A Pack Rat's Guide Continues...

I little while ago, I posted a Facebook Live video feed of my messed up, maxed out crop room I fondly refer to as Crafty Neighbor Studios.  It’s a wreck.  Between the chaos of the holidays, my niece moving in for a bit, and the “purge” cycle my husband is going through, it has accumulated a lot of stuff, and now I have to find a place to put all of it.  Whether that is safely stored in my shelves, tossed in the trash, sold in a garage sale, or donated to ScrapDenton remains to be seen, but I have to do something with it and I have to do something NOW!  Just watch the video, and you’ll see what I’m talking about!

Facebook Live Video

So this video reminded me of some blog posts I did many moons ago about decluttering and organizing, and they have some great tips and info that bears repeating.  If you weren’t around then, I urge you to check out these 4 articles.  I think they’ll help.  And with any luck, I will have more tips to share with you as I clean up this big mess and get my studio back to being my happy place where I love to create!  Until then, please enjoy:

•  A Pack Rat’s Guide to Getting Organized
•  A Pack Rat's Guide to Getting Organized Part 2: All's Well That's Planned Well
•  A Pack Rat's Guide to Getting Organized Part 3: Picture Perfect
• Clutter Busting

Happy Spring Cleaning!

Cindy

Project Boxes

Several times now, I have mentioned my “projects in progress”, or “projects in a box” as I sometimes refer to them.  I wanted to use today’s post to explain what they are and how they can help you be a more organized and productive scrapper.

I have always been a little bit obsessive when it comes to organization.  I think it stems from my ADHD; I am such a scatterbrain sometimes that I absolutely must keep my possessions organized or I just can’t function.  I have been known to search for hours for a single, all-important embellishment when the clutter has gotten the best of me, and I just can’t tolerate the frustration of all that wasted time.

Last February, I began what I hope will be my final attempt at organizing my craft room.  I’ve used a lot of different organization systems over the years, but none of them ever seemed to stick because they didn’t encompass everything in my vast collection of crafting supplies.  But in February, I think I finally found the answer, and I began a complete reorganization project of my craft room.  You may have seen the photos I posted here on March 10. 

This is what my whole room looked like
before the transformation.

I got most of the work done on the room in February when I completely emptied the room and installed a set of cabinets that I purchased at Ikea.  Putting everything back was equally time consuming, but mostly because this spring has been incredibly busy for me and I almost never had a day when I could just sit and sort things out for an hour or two.  I did finally get most of it sorted out, though, and all I really have left is this one corner that is stacked to high heavens with an assortment of supplies, completed projects, and projects I’ve started but haven’t finished (there’s an alarming number of those, yikes!).  Luckily, I have a solution to all that mess, and little by little I am whittling it down to something much more manageable.  Now that school is out and life is settling down for the summer, I plan to spend the next week really digging into that mess, and I’m hoping to have that table completely cleaned off by the end of next week.  I can’t wait!

So that brings me around to the project boxes.  As I mentioned, when I sorted through all my product, supplies, and projects, I discovered that I had an alarming number of projects that I had either started or had gathered up supplies to start but had not finished.  I have a really bad habit of starting projects or planning projects, and then running out of time to complete them.  They wind up stacked in a box somewhere, sometimes never to be seen again.  What makes it worse is that even when I do want to work on one of those projects, I sometimes can’t find everything I need to do it! 

Case in point…in the fall of 2011, I purchased an iron-on decal of rhinestones in the shape of the Texas A&M logo.  I didn’t know what I wanted to use it for, but I knew that I could use it for something and I might not get the opportunity to buy it in the future, so I bought it and put it somewhere safe.  Now we all know how safe works, right?  That means that you stumble across it all the time for months on end, and you think to yourself, I need to do something with that, but not right now.  Then, when you finally decide to do something with your whatever-it-is-that-you-put-somewhere-safe, you can’t find it.  You spend hours, weeks, months, maybe even years looking for it.  And in the mean time, the other supplies you bought for your I’m-going-to-do-this-someday project are lying around, and now you find those supplies all the time and tell yourself “One day I will find that whatever-it-is and I will finish this.”  Sound familiar?  That’s what happened to me with the decal.  I saved it, not knowing what to do with it, and for two years, I would stumble across it from time to time, not knowing what to do with it.  Then last fall, while I was out shopping, I found this adorably cute maroon canvas purse, and I thought, “I know exactly what to do with that decal!”  But guess what, the decal was nowhere to be found.

