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Did you know July is Purge Your Craft Room month? No? Well maybe that’s because I just declared it!

Reading PamC’s success in her paper purge got me thinking - we ALL (right?) need to do just that and a truckload of other crafting items need to go Bye-Bye before we go and Buy-Buy more...because we will.


So here are my rules:

1. Each week pick a specific crafting item to decrease it’s number. Such as paper, stamps, old ink pads, stickers...you get the idea.

2. Take a before photo (don’t be embarrassed) of the area you are going to purge and post it here. That will give you a sense of accountability of going through with the purge.

3. PURGE...be brutal and honest with yourself. GET RID OF IT!

4. Decide how you’re getting rid of the items and DO IT. Donate to a charity, school, your grandkids (your children will hate you for it but what the heck) or the dumpster is also a great spot.

5. Take a picture of the greatly improved area, post it here, tell us where it went and then pat yourself on the back and say “Well done” to yourself.

6. Week 2: Pick another area or item and REPEAT steps 2 through 5.


Get those backhoes and bulldozers going!


I hope I am not doing this by myself. I realize our schedules change daily if not hourly but scrape out some time to do one job each week that will improve your craft room no matter how small the job might be. I’m personally hoping that by September I’ll have a more workable, pleasant and safe-to-walk-into room.

I’ll be posting my first purge task here later today.

This is a great challenge. My time will be limited this month but that won’t stop me from continuing with my mission.

Also Pam P mentioned how easy it is to get overwhelmed and just stop. What works for one person might or might not work for another but my best tips -

Like Farley said, choose one area of focus for the week. I would suggest that you choose a product rather than a space. Stamps, or inks, or cardstock, or whatever. Pull all of that product out (be honest) and decide how much you want to keep. After you’ve purged the excess you can then decide if you have proper storage containers and space. When I chose to purge 30% of my paper and 50% of my cardstock - it was a random percentage. I had space for all of it but for some reason it felt too much. I also realized I was choosing to not use certain papers over and over again (some for years!).

My plan for the month - week 1 stamps (I just did a major purge but there are still MANY that need to go) - week 2 die cuts (I have 1 box for them and the sides are bulging) going to try to use more than usual to see how many still need to go - week 3 will be inks - I have so many Distress Inks that are never ever used - week 4 - not sure yet! It’ll either be stickers or thickers (or both).

There. I put it in writing!

Great idea, Farley! I'm in. I'll take a photo tomorrow and then purge. I think if I do one group per week this might be a lot easier to do and I won't end up overwhelmed. If anyone sees anything they'd like to have, please let me know and I'll be more than happy to send it.

pbp908 wrote:Great idea, Farley! I'm in. I'll take a photo tomorrow and then purge. I think if I do one group per week this might be a lot easier to do and I won't end up overwhelmed. If anyone sees anything they'd like to have, please let me know and I'll be more than happy to send it.

Great Pam!

Yes, I too am overwhelmed. So taking a week to work on something specific works with my crazy schedule. I’ll post soon but today I kept at just working on clearing my floor. I’ve had the Roomba vacuuming in there for awhile. It has stopped. It’s either actually finished or it choked to death on paper scraps.

A small but good beginning to my purge and clean up. Normally I would attack stamps or dies, etc. But to start off this challenge to myself I wanted to first clean up that horrible floor. So many things come into this house and end up in my craft room. I had bags of stuff all around the perimeter of the floor. So today, off and on, I literally crawled around the floor, opened up boxes and bags and pretty much tossed most of what I came across. I also tidied up my desk of the typical litter that accrues while working on a project.

Before ( ) photo showing the clutter and debris. After photo showing that clutter gone and my Roomba survived the paper bits on the floor.

Next job will be stamps...that’s going to take some doing.

Great start Farley, amazing.

Have to laugh at the 2 chairs facing each other, ready for that discussion. I see Farley in one chair and her guys dropping by to have a chit chat!

pat-czap wrote:Great start Farley, amazing.

Have to laugh at the 2 chairs facing each other, ready for that discussion. I see Farley in one chair and her guys dropping by to have a chit chat!

Good observation Pat and you are correct. Most of the time it’s Charley taking a break from studying his law books and coming in to chat about anything other than school/law.

Love this idea. I'm going to try and tackle at least 2 items in my room.

I applaud all of you tackling this! I did mine earlier this year and it felt so good to have breathing space again.

Monica wrote:I applaud all of you tackling this! I did mine earlier this year and it felt so good to have breathing space again.

Yes, you are another inspiration to get this job really done. It’s amazing how just clearing up most of my floor has made me feel better.

On to the main task for week #1...STAMPS! I think I am going to start with my CS stamps first. I have culled them many times but I’m pretty sure I haven’t used a single one for 1 or 2 years now with the exception of a few sentiments. It’s just hard to part with them. I will put up photos of what is going to go in case anyone might be interested in them.

paddlegal wrote:

Monica wrote:I applaud all of you tackling this! I did mine earlier this year and it felt so good to have breathing space again.

Yes, you are another inspiration to get this job really done. It’s amazing how just clearing up most of my floor has made me feel better.

On to the main task for week #1...STAMPS! I think I am going to start with my CS stamps first. I have culled them many times but I’m pretty sure I haven’t used a single one for 1 or 2 years now with the exception of a few sentiments. It’s just hard to part with them. I will put up photos of what is going to go in case anyone might be interested in them.

Those darn CS stamps. I've tried to sell mine on the FB marketplace page for it, and while I did sell some, I'm about ready to donate all of the remainder to Goodwill or something. I want them OUT of my house!

I need to go through my stamp binders and actually finish organizing them too. I love what I kept but at this point it's more of a hot mess than anything else.

I got a start on the stamp purge this morning and doing well. But Monica...look what I found and had totally forgotten about!

The best part about this dreadful process - finding things you had forgotten about.

That is awesome! I expect cards made from that now that you've found it, Farley. I'm thinking I might do notecard sets for Christmas gifts with mine, as I pretty much have everything coffee themed sorted out from the rest at this point.

Okay, I didn't take any before pictures, mainly because I hadn't intended to purge anything last night, but I did go through several drawers of a storage unit, tossed out some dried paints and a few other things, gifted a pile of other stuff, and did a slight reorg of drawer contents now that I have actual space in them. And while pulling out all my Disney stash to continue plugging away at WDW photos I also purged several stamp sets that I never use.

Always feels good to get rid of crap! And I've already got a layout started that I hope to finish up tonight. And if my laptop is all fixed I'll try to post a photo. It's still with my tech after the hard drive failure last week.