During that last crazy snowstorm, I spent a lot of time bouncing off the walls of my apartment. I had a Wednesday evening to myself, then all of Thursday and most of Friday off thanks to the snow. The problem was that I ran out of things to do. I’m not currently working on any crafts, I painted my nails the first night, and my dvr was mostly empty by Thursday. So Thursday evening I sat and stared at my craft bookcase and pondered how I could organize it more efficiently. I mean, it wasn’t necessary to reinvent the wheel, but organizing soothes me in a way that I couldn’t possibly explain without sounding like a nutcase.

After collecting the boxes and baskets and organizey things from Target, Staples, and the Container Store, I finally have it all set up exactly how I imagined. And I’m pretty psyched about how it turned out. Here are the before and after shots:

This is where it all started: the binder with clear protective sheets. Each sheet holds either scraps of paper organized by color or sheets of labels. Geeky? Perhaps. More efficient than a giant pile of mismatched paper? Totally.

I wanted a better way to organize the notecard sets, index cards, old daytimer pages, and other similarly-sized stacks of blank paper I’ve been stockpiling. So I got a photo box and then some 5×8 index card divider tabs. Of course, if I had gone to Staples first I might have bought an index card box and then I wouldn’t have needed to cut those 5×8 dividers to fit into the photo box, but I stand by my choice because I doubt the index card box would have been hot pink. I also put my shipping tags and the deck of cards I use for crafts in the back to keep the box orderly.

My full-sized 12×12 scrapbook paper posed one of the bigger dilemmas as I took on this project, because I really wanted a nice box to store it all. I used to just keep it in a giant pile on one of the shelves. The Container Store sells these boxes meant for legal sized documents, and the short side is 12 1/4″ wide. Which fits most scrapbook paper but not all, because some of the sheets have this little strip for the barcode and brand information. But it’s good enough. My nitpicking has a limit, people. So this box stores the bigger sheets of paper, my clipboard, some stray felt, my graph paper pad, and the box of transparency sheets I took from the library because they were going to throw it away.

This plastic bin holds the supplies that don’t fit the other categories: paint, binder rings, safety pins, and a couple extra things I’ve bought for crafts that I still haven’t gotten to. These would be really good to buy in bulk, because of how nicely they stack. And how crazy cheap they were compared to most of the bins and boxes at the Container Store.

Last of all, I wanted a smaller box that would hold the supplies I use most frequently: the tape, glue, glue sticks, stamps, and punches and corner-rounders. And I wanted it to be prettier than that clear plastic bin. I originally ordered one from the Container Store, but my inability to visualize measurements backfired, because that original bin was GIGANTIC. So I sent it back and found this one at Target, which I somehow missed on the previous trip. It’s perfect.

All in all, this was a really satisfying project on a small enough scale that I could tackle it very easily. Just don’t ask what my closets look like, and instead enjoy my overly organized ridiculousness for now.