I had similar problems with other projects, but I found that one simple solution was to begin using the 4-Section storage method taught by Tiffany Spaulding of The Scrap Rack.  The beauty of this method is that you don’t have to use her storage products (or any other specific storage products for that matter); it will work with just about anything.  I won’t go into the whole process because you can find out all about it on her website, but the key principals are:

• Sort your supplies: alphanumeric; colors; seasons; themes
• Keep it organized:  put things away when you use them and put new purchases away into their place IMMEDIATELY

 

These are a few of my project boxes.

It really is that simple.  I am sorting most of my stash into my ScrapRack (I bought it at a garage sale a few years ago for $50!), but some of my themes are bulkier than others.  For instance, I could probably fill a whole ScrapRack with Boy Scout supplies and memorabilia, so I put everything Boy Scout into one 12x12 Iris Box.  I did the same with my Think Pink/Breast Cancer/3-Day for the Cure, Cruising, and Texas A&M supplies.  Now, whenever I want to work on pictures from one of my Breast Cancer fundraisers, I can go straight to that box and everything is right there…paper, embellishments, memorabilia, even the photos.  No more gathering supplies or trying to remember where I put stuff.  If I buy a new cruise ship embellishment, it goes right in that box the minute I get home from the store.  I do the same with my other subjects – the ones that don't take up a whole box.  Everything is sorted by themes into sections of my ScrapRack for easy access right at the tip of my fingers whenever I need it.  You can do the same with file folders, project envelopes, notebooks…anything, really, because it’s not about the storage containers, it’s about the system.

I put labels on the outside of each box
to remind myself which specific colors
of ink or cardstock go with that project.

My next project will be to label each of the boxes with the theme.  Since I can see through them, it's pretty easy to tell what's in them, but I think it will just help make it that much more organized.  Already, I can tell that having all my projects sorted into themes has been a true blessing during LOAD.  Whenever I see Lain’s prompt for the day, I know exactly where to go to find that special embellishment or the paper I’ve been saving for just that occasion.  It makes it quick and easy to take along with me on crops, too, because other than my tools, all the supplies I could possibly need are stored right there in that box.  I know I can just grab a box, grab my bag of tools, and have a full day of cropping fun.  What could be better than that?

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Do you have an organization tip?  Share it with us as a comment, and you could win a prize!  I have some fun little organization helpers to give away to the reader who posts the best tip.  Enter as often as you like, one tip per comment, no later than May 30.  Winner will be announced June 1st.  

Stickles, Cricut and Walmart -- Oh My!

I can’t believe it’s already a new year!  This past year went by so fast for me, and even though we’ve been really busy, I don’t always feel like I’ve gotten a lot done.  Either way, it’s good to have a fresh start and my vow to myself -- (let’s not call it a resolution because then I might just break it!)…where was I?  Oh yeah, my vow to myself is to let go of things that waste my time.  Efficiency is the key, and so is organization.  I’ve been working on organizing my craft supplies for quite some time.  It’s always a work in progress, but hopefully some day I will hit on the perfect option.

Lately I’ve been using some snap-type food containers that come in a wide variety of sizes.  It works well for most of my stuff, but some supplies have been moved from one box to another so many times that I’m not even sure where they are any more!  For instance, just about the time that I find the perfect container for my collection of Stickles, Ranger comes out with a few more colors that I absolutely must have, and there I am again, looking for a new container! 

