Craft Cabinet Organization

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

I haven’t had a craft room since 2011. Pre kids when we lived in a tony condo in South Austin, I had what I called a multi purpose room. Basically, a craft room with a futon so when Andy’s mom came to visit from Oregon, she had a cozy place to sleep. (You can see the before and after of my one and only craft room here.)

Since then, we moved to Florida and I had a tiny craft closet where I utilized tons of clear shoe storage bins. We moved into our current house back in 2013, and I have what I consider an extra large craft cabinet. Up until about 1 month ago the craft  cabinet was more of a craft supply mountain that had avalanche potential at any moment.

Side note: If you like videos, I have a highlight saved on my Instagram stories of the whole craft decluttering process start to finish. Including my kids rummaging through and stealing my supplies to make “monsters”.

Let’s start with a few before pictures so you can fully understand the magnitude of my craft supply addiction. The craft cabinet is a hard space to photograph since it is a built in cabinet in our hallway, but I think you get the gist. It’s a MESS.

You may notice things are mostly in things. Like, once upon a time, I tied to organize the crafting chaos, but it’s clearly out of control and stuff is everywhere. I have no idea what I have, and honestly would rather run to Hobby Lobby for yellow felt then try to find it in this chaos.

My father in law was in town and the husband and kids were fairly occupied one Saturday afternoon, I decided today was the day to tackle the looming craft cabinet. I started by pulling everything out shelf by shelf.

I decided to start with something simple, so I chose my paper collection. I used to be a scrapbooker, so I had tons of left over 12×12 patterned paper that I hadn’t touched in years. I had one 5 tier paper holder already in the craft cabinet, and I wanted to minimize collection to that organizer.

Tips for organizing craft supplies

Starting was the hardest part, at least for me. I’d been thinking about organizing this cabinet for literally a year!

1. Start with a category you feel will be the easiest. For me, that was paper. Lay it all out in like piles so you know exactly what you have. Get rid of/donate what you haven’t used in years.
2. Everything must come out of the cabinet (or room). You really need to look at it all in one giant pile to fully understand how much you have.
3. This might take more than a day. For me, I used a giant cardboard box to hold craft supplies I was unsure about so that we could still use our hallway. This organizing project took me about a week.
4. In the end, I used said box to donate tons of craft supplies to our local craft reuse store. (If your local, Austin Creative Reuse is amazing!)
5. Group like items together. For instance, I had a lot of holiday decorations hiding in my craft cabinet. I didn’t want to get rid of these things, but I moved them to our garage closet where we store all of the holiday decorations. I also realized things like I had 3 staplers and 27 pairs of scissors!

Craft organizers I love

1. I highly recommend using clear plastic drawers. I am loving the 5 their drawers to hold like items. I am storing everything from google eyes to gel pens to balloons in these containers. (These are the exact ones I have on Amazon!) Vertical storage is key. I also love that when you put a few of these together they make a shelf on top. No wasted space in this raft cabinet!
2. The 3 drawer containers are great for things like markers, stamps, mini card stock packs, or anything else you have multiples of that you use often. I have an entire drawer dedicated to tape runners and it’s so useful! (These are the ones I wish I had!) I bought mine at Target and they have riveted fronts that made adding vinyl labels way harder.)
3. Clear containers are best. I love using clear shoe boxes from the the Dollar Store for larger items or things I want to have multiples of like ribbon, tape, glue, scissors. They stack great and you can see what is inside. Plus they’re affordable and can easily be moved from yout cabinet to your work space. (These are what I use!)
4. For my fabric and yarn I reused plastic I already owned. Again look for clear plastic containers with lids. I’ve found some good ones at Tuesday Morning and Marshalls before.
5. For paint, I used wooden spice racks from Ikea. They are perfect and each one holds 22-24 2 fl oz bottles of paint. (I used these!)

Where to donate craft supplies

1. Schools. Teachers love free craft supplies.
2. Teachers. If you have a teacher friend, ask him or her!
3. Women shelters.
4. Nursing homes.
5. Children’s museum.
6. Libraries.
7. Buy nothing groups on facebook.
8. Neighbors.
9. Children’s hospitals
10. I mentioned it above, but check to see if you have a craft reuse store in your area. Our local non profit, Austin Creative Reuse,  is awesome for donating and buying craft supplies!

How to make labels

Now that you’ve got your craft loot under control and contained, it’s time to label! Labels make everything better. I used my Cricut Maker to make 50+ labels for every single container in my craft cabinet. I wanted the labels to be big and black to ensure that I knew where everything lived.

All you need is:

• Cricut Maker
• Black adhesive vinyl
• Transfer paper
• A credit card or popsicle stick

The Cricut Maker is super simple to set up and use. From taking the machine out of the box to 50 labels cut took about 1 hour. Labels are probably the easiest thing to make, and I love that the Cricut Maker automatically positions the words to fit as many as possible on a single sheet of vinyl.

If you’re detailed oriented, you might notice that the left brass handle is not back on the drawer in the picture above. (I literally just noticed as I inserted this picture into the post!) Those are the original handles and I gave them a good cleaning with Bar Keepers Friend and this brass cleaning tutorial. Oh and for the record, my Cricut Maker, vinyl and tools live in the top, right drawer in the above picture. It fits perfectly. I’m pretty sure it was meant to be!