Which box to choose?

I wanted to have similar boxes to the one I already had, and this one from Hobbycraft is pretty much identical. [Edit: not currently available, but check out this one instead!). What I like about this one is that you can see through the lid, which is quite helpful! I have acquired quite a large collection of thread over the last year or so, and have ended up with one or two duplicates.

I decided to have one box for my DMC thread and one for Anchor thread, partly to avoid duplicates but also to help avoid mixing brands in projects. This is important if I’m designing a new pattern!

The original box is now being used for other thread that I have, like the DMC light effects thread. It’s quite hard to put this on bobbins so I find it easier to keep it as a skein.

Getting organised

These are some other threads that I am yet to organise – they were very kindly given to me by a friend of a friend who had acquired a whole lot of craft stuff. I’ve never organised my thread on cards like this, but the lady who did it has cut the skeins ready to sew. I love the beautiful colours all laid out like this.

Getting my all of my craft stuff organised is happening again as I realise just how mobile a 9-month old can be! I’m thinking about adapting my travelling craft suitcase to have all my sharp tools and current projects in. I think this will be super useful – having everything I need for current projects in one place. I waste so much precious time finding what I need!

How do you organise your thread and current craft projects?

Post updated 12th April 2018.

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I think I might have mentioned a while back that I had got this trolley from IKEA. It is the trolley of dreams. I said that to Tom and he thought I’d gone mad, but my crafty friends know what I’m talking about! It is a bit pricey which is what put me off getting one for a long time, but it has made my life so much easier. Most of my crafting is done in the kitchen, so the trolley moves around a lot depending on where I am making things at the time. It took me a while to get it organised, but I have now got everything that I use regularly on my trolley. No more hunting for the seam ripper. No more wondering where I’ve put my bias tape maker. They’re on the trolley! So this is my little crafting set-up:

The trolley fits perfectly where I craft, and (handily) it is the same height as our kitchen table. I decided to keep sewing bits and bobs on the top so that I could reach them easily if I need them. I have my pin cushions on the top so that I can just grab a pin quickly if I need to, with my scissors, rotary cutter and other useful things in there too. There are also a few pens and pencils as well as my notebooks for writing things I need to remember (usually to include in a post about what I’m making!). You can never have too many notebooks, right?

And if I get a bit chilly, I’ve got the beautiful fingerless gloves that my friend Tiffany knitted for me!

The second shelf is also for sewing-related bits and bobs. I have quite a good collection of tins which store thread, sewing machine things (like feet) and other things that might be useful. I’ve also managed to squeeze my box of embroidery floss on there )although I probably need another one for the overflow now…) and a few patterns that I’m currently making.

The bottom shelf is for stationery (with an e for envelope). As a stationery fan I have quite a lot, so it took some time to really work out what I needed on there! The jars of washi tape were the first items to make the cut. I’ve managed to fit lots of pretty pens on there too

So my top tip for people who don’t have a craft room is – don’t worry, just get organised! I actually really love making things in our kitchen and have found that I have been longing for a craft room much less than before, if at all actually. Really! Find a space that works best for you, and then just be as organised as possible with your kit. My trolley hasn’t completely stopped me from having to make extra trips upstairs, but it has certainly reduced them and that makes me happy (what can I say? I’m easily pleased! ).

What have you done to organise your craft kit? Do you have a lovely craft room? I’d love to know!

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Lots of things have prompted this decluttering. The main thing is that since we don’t have a garage anymore, we have lots of things that don’t have a proper home. And we can’t do that thing that we used to where we would just chuck stuff in the garage and shut the door quickly (a bit like Monica’s cupboard on Friends!). Either we need it and we keep it and find somewhere to put it, or it goes. This is how ruthless this decluttering will be! Another thing that has prompted it is that we have wanted to build some shelves in our living room for a long time now, and we decided that the two things could go hand in hand. I also had to move my computer downstairs (because the internet signal is really bad upstairs) and we’re going to build a desk into the shelves too. You might be thinking that we could get one of those booster thingies and that would solve that problem, but it’s nicer being down here anyway (except for the temporary home on our old dining table…but it’s not for long!) and it’s helpful too, especially as I do all my making in the kitchen now.