This week is no exception.  Christen discovered that Ranger is releasing nine new Stickles colors.  Luckily for me, my current Stickles container has some extra room in it (I thought I’d try to stay ahead of the game this time!), so all I need to do is move my tiny bottles of flocking to a new home and then I’ll have plenty of room to add all the new colors, especially this one:

One of the new colors does not yet have a name.  Ranger is running a contest to pick the name for the new Stickles.  The winner gets new Stickles, of course!  If you are interested, please go to http://blog.rangerink.com/blog/2011/01/nine-new-stickles-colors-and-a-contest.html and place your vote.

I could easily be just as excited about all the new Cricut cartridges, too, if it wasn’t for the fact that I am so frustrated with the selection.  Have you noticed that ProvoCraft hasn’t released many new letter fonts in quite some time?  It seems they have shifted their focus away from lettering and fonts and onto cutesy artwork, graphic designs and, of course, cake decorations.  I don’t know about you, but the whole reason I wanted a Cricut was to cut out fonts -- letters, words, titles, etc.  The zoo animals and robots and fruit and flowers are cute and all, but what I really need is alphabets and numbers!

While I’m grousing about the woefully low number of actual fonts, let me tell you about my recent attempt to buy a Cricut Lite font at Walmart.  I’m not a frequent Walmart shopper.  I used to go there all the time, but the two Walmart stores in my immediate area are filthy, over-crowed, under-staffed, and over-priced on a lot of the items I buy.  Most people automatically assume that they have the lowest price, but this is not necessarily so – they only guarantee that they will match the lowest price.  I have frequently found that many of their prices are actually higher than at other stores on many of the items I buy regularly.  On top of that, after a major store remodel a year or two ago, I found that they no longer carry many of the items I would go in there to buy.  The craft section was cut down to less than a ¼ it’s original size, with no fabric section at all, and the scrapbooking section, which used to take up two full rows, is now relegated to half a row at the front of the store next to the wedding supplies and birthday cards.  So for me, it’s just not worth it to go in there.  Yes, I could get stuff at a low price if I want to sit there and argue with the cashier over the price of every single item, but chances are, they won’t have what I need anyway, so why bother?

There is, however, one thing that would make me go shopping in a Walmart store, and that’s a Walmart-exclusive Cricut Lite cartridge.  I had decided a couple of weeks ago that the Handy Man cartridge was exactly what I needed to finish my son’s Eagle Scout project scrapbook.  All my layouts were done except for some journaling and embellishments.  So when I saw this font, I knew I had to have it.  Unfortunately, it’s a Cricut Lite cartridge, so that means a trip to Walmart. 

I planned my trip out carefully and waited until I needed some additional items to make my trip worthwhile.  Unfortunately, when I got there, the only thing the store had that was on my list was a bell pepper and some cheese!  They were either out of, or didn’t carry, everything else!  I went first to the scrapbook section, thinking I would find a rack with a wide assortment of these Walmart-only Cricut cartridges.  Nope.  They did have four of the new Cricut Expressions in the cute new colors.  They also had one of the older Cricut cartridges that was several years old.  It was still priced at $64.  I think I can buy that same cartridge at CricutMachine.com for $14.99. 

Thinking that these new cartridges must be shelved on a big display somewhere else in the store, I gave my BFF Stephanie a quick call to see if she’d seen them.  She suggested I look back in the craft section because she’d seen them there a few times.  They did have two additional cartridges, hanging right next to the sheets of felt and bags of puffballs (or something completely incongruous like that), but again, they were older cartridges, priced far above what they were worth, and there wasn’t a single Cricut Lite cartridge to be found.  So I bought my cheese and left.

Not wanting to drive all over town hoping that another Walmart might have the cartridge, I decided to go online to Walmart.com and use the site-to-store shipping option.  This would save me a few bucks, and hopefully I could get it here a little quicker by volunteering to come in and pick it up rather than wait for it to be shipped to my house.  Or so you would think.  In actuality, the site-to-store option was actually going to take longer than a UPS delivery to my house, but these so-called “Lite” cartridges really aren’t all that cheap, and I needed to be frugal after the holidays, so I chose the site-to-store method anyway.  It wasn’t until after I had gone through the entire checkout process that a message came up on the website and notified me that site-to-store wasn’t available.  Apparently, not one of the 30 Walmart stores in a 50 mile radius had this item available for site-to-store delivery.

