Craft Room Makeover!

Hi there friends! I hope you had an awesome weekend! I’m not quite sure how I was so fortunate to be blessed with such terrific friends, do you ever wonder about that? It started a few months ago, some of my team mentioned they would be willing to help me reorganize my craft room. I was secretly terrified of where to begin… I had such piles and boxes and bags, I didn’t know where to begin, I mean I had to clean out before they came to help me… well finally in December they brought it up again and we picked a date- Saturday January 23rd. Amye, Tiffany and Laurie said they would spend the day helping me and they encouraged me to sort through things ahead of time to make it go smoother. I was slowly picking up some new bins and organizational storage, when I lucked out on New Year’s Day there was a sale on the Stamp-N-Storage website (10% off and Free Shipping!) so I picked out three new pieces that I had wanted for some time. I rented a canister from a local shredding company and have spent the past two weeks sorting through every desk drawer, file cabinet and numerous boxes of “stuff” I had all over my craft room/office. I did remember to take some pictures of the “before” and “after”.  So who are my angels who helped me? Amye Speirs, Tiffany Williams-Hart, and Laurie Kownack  I am so humbled by your generosity, your hard work, your talents and your stamina! 13 hours of sorting, cleaning, purging, organizing… I never dreamed we would accomplish the whole room in one day! Pinch me, I must be dreaming! Are you ready to take a peak at my craft room make-over??

First- I think it would be good to remember what this room looked like in the very beginning- the reason I bought this house in the first place, this is what it looked like in June 2009 (we painted the walls in “Certainly Celery”  and the ceilings were done in whisper white, wish I had gone ahead and painted the built-ins and shelves… my dad talked me out of it, but I think it would have really brightened up the space:

 

Well, over the years I acquired more stuff, bought more stuff, and kept packing it all in this space. Lots of friends would give me things they no longer wanted, and I accepted it all. I had an area for kids crafts for my nieces and nephews and for my Girl Scouts- we do a lot of crafts! Anyway, I retired from my part-time job as a college adjunct professor in May and decided that it was time to purge all my old college materials, as well as decades of financial info and junk mail, (I have already started a new system, so it’s not even going to come up to the craft room).

 

 

My staff at work gave me a gift card at Christmas and I bought this lovely pine cabinet from my friend Amy at her shop, Bliss, before she closed up shop. I hope she reopens soon, I want to continue re-organizing the whole house, and I need more functional storage.

 

So this mess isn’t how it normally looked- the new storage cabinets arrived from Stamp-N-Storage and I was still purging.

 

 

I didn’t notice until I took this photo that I still had my autumn wreath up on the closet door…

 

 

 

This is the pile that gave me the hibbie-jibbies… so much stuff piled here on this table.

 

 

Another view of the pile… one bag away from hoarders, I was so disgusted with myself for letting it get to this point.

 

 

just. a. mess!

 

 

So many boxes and piles….

 

 

 

No joke, I don’t think I have seen the desk top in two years… how did I let it get so bad?

 

Another view of the “worst” corner.

Couldn’t even get to my stamps so I started keeping them out on the side.

 

 

Jumbo pile of Scrap paper… boxes and bags of scraps.

 

 

Chip board anyone? I have saved every piece- you never know when you’ll need it.

 

 

Boxes of cards, photos, embellishments, you name it…

 

A sky high pile of embossing powders, more scraps, tools galore. It would give me a headache to have to “clean up” to create a card. But no more. It is never going to look like that again!

 

 

Tiffany digging in and sorting all my endless supplies of paper…

 

Sorry this is blurry- but wanted you to see the corner where Amye spent several hours organizing all my stamp sets! With catalog in hand, she sorted current/retired!

 

Laurie started with some of my piles of chip-board. Honestly, why did I save every piece of chip-board from every Stampin’ Up! package of paper??

 

 

Progress in the works…

 

 

Knee Deep in Paper Pumpkin kits…

 

Almost done alphabetizing!

 

 

Next Tiff worked on my DIY craft supplies. 

 

Since I’m still hobbling around on my broken foot, the girls would drag everything down to the kitchen/dining room for me. All of this stuff on the kitchen island is just scrap paper. Seven boxes/bags of scraps. just scraps. Never again will I save that many scraps!

I took the plunge and threw out a lot of “crap”… broken, torn, missing, crushed, ruined, or just no use for it anymore… the total count of garbage bags of crap that I threw away just this weekend: 16 garbage bags!! Whew, that felt good!!

 

 

Paper sorting carried over to Sunday- trying to get some good pieces to keep.

From all of this- probably about 50 pounds of scraps…

 

 

to just this one box!  The girls told me I could only keep this one grey box for scraps. So I sorted and kept the biggest pieces, have one bag of just whisper white, one of very vanilla, one baggie of card bases, and one of just miscellaneous extra card parts from previous classes.

