The Card Stock Re-org

[If you're looking for my Jingle Belles post, please scroll down, or click here.]

I don't know if you've watched Jennifer McGuire's recent organization video of how she stores her paper and card stock, but it made me get off my rear and organize my own. I have a vast collection of A Muse patterned card stock, Hero Arts Layering Papers, and SU card stock. I sold a ton of my SU card stock before I moved, but I still have a LOT of it.

I have IKEA cabinets in my craft room, and I'm constantly changing how things are organized. Here is what I've been working with the past few days:

Note the cat bed on the top right. Also, the crap on the floor is a product of my re-org, and where-the-hell-do-I-put-this-oh-right-here-for-now.

I have three sets of this 2-tier cabinet stack, and this one has been holding disorganized non-SU colored card stock for some time. When I was a Demonstrator for SU, I had all my colored card stock at eye level, in a 3-tier stack of cabinets, with current colors on top and the retired colors on the second level. They were all organized by color - reds, yellows, greens, etc. I felt it was time to cross the beams and mingle them all, so I got to work.

First, I took all my Hero Arts Layering Papers and put them in piles by color. Along the way I re-discovered a bunch of packages I'd forgotten I had, so I bought more. Sigh.  I then took out my labeler and put all the papers into their own sleeves like Jennifer did.

I also took all my Hero Arts patterned/designer papers and put them into sleeves - one for each color: greens, reds, etc. In the end I had quite tidy piles of Hero Arts card stock!

Since I'm not in the biz like Jennifer is, and it's not so important that I know whose paper I'm using, I took all my non-Hero and non-AMuse card stocks and put them together in sleeves of blue, red, green, etc.

Now it was time to cross the beams, and this is what I ended up with:

Please ignore the loose papers at the top ... I seriously ran out of room to wedge even one more sheet in there. But isn't it pretty? Yeah, I know the yellows and oranges are backwards, but that's how they were before, and I didn't bother to switch them. Yet. All the SU card stock is on its side with dividers between colors. I mixed up all my retired, non-retired and In Colors, and I lived to tell about it. In between the SU boxes, I stood up the sleeves with my Hero Arts, A Muse, Bazzill and all other miscellaneous card stocks.

Do you see my vast collection of purples over there on the right? Mmm-hmmm. And no, I do not have a lot of (gah) pink. Most of the vertically stored card stock is white core, so it just looks pink. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Here's the lower shelf of that cabinet:

It houses all my neutrals. The magazine holders contain specialty papers, On the far left are velvet papers (which you'll see in action in another post), and Japanese papers. Yummy stuff. The middle magazine holder contains my specialty white card stock: wood grain, glossy, canvas, etc. The box on the far right has wood sheets and some metal sheets I forgot I had.

The small horizontal boxes hold my Clearbags Linen card bases, and there are some packages of watercolor and letterpress papers on top of them.

I did a huge purge of my SU 12x12 Designer papers, and only kept a few packs. I also kept my 12x12 Cosmo Cricket, Co'ordinations, and Graphic 45. Where I used to have a 2-tiered cabinet full, on both levels, of 12x12 card stock, this is all I have left:

Less than 1/4 of a cabinet, which means between this week and last September I've purged 3/4 of it. YAY! Oh, please note the stack of purple 12x12 card stock. I remember when I bought this ... in a fit of WHY DO I NEVER HAVE THE RIGHT COLOR PURPLE. So I might just have the right color purple after all.

The partial packs of SU papers I kept were cut down and put into this box:

That's it! That's all I have left. I might be a little stoked about it, too.

I had a moving box of neutral SU card stock on the floor that is now gone and integrated into the new storage system. The cabinet that used to hold my SU colored card stock now houses some other specialty papers that didn't fit in the system above: acetate, pre-embossed card stock, and washi sheets. I'm sure I'll come up with a system for storing them, too. Bottom line is I have a ton more space now. Wheeee!

Also, I have BIG plans to use some of this stuff now that I remember I have it. To prove it to you I've made a few cards with some card stock I couldn't bear to give away. I'll be back shortly with a show-and-tell of those.

Thanks for stopping by!