Space for scrapping

26 years ago

In my dream house, I'll have a huge craft room with big tables....my supplies will be neatly organized, and will remain untouched by small peanut buttery fingers until I'm ready to scrap the day away.....AHHh. But until then I'll have to use the kitchen table. Do any of you have tips on storing/organizing/etc your supplies? I keep mine in 2 (soon to be 3) large plastic containers under my bed. I'm pretty organzed...maybe I just have too much stuff!!! To haul those out and do even one or two layouts can easily take an afternoon. I'm almost to the point of "It's not worth the time." Can any of you do a page without the entire "setting up" process? Thanks.

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Comments (9)

Penny
26 years ago
Dear Anne,
The best tip I have heard on storing scrapbook materials if you don't have a room devoted to it is to buy (now this can be a bit expensive, but in my opinion WELL worth the cost) a LARGE tool box from say the Sears craftsman line. It is big and on wheels. It has at least 5 drawers of varing depth, and the best part is it can be LOCKED when not it use, there by keeping small kids out. You could ask for it for your birthday. Penny
Patti in NH
26 years ago
Oooh - and it can be painted too. Maybe a nice antique white... then you could leave it up in a main room. Hmmm. That's not such a bad idea!! :)
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Aliska We grow in containers because even after we augment our soil for years it looks like this: It doesn't matter how much organic matter we put in. All it takes is a few gullywashers a year and the compost washes down the hill and we are back to trying to garden in rocks and coal. The only way to hold organic matter in the soil here is to augment very heavily and have a ton of perennial plants with huge mats of roots to help anchor it. So veg went to containers and in-ground growing is mainly used for hardy perennial flowers. To fill the containers, we have a great compost heap and we spend as much time growing soil as we do growing our plants. Here's two of our compost heaps in 2008 - that's after all the buckets were filled: Since then we've stepped up our composting a lot. We actually harvest our forest floors now. Two reasons for that. One is to feed the compost heap with the organic matter from the forest floor and from our annual leaf harvest. The second is to expose the soil on the forest floor so we can seed into it and grow more stuff for the animals to eat. This is our star compost producer. She's good for about 2 five gallon buckets of collectibles each day. (That's just the black gold she leaves in the back yards closest to the compost heap. She also leaves plenty out in the hills.) Connie the queen of compost: As for intermediate transplanting. Part of it is that potting up size by size is good for the plants. Part of it is that while potting up season is in full swing, we have to spend to spend day after day sieving compost and blending it with a little perlite. It takes time to get enough compost to fill close to 500 buckets. We use fresh compost in the buckets each year. That decreases disease risk for the plants and lets us plant them in soil that is so nutrient rich that we never use fertilizer. At the end of the growing season the compost from the buckets gets put in my giant flower gardens. The reason we have so many plants is that we grow most of our own food. Gardening isn't a hobby for us - it's dinner! We are both vegetarian so don't worry - cute Connie and the goats are working animals (landscaping crew and compost makers), not future meals. As we've transitioned to doing all of our food growing in containers, we've seen other gardeners in the area do the same. We get used buckets from our friendly local scrapyard dealer. He's a gardener who's now using more containers and he tells his other gardening customers about it. It's a lot of work, but it's usually better than fighting Appalachian hill soil. It also lets us control the soil moisture - not an easy thing to do if you are ground growing and the weather is cycles of drought and flood. We also use tire gardens for some of our growing: Most of the photos have additional comments with them. Click on any of them to see a larger image and the comments. Lynda
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I like all the alternative ideas for heating, but I'm also thinking about what you could do with your existing kitchen as an alternative to moving to the garage. What does the current space look like? I say this because we had planned to add on to a family home and had even drawn up architectural plans, cleared with the county building dept., and priced out the whole project. Unfortunately, the pricing out turned out to be more expensive than the value of the house and land warranted. Plan 2 was make our kitchen in our current house larger. We really tried, but there was no reasonable way to do it. Believe me when I say I feel your pain. Plan 3 was redo our existing space. We've done that and couldn't be more pleased. My daughter who grew up in this house was here for Thanksgiving and commented several times what a pleasure it was to work in there, so much easier than before, and before wasn't terrible. The moral of the story is: If at first you don't succeed...
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Disclaimer: rookie here, I still have a lot to learn If I was in your position, I would stop digging right now and start mulching. Just lay down a good layer of whatever free carbon is available (dead leaves, wood chips from a tree trimming operation, cardboard box waste from a shopping center, whatever). This would help keep the soil moist, reduce wild temperature swings, and protect the soil organisms while they're decomposing what you already added. With the the manure and coffee grounds (and kitchen scraps I'm no longer digging in), I'd start a compost pile, as close to a 3-foot cube in size as I could reasonably manage, 3 parts free carbon to every 1 part that stuff. Keep it moist but not soaking, and turn/stir/mix it every now and then, and by May it should be thoroughly broken down to compost that can help a lot. If I had more of that good nitrogen-rich material than I could fit into a 3x3x3 compost heap (I wish I had that problem), I'd start laying it down in alternating thin layers (no more than 1-2 inches thick each) with free carbon on the plot where I want to plant in May, keep it moist, and otherwise ignore it. If it breaks down enough to plant in by May, great; if not, spread the compost on top of it and plant into that. It will all break down eventually, nourish the soil, and by ignoring it and letting the soil food web do the rest of the digging in work, the soil should be in better shape than it would be if I'd broken it up myself with tools.