Needless to say, I wound up having the cartridge shipped by UPS and it still hasn’t arrived.  I think next time I’ll just order it from Amazon.com.  They carry the Cricut Lite cartridges, too, and though it may cost a little more, it will be worth it to avoid the hassle of a company I’d rather avoid.  In the mean time, I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied looking at all the pretty new Stickles!

Clutter Busting

From time to time, I read a blog by someone else that is so on target that it just knocks me off my feet. Such is frequently the case with articles by creativity consultant and author Christine Kane. A recent article by Christine about clutter made so much sense and was so fitting for this series that I felt I had to include it as one of my weekly entries. Yes, I know she’s talking about throwing stuff out, while I’m talking about saving things for later, but really, we’re both talking about the same thing…how clutter and disorganization drain you of creative energy. 

So as you read Christine’s article, think less about throwing things out, and more about actually putting them to use, getting them organized so you can find them, and finding new uses for old stuff. And yes, you really should throw out anything you are only keeping out of guilt. Take a good hard look at the craft supplies you have accumulated, and make that hard decision about what to keep and what to throw out. Only keep the things you really love. That way everything you make will be something you really love, too!

9 Seemingly Logical Reasons We Cling to Clutter
by Christine Kane

"Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away." 
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A retired man once told me he loved going camping with his wife because camping showed her how simple life can be "without all that bloomin' stuff she keeps everywhere!" He's right!

Our lives are meant to be simple. Our intuition and creativity thrive when given freedom and space. Clutter is a disease. Each moment we ignore the reasons we hold on to things we don't want, those things rob us of energy, health, and clarity.
If you're a clutter-clinger, be kind to yourself. Begin with an awareness of your thoughts and excuses. For starters, read over this list to see if you can find YOUR excuse!

Clutter Excuse #1: "I'd be a bad (mean) (horrible) person if I…"
Guilt is heavy gooey energy that convinces us we're bad people if we let go of heirlooms, knick-knacks, unwanted clothing, or unwanted gifts. These items clutter up our lives and keep us in a comfortable – but draining – place. And conveniently, we never have to decide what we actually do want in our environment. We become environmental victims. Often, that spreads out into other parts of our lives too!

Clutter Excuse #2 - "I spent so much on it!"
Do you punish yourself for having made a bad choice by keeping the item around? Or convince yourself that you're going to get your money's worth – even if it drains the hell out of you? You won't. And it will. We've all done stupid things. And we've all had to let them go. Now it's your turn.

Clutter Excuse #3 - "I might need this someday."
I often wonder how many idle telephone cords exist in the world. Way in the back of old desk drawers. Stuffed on closet shelves. They can't be gotten rid of. Why? Because we might need them some day. Evidently, some day - in spite of technological progress - you're going to need that particular grey phone cord that came in the box with a phone you bought in 1989. Throw it out. Now. Same thing goes for: the broken fax machine, switch plates from your first house, and every glass flower vase that came with deliveries.

Clutter Excuse #4 - "I might do this someday."
I know. I know. Someday you'll take those broken pieces of china you've collected and create a beautiful mosaic birdbath. And you'll go through those stacks of magazines and make that collage for your sister's 30th birthday party. (She's 51 now.) Now – I don't mean to deny you your plans and dreams. However, I urge you to consider experiencing the infinite relief that appears when you let old project ideas go. Call your sister and tell her the collage ain't gonna happen. Buy a mosaic birdbath from an artist who makes her living from creating such treasures. And then, make space for what you want to do. Don't fill your space with what you should do.