I had a little look online for some decluttering tips – there is quite a lot out there about what is the best way to do things. One post I read said that you shouldn’t have a ‘keep’ pile, and that you should just find a home for the thing straight away instead. I like this idea in principle, but that’s clearly not going to work for us because we haven’t built the home for the things yet! So we’re sticking with the ‘keep’, ‘throw’ and ‘give to charity’ piles for now. I also like this list from Apartment Therapy, which is what not to do when decluttering. Tip number 2 is useful to me – I always try to do more in a short space of time than I can actually achieve! So I need to remember that this isn’t going to be a quick process…we’re not going to be building the shelves until we can take a couple of weeks off at the end of August/beginning of September, so there will be mess and there will be time to plan. Speaking of shelves, if anyone has any tips or can point us in the direction of some, that would be FAB! I’m like ‘yeah, we can build some shelves!’ but Tom is not a DIY fan and we’ve never done anything like this…my Dad has kindly said he will come and help us to construct them, but we need to work out what that actually means…

I have been trying to reorganise my craft supplies a little better so that I’m not forever going up and downstairs for something else that I’ve forgotten. Know that feeling too? I seriously spend so much time doing this – it’s really frustrating! So I decided that something needed to be done about it asap. This included buying one of those super cool raskog trolleys from Ikea (yes, I got the teal one – whoop!) and it has been brilliant. I’m planning on doing a separate post about that soon, so stay tuned. I have already begun to sort out my fabric stash (read more about doing an inventory here), so I feel like progress has been made already. Yay! Wish me luck for the rest…

Do you have any tips for decluttering?

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Sorry for the not-so-good photo – it was really difficult to get a good one! The box is 21 litres (not that I could really picture what size that would be from the photo online) and it came with two inserts. Each insert has 12 compartments, which is fine for the 3 x 4 cards, but the 4 x 6 ones don’t fit. I went and had a look at the manufacturer’s website and found that I could buy an insert with 6 larger compartments, so I ordered one and it came really quickly – yay!

So now that I had the inserts that I needed, I could get organising! I must admit that I LOVE to organise stuff – and I would be far more organised if I had a place to keep all my stuff in one place and easily accessible for crafting. Can you tell that I dream of having a craft room a lot?! Anyway, I started with the larger cards and realised that I needed to put some bits of sturdy card in the bottom of each one to prevent bending. I just cut up some card that was in the back of my Project Life paper packs to do this.

Next, I made some little dividers to separate each kind of card and kit in my box – I needed to do this because there aren’t enough compartments for all the kits I have now! So I used a 4 x 6 card as a guide, and made some little dividers with some spare white card I had.

The dividers have a tab in a slightly different place so that I can see what I’m looking for more easily, and I wrote the kit and card type on each one.

The 3 x 4 cards fit really well in the insert with 12 compartments – I didn’t bother making any dividers for them because a kit fits in three compartments, which is handy! So left to right, I have Blush, Kiwi, Strawberry and Honey.

It’s great being able to flick through all my cards more easily now! One thing that doesn’t fit in this box is my paper, so I got one of the scrapbooking boxes too. It has made my scrapbooking so much easier now that I have everything in one place – well, two boxes, but that’s manageable!

I also want to tell you about a really useful site that I found, where you can find out about all the Project Life kits and see what’s in each one. Check out Miss Magoo Scraps for the complete list of kits – it’s really useful if you’re wanting to get started or mix up your cards with some new ones! That’s how I realised that Kiwi and Honey would match Blush and Strawberry really nicely. You might also want to check out my Pinterest board if you’re looking for some inspiration! How do you store your Project Life kits? Has anyone gone digital with the app? I’d love to know what you think of it!

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