Day 5: Collect Paper
Now we are getting into it. Paper. I actually have a good system, but it can be a PITA to get everything put away, regardless. I don't think I need to put the one bag of 10 sheets away, I'll save it until I have more. Next thing, I know, I have 5 bags from purchases, I've dug a bunch out for swaps, and then it's too much for me to want to deal with.
First thing we need to do, is just get all the paper in one spot. New paper that is still in bags, paper you might have pulled out for a project and didn't use, paper you might have sorted in the past, but the system didn't work for you. Find a box or basket or a table somewhere where you can get it all in one place.
If you have a paper organizational system that works, you can leave everything already sorted where it is, and just pull together all the paper that isn't where it should be.
Paper was the primary thing that exploded everywhere in the pics I posted in the original post. So just collecting all the paper made a big dent in the appearance of my room. I got 3 containers to work with.
1. Paper Scraps. I put these all in an Iris box, where they are at least neat until we get to them, near the end of the organizational challenge.
2. Single sheets. These are primarily recent purchases, or paper that had been pulled out, but not used when I was working on Christmas presents. I also put these in an Iris box.
3. I also had a bunch of paper that never got sorted when I originally sorted my paper because I ran out of Cropper Hoppers. I had 3 project keepers from the days when all my paper fit in a small space. I have some old value pack paper from the days before I used primarily Bazzill (but they still work well for Cricut paper piecings), and I have a bunch of paper packs of like 25 sheets that I got at Big Lots. All of these went into a document box.
On Thursday, we will begin the process of sorting the paper. While you are gathering, start thinking about how you might want to sort. I sort my cardstock: Pink, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Brown, Gray, Black & White. Patterned Paper is the one that always trips people up. I scrap mostly by theme, so that is how I have the majority of my PP sorted: Disney, Christmas, Halloween, Other Holiday, Cruise/Travel, Zoo etc. That takes care of about 80% of my paper. I also have a few "favorite" manufacturers that I buy many pieces of one line, so I keep these together, sorted by manufacturer: Basic Grey, Imaginisce, American Crafts and SEI, I think are the only ones I have sorted out. The last 10% I have sorted by pattern: Flowers, Striped, Dots, and then I have a very small section that is a for anything left. Some people prefer to sort entirely by manufacturer, or by the primary color in the paper. I figure the sort, is going to take many days, so that's why I set it up to start when I go on my trip, so that you will have over a week to try and get through it all. Sorting would also be a good time to purge anything that you don't think you'll use.
Hopefully, collecting all your paper will make as much of a difference in your space as it did mine.
It's paper day.... still need to organize stamps. I am going to update my At Least 3 Things to do list.
Paper is pretty much all in the same area, except for one drawer of scraps.