Clutter Excuse #5 - "I gotta look good to my guests."
CD's. Books. DVD's. Are these items treasured? Or are they simply a prop so your guests will be impressed by your intelligence and diverse tastes? Remember this: we are motivated by two things: Fear or Love. Which of these keeps you clinging to items because of appearances?

Clutter Excuse #6 - "I Don't Know Where It Goes."
When items don't have a home, it's harder to determine whether or not they are clutter. Some things may seem like clutter - like the cute card that your daughter made that floats around from drawer to drawer - but they're not clutter. They're homeless. Once you start defining spaces for items, then it's easier to see when something doesn't fit anywhere and should just get tossed.

Clutter Excuse #7 - "My thoughts don't have any power. Do they?"
Everything has energy. The thoughts you have about the things in your home CREATE energy. If you are surrounded by stuff you keep out of guilt, then your environment holds guilt. If you hang on to stuff given to you by your ex, and you still feel bitter – then there is bitterness in your home. Get it? It's either fueling you, or draining you. Some things might be neutral, of course. But if anything triggers you, then that is your barometer. Let it go. 

Clutter Excuse #8 - "But I never wore it!"
See Clutter Excuse #2.

Clutter Excuse #9 - "There's too much stuff!"
Overwhelm can stop us in our tracks. If this article makes you aware that there are lots of items in your life you don't like, then go slow. Schedule small chunks of time each day. It takes time to be clutter-free! But the newfound clarity and lightness are worth it!

--
Performer, songwriter, and creativity consultant Christine Kane publishes her 'LiveCreative' weekly ezine with more than 11,000 subscribers. If you want to be the artist of your life and create authentic and lasting success, you can sign up for a FRE*E subscription to LiveCreative at http://www.christinekane.com/ .

A Pack Rat's Guide to Getting Organized Part 3: Picture Perfect

April is over, school will be out in just a few short weeks, and I realized suddenly that I hadn’t done much spring cleaning this year. I used to be a religious spring cleaner. Starting in January each year, I would methodically go through every single file cabinet, desk drawer, closet, pantry, and dresser until I had decluttered everything. The end result was usually a huge pile of trash, a garage sale, and a lot of shredded files.

Over the past few years, life made some sharp turns and I just wasn’t getting the cleaning done like I used to. So a few weeks back we had a little scrapbook garage sale to get rid of some of that old stuff and to make a little money on the side for our September cruise. Christen and I wound up reorganizing a closet, several storage bins, a shed, and all the Crafty Neighbor merchandise we had in stock. Whew! Of course, that meant we had to change the sales on the website (something we’ve been neglecting for a while) and that reminded me about a blog series I had started last year about this time…a series I never quite got around to finishing (can you tell I’m easily distracted?). The blog topic? Spring Cleaning…what else?

Since it’s been a year, I thought it might be nice to revisit the first two articles in the series, and pick up where I left off. So without further adieu, here is Part 3 of “A Pack Rat’s Guide to Getting Organized”, better known as, “A Picture Paints a Thousand Words, but I Can’t Hear Mine Because They’re So Unorganized!” And don’t miss Parts 1 and 2 below!

Picture Perfect

It's a terrible feeling when you finish a beautiful scrapbook page only to suddenly find more pictures or memorabilia that you should have included. I can't count the number of times I've had to rearrange a page or even add another page at the end just to accommodate something that absolutely MUST be included. That's why getting your photos and memorabilia organized is so very important.

Store photos in archival boxes. 

As I told you in a previous blog, when I first started scrapbooking, my photos were a mess! They were stored with no rhyme or reason. I'd shoot twenty rolls of film at a NASCAR race, and send the film off to be developed. When it came back, I’d slap it in a shoebox and never give it a second thought. Sometimes the negatives wound up in the same box; sometimes they didn't. Nothing was labeled either. 