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How long are your arms? That latest island still looks too deep for most people - I suspect it's not much better than the 8'x7' you originally had. For the majority of people, 60" (5') is the maximum depth that can easily be cleaned. You have to be able to easily reach the middle of the island to be able to wipe it down. Based on your comments about not cooking and how entertaining is more important - I have to ask, is this a "show" kitchen rather than a "working" kitchen? It's not a bad thing, it's just that most of the comments you are receiving are based on making a kitchen functional for cooking, etc. If you rarely cook, then function probably isn't that important to you. Again, that's not bad, it's what works for you and your family. The size of the island is still a concern for cleaning, though. One comment - eating at a table is much more comfortable and more conducive to family bonding/conversation than sitting at a counter like in a diner-style restaurant. The latest island you posted has seating lined up "like ducks in a row" and is more for strangers eating side-by-side without having to look at each other - the polar opposite of what you should be aiming for. Something else to think about - if you plan to put your Cleanup Zone in the island, do you really want to be staring at dirty dishes while trying to eat dinner? Cleanup Zones in the island put your dirty dishes front & center for all to see...but it's better than putting your Cooking Zone in the island (unless you have a very good overhead hood and a lot of workspace around the cooking surface.)
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Brenda
26 years ago
I guess I am one of the lucky ones - instead of suffering from empty nest syndrome when my children married and left home I have turned one bedroom (the smallest one) into a nice craft room. I have one of the wooden buffet tables that is expandable - right now only have it opened to about 4 feet - and it is about 4 feet wide. But I can pull it all the way out to 12 feet if I need to. I bought a table top storage unit from Sams for about $30 that has adjustable shelves - four shelves wide. I sat this on the back of the table - fits width exactly - and use this to store my 8 1/2 x 11 papers, card stock, books, etc. I store my 12 x 12 scrapbooking papers and stickers in my unused plastic page protectors, and keep these in a large album. I can easily flip through the album and choose the papers and stickers I want to use. I use baskets for my scissors, glues, etc. My computer is in this room as well as a large bookshelf unit. Works great.
Kay
26 years ago
I have to use the dining room table. I have 2 portable hanging file boxes that hold my papers. One for cardstock and the other for prints. I also keep stickers and die cuts in these. The cardstock si filed by color, the prints by theme. I place these on DR chairs on each side of me. I have a 2-sided hard tote that has all my cutters and misc. "toys". I out this in front of me on the table. It only takes me 5-10 minutes to get all this out of the coat closet and set up on the table. I usually leave it up for a number of days in a row when I know I can scrap for a few moments here and there.
Lizanne
26 years ago
Hi! I'm new to this sight, but I am an avid scrapbooker and I'm only 16. I don't know what if I can do any of these good organizing tips all of you came up with, since it's not really MY house! :) Do you have any ideas that could maybe fit in my room, that wouldn't require file shelves and extra tables?? Thanks!
Patty/Mo.
26 years ago
I also have turned 1 of our empty bedrooms into a craft room. It is great. But I have to come up with a great storage thing. I am still working on it. Patty
Penny
26 years ago
I am lucky enough to have my own craft room also I bought 4 large desks / dressers from a local hotel when they remodelled, each desk has 3 drawers on each side and a drawer in the middle, and they are STURDY and have formica tops. I keep all my stickers alphabetically in my old magnetic albums, if the back of the sticker pages sticks to the page it is not a problem since I don't use that part of the sticker anyway. I keep all of my die cuts in a portable hanging file system also by alphabet, I store all of my paper in hanging file folders, by theme, or color. For those of you who can't do this I would suggest some storage boxes that would fit in your case LizAnne, underneath your bed or clean out a drawer of your dresser. However my favorite is still the craftsman tool box. It can be drapped with a floral cloth to match whatever room it's in or be painted like Patti suggested. It doesn't have to be attached to any walls nor will it's wheels hurt the floors. (I had one in my dining room for years when our garage was being redone, covered with a cloth it looks just like a small table.) LizAnne, you could also store other items in, and on it, but the top makes a great cutting and work surface. I would suggest putting down a protective mat of sorts though, and I think it is less than $100.00. Penny
Kim
26 years ago
I bought few of the rubbermaid type 3 drawer organizers. Each drawer is 9x12. I have a ton of supplies so I have seperate drawers for cutting, pasting, writing, texture papers, scraps, stencils and books. I can sit flip top (9x12ish sized) rubbermaid type boxes on top. One holds my solid paper and the other is for stickers. I took posterboard and cut them to be dividers and labelled them accordingly with all my stickers very accessible! This takes very little space and is basically two trips to the dining room table and I'm ready to go!
Bonny
26 years ago
Check out the Cropper Hopper for $79 and free shipping

http://www.buychoice.com/BuyChoice/Products/ItemSelection.cfm?itemId=1844&catcd=1&prodCode=794&prodLinecd=297

Space for scrapping

Comments (9)

Penny

Patti in NH

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Kay

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