 

 

I was so happy to find this missing punch and chalk marker at the bottom of the jumbo box of scraps!!

 

 

These two boxes of scraps are being donated to a friend who has a close friend who makes cards for the wounded warriers. I don’t know if she will want/need all this, but if it can help her at all, I’m glad to give it to her. I thought of saving it for a BOGO sale, but I’m weeks away from being able to carry heavy things in/out of the house. Not sure when the BOGO will be- maybe end of February- I have to go back to the Orthopedic on 2/22 to have my foot x-rayed again.

 

After months of daydreaming, weeks of planning, buying storage containers, purging, and sorting, and a marathon day with three hard working angels in disguise, are you ready for the awesome reveal???

 

 

Here is the All-New-Craft-Room:

 

 

 

 

 

I just love my new work-space- everything is within my fingertips!!

 

 

I was debating about whether to get rid of these gray embellishments storage (bought at K-Mart, years ago in their automotive section- it’s for nails, washers, etc.). Laurie worked so hard in this corner- organized all my envelopes, embellishments, bags, boxes, and frames in this area.

Laurie also organized my Paper Pumpkins, retired inks, retired markers and retired reinkers (I use these for my kids classes and kids events).

 

More hidden storage, that looks amazing now that it’s organized, thanks Tiff!

 

Tiffany also sorted my retired designer papers and 12″x 12″ papers- this is in one of the build-in cabinets.

 

My little Project Life corner- Memory Albums in the making- everything at my finger tips so I can whip up lots of albums for my family! (that 31-bag is full of photos).

 

 

I love having all my current stamps right next to me, thank you so much Amye for sorting and organizing them for me, and love all the “pretty” touches you made too! I love having them alphabetical by Annual Catalog and then the box of Occasions with Sale-a-bration right next to them, so convenient! Thanks a million!!

 

 

Tiffany organized my punches- look how awesome they look in this storage container! My friend/neighbor Marilyn gave this to me years ago- I love having it here and it is perfect for my punches! And all my embellishments are in the new bins. Thanks Laurie!

 

 

Here are all my retired stamps, Amye sorted them all and they are in alphabetical order… I didn’t have any bookends, so Amye taped them up with painters tape… hope to find the old-fashioned metal ones somewhere this week.

 

This is what I’m on the hunt for- I need 3 of these- if you know where I can find some (cheap) please let me know! thanks!

 

 

This 12″ x 12″ paper tower storage holds all my current Designer Series Paper (DSP), and specialty 12″ x 12″ papers. Love it Tiff, you did a great job!!

 

 

I can see my desk tops! It’s a miracle! I do want to work on the bulletin boards and “neaten” that area up some more.

 

 

This is the new “kids crafts” area- I need to put some stamps still over there and need to tweak this area a little bit, but don’t you just love all the white and pink bins, and notice the burlap bins on the bottom? All from Target!

 

Nice clean tables and without all the clutter it feels so big up here now.

 

 

Still have a little work to do next to my desk, but I’m on a roll- can’t wait to get it all done!

 

 

Current catalogs, order forms, box of Occasions and Sale-a-bration card samples. The striped box is the Tin of Cards kit and the white box is full of technique cards.

 

 

So the top of this file cabinet was full of empty jars, and some dust, and I washed everything down today and put some of my retired ribbon inside. What do you think? (can you tell what my favorite channel is? I had House Hunters tropical edition on while I sorted ribbon).

 

There’s one new thing here that I finished up yesterday- can you spot it?

I purchased the 60 combo Marker, Ink Pad and Reinker Storage, the Corner Shelf, the Six-Drawer Storage and some kickstands, raise everything up so I have additions surface space, perfect for my paper trimmer, my stampin’ scrub, and a few other items I need right next to me, here’s their link. They have free shipping going on again, on orders over $80. I highly recommend their products!! here is a link:  http://www.stampnstorage.com/

 

Well, what do you think of my Craft Room Make-Over? I would love to hear your comments! Any tips for how to keep it this clean and organized? I welcome all your input! I still have the craft room closet to tackle, but I’ll need some built-in shelves for inside there, it’s just a jumbo walk-in space. But I will get it done this year. Promise!

I hope you have a great day! Kinda glad no one signed up for my Stamp-a-Stack tonight as I need to get ready for my team get-together tomorrow night and BINGO event this Friday.  So if you see Amye, Tiffany or Laurie- congratulate them on their hard work! Aren’t they amazing?!?!!! I’m blessed indeed. Thanks for stopping by to read my blog today! Stop back on Wednesday when I’ll have lots of card samples to share with you all!

~Lynn

If you are thinking of ordering anything this month, please use Hostess Code: BAMUEFYP (unless your order is $150 or more, then don’t use the hostess code- you will earn your own rewards for your order). 

~Lynn Streifert

Independent Demonstrator, Stampin’ Up!

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