The problem with this type of organization is that you never really know what you have and what you don’t. I actually did a whole scrapbook page based on photos that I thought were from one year only to find that half of them were from a different year. Wow, was that a mess to straighten out! I had to pull all the "wrong" pictures off the page and find something else to fill the space. I wasn't nearly as happy with the result as I had been the first time around. Even worse was the time my daughter cropped the only existing pictures of a high school dance thinking that I had a duplicate set somewhere as well as the negatives. Unfortunately, it was the only set and someone else had given us the photos, so there were no negatives that we could use to print more.

All photos and negatives should be stored in a cool, dry place, out of direct sunlight and protected from dust and other potentially damaging elements. Sunlight can damage photos faster than just about anything on earth except water. Shoeboxes are not acid-free, so choose an option that won’t leach dangerous chemicals that will damage your photos. Photo storage boxes are available for a very low price at just about any hobby store. They are made of materials that will protect your photo prints from dust, sunlight, and other environmental hazards. Go with the plastic version, and your photos will be at least semi-waterproof. Or take it even a step further and make digital archives of all your photos (see below).

Store your photos on end, not lying flat. Humidity in the air can cause the emulsion layer on film to become sticky. If your photos are stacked flat on top of each other, the weight of the stack may cause your precious photo to stick to the back of the photo on top of it. Once that happens, you will never be able to safely pull them apart.

When choosing a storage option for your photo prints, make sure it meets all these qualifications:

• Is it photo safe? Will it protect my photos from the elements and from damage?
• Will it allow me to sort my photos by date or by subject (or both)?
• Is it stackable or can I expand it/add to it if I acquire more photos?
• Is it attractive? Where will it go in my house? Will it look nice on a shelf or in my closet (and does that matter)?
• Is it accessible? How hard will it be to get to my photos once they are stored properly?

Negatives are important too!

A lot of people ignore their negatives and just throw them in a box somewhere. I confess, I used to be one of those people – until the day that I actually needed one of those negatives and couldn’t find it. You never know when you might need to reprint a photo because the original was damaged or maybe needs a little touch-up. Or what if you just need to reprint your favorite picture in a bigger size? Either way, if you took the picture on film, you’ll need the negative. So be sure to keep your negatives stored safely and in a manner that you can easily retrieve them whenever you need.

My favorite way to keep my negatives is to store them in archival plastic sleeves in a three ring binder. The sleeves protect the negatives from dust and fingerprints, and I can tuck the binder into a closet or shelf to keep it out of the sun. I have my negatives sorted by date (simple index tabs separate them by year), and I marked each sleeve with a brief summary of the photo contents (Christmas, Birthday, Prom, swimming pool, picnic, etc.). It makes searching for specific pictures a synch; whenever I need to find one, I just flip to the approximate date and I can view the negatives through the plastic sleeve without ever touching them! An inexpensive light box (available at any craft store) and a small magnifying glass help me identify subjects in the photos. A pair of white cotton, lint-free gloves (available at any camera store) allow me to handle the negatives themselves without leaving fingerprints.

The protective envelopes your photos/negatives come in work great, too, if you combine them with a photo-safe storage box in a cool, dry place. However you decide to store your negatives, you’ll want to make sure it:

• Keeps your negatives safe from the elements
• Allows you to sort by date or subject
• Is easily accessible in case you need to retrieve a negative for a reprint.

Get those digital pictures off the camera! 

Back up your digital photos to CDs or DVD data disks and give a copy to a friend or family member for safe-keeping. We've all heard stories of people who have all their phone numbers stored on their cell phones and then lose everyone's phone numbers when the phone breaks. Or people with great photos that they never download from their camera and then the camera breaks. Computers break, too. So don't ever rely on one as your only method of storing and preserving your photos. Always back up your photos to at least one other source, be it CDs, DVD data disks, or a simple thumb drive.

