Category Archives: storage and organization ideas

Easy storage and organization tips and tricks.

April 25, 2012 · 1:22 pm

Framed Earring Storage

This past weekend was one of my favorite quarterly projects…Spring Cleaning!  I love spring cleaning so much that I do it once a season…sometimes twice.  Yes, I’m THAT person.  I’m that much of a nerd.

To be fair, I do have a lot of crap…and I live in an apartment with hardwood floors, lots of books, and windows that stay open quite often…so there’s lots of dust.  I also live with a boy…and, well, we all know how that goes!

So when I do my spring cleaning, I like to start one room at a time and just take my time going through things and throwing stuff away.  This year I started with my jewelry.  I needed a way to store all my earrings so I could see all of them at one time.  I had some left over wire shelves from my craft unit I showed you a few weeks ago, so I tied a ribbon to those and was able to hang hooked earrings on them.  It looks oh so chic!

As for my studded earrings, I needed a way to store them that wasn’t in a little bowl in my dresser.  So I decided I’d do double duty and create a storage system that was also decorative…bada boom!

These sweet earring frames are so easy to make and they’re a great way to store your studded earrings in a way that looks professional and stylish.

Earring Frames

Materials:

  • Wooden frames (I got mine at IKEA.  I think they come in a package of 5 or 6.  I only had to use 2 for this project.  These frames are 4 x 6)
  • 1 8 ½ x 11 sheet of felt, color of your choice
  • Scissors
  • Glue gun
  • Felt flowers (optional)
  • Ribbon

Instructions:

  1. Take the backing off the frame and remove the glass/plastic part.  Lay it on your felt and cut out a felt rectangle, using the glass/plastic as a guide.
  2. Hot glue the felt piece to the inside of the frame where the backing used to be.  Don’t put the backing back on because you want to be able to poke your earrings through the felt.
  3. That’s really all there is to it.  You can add felt flowers if you’d like to give it a feminine touch.  Then hot glue a ribbon to the back (if there isn’t a wall hook on the back of the frame) and you’re ready to go!
  4. To attach your earrings, poke them through the felt and secure them on the other side of the frame.

Done and done!  Moving on to necklaces…

Since I’m a renter, I can’t really drill massive and awesome storage units into my bedroom wall.  And since my apartment is small, I can’t really afford to waste space with units that sit on the floor and take up room…and since I’m a bit of a crafty minded person, I have a LOT of necklaces.  I needed a way to store and display them so they wouldn’t get tangled and messy.

I have to thank my brilliant man friend for this idea.  I had these great mini hangers that I also got from IKEA, but they put huge holes in the wall, which I didn’t want to do.  He suggested simply attaching them to my dresser, also from IKEA, and hanging my necklaces there.  Um…genius.

Instead of having to drill screws into the wall to hang up these awesome hangers, all I had to do was push a thumb tack through the hole and into the dresser.  My necklaces aren’t super heavy, so that was all the support they needed.  This is a great space saving idea for ladies who live in little lofts and flats.

As for my bracelets, which I don’t wear too often, I simply threw them on some glass vases (wait for it…ALSO from IKEA!) and threw some fake flowers inside the vase.  Boom.  Storage with style!

I was so excited with my jewelry plans that I really didn’t have time to finish much else!  I did clean up the bathroom, though…and next week I’ll have a helpful tip for renters who are looking to add some color and style to a bathroom they can’t really do anything to…

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

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March 14, 2012 · 12:06 pm

DIY Craft Storage and Organization Idea

I’m pretty OCD when it comes to craft storage and organization.  I think there are times when I’m actually too organized to the point where I can’t find anything when I need it!

After my recent move, I wanted to downsize my craft supplies.  Like all my fellow craft lovers, I stashed scraps, beads, and pieces of paper…hoping I’d use them for something.  Needless to say, they sat in a box for a good 2 years, unused and unloved.

I had some leftover storage bins from Target and I decided to use them to store my craft supplies.  That way, whatever fit would stay…whatever wouldn’t fit would go.  I had a unit that would hold 6 bins…so whatever didn’t make the cut was donated to other creative minded people.

I also decided to use various scraps and embellishments to decorate my storage containers.  I mean, why not?  If they’re going to hold craft supplies, they may as well be pretty!

Today I’m going to show you how I made my yarn bin.  It’s very easy to do and great if you’re looking to rid yourself of a few fabric scraps!

Craft Storage and Organization:  Yarn Storage Bin

Materials:

  • 1 folding fabric drawer (you can find these at Target or Walmart)
  • Fabric to cover drawer (optional)
  • Needle
  • Embroidery thread
  • 2 pieces of fabric scraps to create needle pocket
  • Sewing machine OR hemming tape and iron
  • Hot glue gun
  • Ribbon

Directions:

1.  Gather your supplies.  Make sure your piece of fabric is long enough to wrap around the box without you having to cut it.

2.  With your needle and embroidery thread, stitch the fabric to the bin using whatever kind of stitch you like.  If you’d rather not hand sew, you can hot glue it and then decorate the seam with ribbons.  I just stitched on the four sides, trimmed off the excess, and hot glued the fabric to the top and bottom of the bin.

