, by storing all of the stickers together, for instance. I did use this system exclusively when I first started scrapping almost 7 years ago, but the type system is only really manageable for products like paper or stickers when you have small quantities to deal with. With a larger stash your sticker or paper stack becomes so huge that you can’t find anything in it and need to subdivide it – leading to more questions about how to sort it.

The second sorting method for supplies is by topic. I used this system for about 6 years after the size of my stash forced me to abandon the type method. Supplies are filed by the topic they are intended to be used for, such as baby, vacation, or wedding, or by the design theme, such as floral. The convenience of this system derives from the ability to create a page simply by grabbing the files relevant to the topic you want to scrapbook and have everything necessary to create your page.

For a long time, the topic system did work very well for me, and I know it works very well for many scrapbookers. However, recently I began to have some difficulties with it. The first was caused by the growth of non-themed supplies that are available, both in ‘traditional’ scrapbook supplies like paper and stickers, and also in the number of mixed media type supplies such as mesh, ribbons, and slide mounts. A theme-based organizational system simply cannot easily accept all these types of supplies. Another difficulty was the expansion of available styles in many different themes. Floral papers, for example, are now available in a wide range of styles from cute to retro to classic heritage looks and it can be time-consuming to wade through all of those different types when you have a specific vision in mind of the style you are looking for. Also, many more companies than previously are now creating vast coordinated product lines. Under the topic organizational system, when I looked at a piece of floral KI Memories or Anna Griffin paper, I wouldn’t know without having to look in several other places whether or not I had the coordinating stripe or solid paper.

These factors and several more, such as the desire to occasionally do contests and design team applications which means I sometimes need to know what product I have of a certain company’s, led me to consider making the switch to a manufacturer based filing system. Many of my friends use and recommended such a system but I was at first reluctant to commit the time and effort necessary to make such a drastic change despite the seeming advantages. What if I didn’t like it? Finally I took the plunge…and was thrilled with the results. My scrapbooking has gotten better and faster since I made the change, and I feel it was well worth the investment of time and effort.

The system that I transitioned to for my storage is a combination of type and manufacturer storage. My generic craft supplies like ribbon, mesh, tags and buttons, are stored mostly by type of supply. But now, I have my paper, stickers and other scrapbook embellishments arranged by manufacturer. This has made it wonderfully easy to see at a glance what supplies I have that are pre-coordinated by the manufacturer, or what I have available to enter a design team or other contest that requires I use a specific company’s products. I also don’t have to sift through tons of totally wrong style product to find the look I want. If I am looking for a classic or antique look, I can go straight to my Anna Griffin and K&Co files to see my available options. If I want a more modern look, I can go straight to the companies I have that make those types of designs. My paper and embellishments get less handling and thus less damage, and I can work faster as well.

A manufacturer based system isn’t the perfect answer for everyone. You do have to have a broad knowledge of manufacturers and their design styles to make such a system work for you. And it isn’t necessary to separate your supplies by manufacturer if you tend to stick to one very particular style in your supply purchases, or if your supply stash isn’t particularly large. But for scrapbookers who have the need, like myself, making the switch to a manufacturer based system can have excellent results!

Purging Your Stash: Painful but Productive (Organization Pt.1)

Since my earliest days of scrapbooking seven years ago, I have loved collecting scrapbook supplies. Like many scrapbookers, I love paper, stickers and a myriad of other scrapbook accessories and want to have virtually everything I see! Buying supplies faster than I can use them led to an ever growing stash of supplies that first outgrew my scrapbook tote, than my scrapbook area, and then my scrapbook ROOM. Clearly something had to be done about this monster before it took over the whole neighborhood!

So a few months ago when I decided to really get my work area organized, I knew the first step needed to be to thin out my supply stash and purge old stuff that would likely never get used. In theory that should have been fairly easy, as my style has changed pretty dramatically in the past 5 years and I had accumulated a lot of old supplies that definitely did not fit my current style. And at first it was fairly simple. I culled out some patterned paper and really old stickers that I had long since fallen out of love with. But it was surprisingly hard to get rid of even things that I looked at and thought “what was I thinking when I got that?” and so that sorting only generated a small reject pile…the remaining stash was still way too large to be manageable and workable. On the first go-through, my rule had been: “When in doubt, keep it.” I decided that I would have to make another pass-through with the opposite rule: “When it doubt, pull it out.” The resulting sort-out yielded a much smaller remaining stash, much more workable in size and much easier to organize and store!

After organizing those remnants of my stash, I have now been thrilled at how much easier it is to scrapbook, at how much more creative and productive my work process has become. I was afraid of feeling hemmed-in by having so many fewer choices of supplies when I work. Instead, I no longer feel overwhelmed by the huge number of choices available to me. A huge number of mostly poor choices has been replaced by a much smaller number of high quality choices, leading to a more streamlined and less confusing work process. My work output has increased in both volume and quantity in the past months as a direct result.

Being brutal with my treasured stash was painful…after the initial run-through, it took me awhile before I was ready to make a second look at it and get rid of some more things that I just wasn’t quite willing to let go of the first time. But after time passed and I got used to my smaller stash, it didn’t seem quite so horrific to go through and thin out a few more things. What I have discovered, in fact, is that purging really should be an ongoing maintenance project. Every couple of months, I need to take a good hard look at things and decide if they still fit into my current style and work process. If the answer is “no”, then they need to be removed to make room for the products that will get used. This look-through can be done in a few hours and is a good investment of time that helps my work process continue to run smoothly and productively.

It was painful to take the first step of letting go of some of my treasured scrapbook stash. But once I started down that road, I found that I loved the journey it took me on to more productive and more creative scrapbooking – and that is the best result
of all.