My son went on a very expensive but wonderful trip to England with the Boy Scouts for the 2007 World Jamboree. It was the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouting organization, and he had a great time. I got a lot of great pictures from the event, too--some from him, some from the other attendees, and some from my own camera as the boys went through security at the airport and returned two weeks later through the Customs and Immigration lines. One of my very favorite photos was of one of the boys hugging his mom on his return. Mom was crying, the boy was beaming ear to ear, and everyone was really glad to see each other. I fully intended to email that perfect photo to the boy's mom, so she could remember just how precious that moment was. And then I had a major computer malfunction. I lost everything. I was really fortunate that a lot of my photos had come from other sources, so I was able to replace most of them. And I had posted many of the photos on our troop's website, so I was able to download some low-res copies from there, but not that photo. That picture was gone forever. 

The lesson I learned was that everything must be backed up to disks or thumb drives or something. The more places you can store it, the better. And never leave pictures on your camera. I could write a whole blog about reformatting your memory card vs. just deleting pictures you don't want! The bottom line is that you should download all your photos frequently (I do it after every photo shoot), and then reformat that card. Using and reusing a card or memory stick without reformatting is like brushing multiple colors of paint one on top of the other. Eventually it's going to be a big caked-up nasty mess. Reformatting your card helps to ensure that the data is clean and that there are no artifacts left over from previous photos to corrupt your files.

Go digital!

While you're sorting and organizing, make digital archives of your favorite photos. Have you ever heard the dental saying, "Only floss the teeth that you intend to keep"? Well the same thing is true of making digital archives of your film and print photos. Twenty-five years ago, my parent's house burned to the ground, including every family photograph, memento and treasure that I hadn't taken with me when I got married. And even though friends and family members came out of the woodwork to offer copies of their precious photos, much of what was lost were unique, one-of-a-kind snapshots that can never be replaced.

When I got my first scanner, one of the first things I did was start to archive all of my print photos and negatives. It was a very long process (I have literally thousands of photos and hundreds of rolls of film). When I was through with my own photos, I started to scan my mother's as well. The result is a huge collection of photos to choose from when scrapbooking, and I can rest easily knowing that the photos exist in multiple locations, and will never be lost, damaged, or destroyed ever again. Just be sure to back up your archives to CD or DVD data disks, and give copies to friends and family for safe-keeping. I'll cover the techniques for making good digital archives in a future post.

Don't forget to sort the memorabilia

Prize ribbons, participation patches, and test scores are just a few of the non-photo items people often included in scrapbooks. I had tons of little goodies like this stashed here and there in boxes, hope chests, and old photo albums. When I started scrapbooking, I wanted everything together in one place--easy to access when I wanted to work on a particular subject or event.

Some of the same principals apply to storing memorabilia as photos and negatives. Always put your items in archival quality storage and keep it in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight. I have memorabilia stored in basically two places: a hope chest and a file cabinet.

The hope chest is for larger items that are too big or too bulky for scrapbooking. Some of the more delicate items are further packed in plastic boxes and wrapped in archival quality tissue paper. Check with organization stores like The Container Store or your local dry cleaner for this paper. If you don’t have a hope chest, there are various styles of plastic boxes and totes that will work just as well.

Anything that I think I might want to use in a scrapbook goes into my file cabinet. There I have used hanging file folders to sort school papers, certificates, larger photo prints, awards, ribbons, and anything else that might fit. My own files are sorted by person and then further divided by topic. For instance, I have a file for my mother and father. Behind that I have a file for their wedding and another for their 40th anniversary a few years back. For my children, I have a general folder for each of them, plus additional folders for school organizations, individual sports, birthdays, report cards, artwork and compositions, etc. Obviously, some things apply to more than one person. For that reason, I have also added a few other folders for things like Christmas, pets, pressed flowers from my garden, etc. Keeping all these items together in one file cabinet makes it easy to just grab a subject file and start scrapbooking—no more hunting around for that Honor Roll certificate that I put in a “safe place”.

Well, that’s all for this week. I hope I’ve helped you get a little bit closer to your ideal of organization and if not, then at least you’ll have a good place to start. Just remember to go slowly, set small goals, and work on a little bit at a time. Next week, we’ll talk about clutter and the excuses we get trapped into.

-- 
Cindy