Craft Closet Makeover

When I initially interviewed at The Container Store I was assigned the task of choosing an area in my home that needed organization and selecting a product from the store to solve the problem. I chose the craft area of our apartment and now, one year later and in our house, I have finally gotten it done!

You know I love to be crafty. I am happiest when I am painting pegs or crocheting a blanket or scarf. It is hard for me to just sit still without also working on a project of some sort. This innate craftiness manifests itself by the many supplies that sometimes get out of control. Felt, paint, paper, markers, wood, fabric, and yarn everywhere. Here at the house, I am lucky enough to have an entire closet that we have devoted to craft supplies. Sadly, it isn't large enough to fit everything, but I knew it had the potential to hold quite a lot. Once it got to the point where the door couldn't really be closed and boxes of supplies were scattered about the floor, I knew I had to get to work.

Oh, the shame! Yvette and Drew, I don't know how you put up with this for so long.

 

I had initially planned to tackle this challenge in November, but instead I redid Drew's clothes closet, because I am awesome like that. However, I had already removed the only existing shelf from the craft closet and that served to exacerbate the overflow problem. Drew is two months into restarting his quest to complete his bachelor's degree, and since the "office" and the "craft room" are one and the same, I needed to get organized for his sake.

Off to The Container Store I went for some shelving! I planned to sort and organize all of my supplies into clear shoe boxes and stack them on the shelves. Upon realizing that some of the shoe boxes would be quite heavy and that I wanted easier access to them, I determined that adding three more shelves would be ideal. I also had the brilliant idea to install a very short shelf at the bottom where we could store broken down boxes for mailing gifts to family throughout the year; they take up so much less space this way!

Five shelves was the initial plan.

Eight shelves made for a much better solution.

Some of the shoe boxes needed a little bit more help getting organized than others. The Like-It Bricks were a great choice to get our office supplies all tidy. The bricks can be divided and, when stacked, the top brick can slide back and forth. These shoe boxes make me happy. :)

I also LOVE the gift wrap door rack that I installed. I frequently sell wall and door racks to customers and, although they are quite popular, I was skeptical about whether I would like it. Our gift wrap and ribbon had no organization whatsoever before this, and since they were stored in several different places, this is a tremendous improvement. Now everything is together and I have room for even more supplies!

Over Door Gift Wrap Organizer

The clear boxes make it fairly easy to see what is inside each one, but for the sake of convenience, I bought chalkboard labels and chalk ink pens so that I could label each box. They are erasable, so I can rewrite the labels in the likely event that my crafty interests change in the future. The closet looks packed, but it is orderly and I like it that way. Everything has its place and I now have two empty drawers in the dresser I use as a workspace - perfect for yarn and fabric and works in progress.

All things crafty are easy to see and easy to find!

I am a happy crafty camper!

Disclaimer, because you never know when people will freak out over nothing: I do work for The Container Store, however, I receive no benefit for talking about my job or the store's products on this blog. Unless you consider getting great joy out of sharing something I love a benefit.