Paper organization

[jfugina]

I have been on a tear with the scrapbooking lately. Sorry I haven't posted the results - I get in a groove and don't always think to take pictures of the finished product. But now I've gone through so much paper recently, that it's got me thinking about how my paper stash is organized, and I think it's time to re-think it a bit.

For storage, I've got two large rolling tubs with hanging 12x12 file folders. They're amazing. They roll under the counter when I'm working and roll out when I need them. I use those two bins for designer patterned papers. My solids (including printed Club Scrap stock that I use as a solid color) are sorted by color family in retail sales racks that mount in pegboard. Decent sized scraps are sorted by approximate color family in 12x12 plastic envelopes, and POPs are in small bins that also hang from pegboard.

What I think needs re-doing is the designer patterned papers. This doesn't include page kits - those stay in their pack until I'm ready to assemble. But all of the other loose stuff - I often find it difficult to assemble layouts from scratch because I'm kind of overwhelmed by the variety of stuff I have. I'm thinking that maybe one of the rolling bins with file folders should contain strongly themed papers and collections. Like, Christmas - regardless of designer, it makes sense to have all of the Christmas stuff together. Same is true for all holidays and strong seasonal themes. And camping/scouts. And band/music. And then maybe sort the rest of the stuff that's not so strongly themed by designer? By designer makes a certain amount of sense to me because they all have specific "vibes". But I'm not sure if that's the best way.

So I'm curious - how do you all sort/organize your designer patterned papers?

[Laurie]

Mine is sorted sort of like you described in the later. Solids are sorted by color (12x12 and scrap) and then printed is sorted by Theme (floral, Christmas, etc). But...not with the rolling carts. I like the idea of rolling carts. I use the Michaels shelf cubes.

[pamcook]

Julie, it sounds like you’re on the right track. File them in a way that makes it easy for you to find it. Shimelle files by designer. I tried that - didn’t really work for me - except with a rare exception. I have an Iris bin for Vicki Boutin (because I just can’t make her products work with other designers), a bin for Shimelle, one for birthday, one for boy, and one for beach (need a bigger bin!). The rest is filed by color. So, apparently I do a bit of all the choices. It works for me.
January will be another no-spend month for me. I plan to make some page kits to take to the beach. Once that’s done, I’m going to look through some paper pads to see if there are papers I need to take to the beach or use the backs for the solid white.

[Monica]

Mine are kind of a mix as far as sorting. I do still have a decent amount of Club Scrap stuff, although it's sorted by kit because the once I tried to do it by color family it irritated me not being able to find a couple papers I needed. The POPs are color sorted, however. As for the rest, I have themed together more than specific designers or brands, unless the designer/brand is a bit unique. My theme sorting includes categories such as Christmas/winter, fall/Halloween, coffee/tea, travel (subcategories for states and countries), tropical/beach, patriotic/4th of July, school time, and Disney (subcategories for SW, different movies, princesses...). I go with what I find helps me locate the papers I want when I want them, so I have all my Blue Fern together, same with Maja Designs, Altenew, Basic Grey, Craft Consortium... you get the idea. I don't know if that will help you at all, Julie, but hopefully it does!

[nchoney]

Even after my sorting and purging, I still have too much paper.

but... the solid cardstock is now all in one place. It's not sorted by color yet... but I've found that I will want to sort by paper weight/thickness first. When I'm making card bases or moving parts on cards, I want heavy/sturdy cardstock... and I wasted too much time searching for that, recently. So I'll be pulling out the 100+ pound paper and keeping that separate from the rest.

As for patterned paper and kits. I keep kit things with kits... but still need a better way to store those so I can get to them easily and use them!! other papers are in my wall-mounted racks... and I need to do some more sorting of those. If I don't think I'll use them on layouts, they'll go into a card-making box. (or in a RAK box for May)

I do have major things separated... beach/ocean, dog, Christmas, etc. I have all the wedding things in one area, too... and maybe 2022 will be the year I get our wedding scrapped.

[jfugina]

Thanks everyone! I found the responses super interesting. I think Pam hit it on the head with sorting by whatever makes stuff easiest to find back. But I just haven't entirely figured out what that is yet.

