A Crafty Clean Up

Things have been so busy lately I have hardly had time to blog.  But yesterday I found time to do a job I have been putting off for ages, cleaning out my craft cupboards.

Hidden behind these benign looking doors away from visitors eyes lies a disaster area, a dirty little secret that threatens to expose it's self should you decide to investigate further.

All tidy from the out side

This is the state of things before I started in the right cupboard, not too bad but it is the lesser of the two evils and was not my major cause for concern.  This cupboard is for non scrap booking supplies, gift bags and boxes.

This one below, on the other had was my cause for concern.  Scrap booking supplies gone crazy.
Really I had no idea some of what was buried amongst some of these piles, and this was not all of it either.  On top of the fact I had just been poking stuff in and quickly shutting the door, lest it should want to jump back out, there was also the pile on the floor (no photo sorry) of all the other things that needed to be sorted and stored.
Part of the problem with scrap booking is that you get into the habit of saving everything that you could use in the future.  The big issue here is that almost everything could be used if you are creative enough and knowing where to draw the line is challenging, well for me anyway.

But I was determined to get it into some sort of manageable order so I sorted and at times even threw out (reluctantly) but it was all for the better in the end because now I know exactly what I have and can find things easily.

Now below is the result of my efforts and while it may still not look like the picture of perfection this is about as good as it gets.

While I was sorting things out I found I really needed a couple of storage methods for quite specific things, rolls of ribbon and scrap booking papers that are 30x30cm.
These storage containers can be purchased, at a price, from most big scrap booking stores and on line but I really was not prepared to outlay the money.  So I got creative and made my own.
I turned and old shoe box into a ribbon box by threading a piece of dowel through the middle threading on the rolls of ribbon and securing each end with rubber bands, then I made a slot for the ribbon to come out the front.

For the papers I picked up some stackable fruit boxes from the supermarket and cut one of the sides out leaving just enough to lock into the box below. 

Now things are a lot tidier (for a while) and I found a whole lot of stuff I had forgotten about.

Do you have cupboards like this at your place?

PS while on the topic of craft, don't forget today is the last day you can enter my birthday giveaway so make sure you comment on that post from earlier this week.