One thing I'm starting to figure out, is that I really need to keep collections together somehow - and I mean when I have embellishments that go with the papers, I need to keep them together. I currently have sticker sheets separated from ephemera, etc., all stored separately from paper. And I think I did that to try to force myself to mix and match, but it turns out I don't love the product of my own mixing and matching so much. A lot of my stash comes from warehouse boxes, so maybe I have embellishments that don't go with anything, or several papers from a collection and no embellishments, and that's totally fine. But when I have embellishments that go with papers I have, I think I probably want them to stay together.

I think that I'm leaning towards one bin being the designer bin, but not for collections - just for loose papers where I don't have enough from the collection to be worth separating. And the other bin will need to be for themes and larger collections. And it's interesting what kinds of themes you all sort by. I have a summer folder allocated for my theme sorting, and a travel folder, but not one specifically for beach. I do have quite a bit of beachy stuff, but I think I grabbed everything with palm trees and lobsters and threw it in vacation/travel, and the other stuff I put in summer, along with anything that references a swimming pool. I also threw a bunch of camping stuff in the travel folder, but with so many camping photos for scouts, I think I may just do an entire camping/outdoors folder separate from vacation/travel.

Ultimately, organization is something I know will always be evolving for me. And that's cool. Sometimes a good re-org day is what it takes to get me re-energized. Finding old stuff (because it wasn't organized that well) is better than Christmas. But it's probably better to find it when it's the perfect match for something I'm working on, and it's in the right place for me to stumble across it.

As far as resolving to not purchase anything - I probably should do exactly that. But (not counting adhesive, binders, protectors), I probably have spent less than $200 in the past 3 years. There were a couple of warehouse boxes, and a lovely trip through the actual scrapbook generation store this summer. But I've mostly been doing a good job of using what I have. The 6x6 class this summer probably forced me to go through a good inch of those papers, and I'm nearly out of kits to assemble from Scrapbook Generation. But now with an organizational re-fresh, there really should be very little that I find I "need".

[pamcook]

One of the best thing about reorganizing is that you look through your stash and you see what you have again. I find I do need to reorganize ever so often. Interests change. For sure, there is no one perfect way to organize your stash!

[Keitha]

I'm late to this thread. In terms of deciding what kind of sorting works for you, think about how you scrap. Do you think 'I want to use Shimelle papers'? If so, sort by designer. Do you think 'I want music/band papers' or have a lot of themed paper? Sort by theme - which is mostly what I do. The only paper I sort by colour is scraps and it's a simple system - a baggie for warm colours (yellows/oranges/reds/browns), a baggie for cool colours (greens/blues/violets), a baggie for neutrals (white/black/grey) and a baggie for specialty papers - although those should probably go in with the colours because I never reach for it. I never think 'I want a blue paper' so don't sort any full-size paper by colour, but as most of my solids or generic patterns come from a themed collection, they go in that folder. Other than Basic Grey I can't think of a designer-specific folder I have; there are just too many of them to suit my desire to look at as few folders as possible when auditioning papers.
Aside from the usual camping/outdoors, celebrations, Christmas, florals, etc. folders I now have one for Woodgrain; they're trendy currently and lately I often want to add one to a page. Travel is a favourite theme and I have 3 sub-folders: Road Trips, Destinations by Air and added since I started cruising, Tropical. I also have a Water/Beach folder - that would include lake papers, but not palm trees if that makes sense. Because I live in a four-season climate, this makes the most sense for me. I try not to buy paper pads because I know from experience I use next to none of it, but if I just can't resist one, I immediately take it apart when I get it home. The papers I think I'll use go in my folders, and the rest goes immediately into the purge pile.
I use Iris carts for embellishments, also sorted by theme. That way if I buy an outdoors collection the papers are in the Nature/Outdoors folder, and the embellishments in the Nature/Outdoors drawer. Easy to reunite them. I've recently set up a paper holder for 12x12 sticker sheets, also sorted by main themes. My hope is that if I'm not working with a specific collection I'll use them more, and it frees up space in my 2 rolling paper carts. I have a specific box for Tim Holtz embellishments, and a specific box for Christmas embellishments.