3.  To make the pocket, measure one piece of scrap fabric so it’s the width of your bin and about half the height.  Measure the other piece of fabric so it’s about an inch shorter on all sides.

4. Use either your sewing machine or hemming tape to seal the two pieces of fabric on the bottom, left, and right sides.  You could also use a glue gun if you’d like.  Make sure to leave the top open for your needles.

5.  Place your needles loosely in the pocket.  With a needle and some embroidery thread, thread small pieces of yarn between the needles like so.

6.  Tie the string together and move the knots to the back of the fabric.

7.  The front of your pocket should now look like this:

8.  Hot glue your pocket to the front of your bin and place your needles, crochet hooks, and other little tools inside.

9.  If you’d like, you can hot glue a ribbon to the front of your pocket to hide your little stitch marks.

10.  Glue the ribbon right below the top edge of the fabric so as not to close any of your needle holes.

And there you have it!  Wanna see my other bins?

Here’s the one we just made, for yarn and yarn supplies:

Here’s my bin for stamps and embellishments (as you can see, you don’t have to cover the bins with fabric if you don’t want to):

Here’s my bin for beads and buttons:

Here’s my bin for paper:

Here’s by bin for scissors and misc. stuff:

And here’s my bin for paper embellishments, die cuts, and other things of that nature:

And here’s the whole thing, organized and put away!:

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

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January 11, 2012 · 1:13 pm

How to Organize Charging Cords

Electronic devices are awesome, but what’s not awesome is keeping track of all those dang charging cords!  Some companies have gotten better at having the name of the company on the cord itself (thanks, Kodak!), but when every charging cord has a USB side and a wall charging side, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of what’s what.

That is, until you run out of toilet paper.

Here’s an easy way to keep cords labeled and untangled so they’re easy to find and use.  All you need is a toilet paper roll, some scrapbook paper, and a glue gun.

Cord Storage

Materials:

  • Toilet Paper Roll
  • Scrapbook paper
  • Ribbon
  • Glue Gun
  • Pen
  • Scissors

Instructions:

1.  Gather your materials.

2.  Lay the toilet paper roll on the scrapbook paper, pretty side down, and measure where the paper needs to be cut by making a small mark with your pen on the paper on either side of the toilet paper roll.  Cut the paper and set extra paper aside.

3.  Glue paper to toilet paper roll and add ribbon, if desired.

4.  On the scrap paper you set aside, write what the cord storage will be holding.  In my case, it’s my cell phone charger.  I just used the other side of this scrapbook paper, which was double sided, but you can use whatever you’d like.

5.  Place your cords inside and store away!

I’ve done this for all my chargers now, as well as  my extension cords.  It’s also a great way to use up leftover paper scraps that are too small for anything else.

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

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December 14, 2011 · 9:03 am

Clever Storage for Yarn

Here’s a useful and decorative way to store your yarn in plain sight!  Gather some bottles, jars, or containers and wash them thoroughly.  Here’s the collection of bottles I used.

My collection of random jugs and bottles

Take your yarn and tie one end loosely around the top or bottom of the bottle and wrap it around until everything is covered.  Then take the remaining yarn and feed it into the bottle.  You can also just fill the clear bottles or jugs with the yarn, like I did here.

Jug filled with yarn!

With a cardboard circle and a piece of duct tape, create a top for the jug and feed the end of the yarn through the top…so now you can still craft with the yarn as it sits pretty on your shelf!

Top of jug

Now you have cool decorative pieces that are doubling as storage!  You can also adopt this idea when storing buttons and beads.  Use baby food jars or mason jars to store items of the same color and arrange on a shelf for a colorful (and organized!) display!

My collection!

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

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October 19, 2011 · 8:58 am

How to Make Shelves Using Books

And you thought books were just for reading!

Here’s a great way to use those old classics that you’ve read once and will probably never read again.  All you need are a few tools from your local hardware store and your favorite hardcover books.

book shelves!

Read the full instructions here.  If you’re certain you will never use the book again, you could hot glue it to the metal pegs for extra stability.  If you don’t want to use any of your own books for this project, check out some local thrift stores and find books with cool covers and spines.

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

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February 16, 2011 · 9:13 am

DIY Food Storage Cabinet

For those of us living in small spaces, it can be hard to store all of our food in the 3 cabinets that are provided for us…therefore, we’re left to store our food out in the open…for people to judge us 🙂

Not so anymore.

Food Storage System

I created this food storage system with a grid storage unit from Target and 12 Christmas boxes from Target that were marked down to 90% off.  I mean…is that a steal or what?  All I did was wrap the boxes in shipping paper and glued a tag on each one, saying what goes in each box.  If you’re feeling really crafty, you can stamp or decorate the paper…or even use wrapping paper…to give your kitchen/dining room/room where your food is stored a whole new look.  This is also great for toys, tools, and craft supplies.

Box #1

Box #2

Box #3

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

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September 8, 2010 · 3:54 pm

Upcycled Pringles Can Storage Container

Use recycled material to make cute and adorable canisters to hold paint brushes, pens, colored pencils, markers, and much more!

Like this one? Click to buy!! 🙂

WHAT YOU NEED:

1 empty and freshly cleaned Pringles canister

1 12 x 12″ sheet of scrapbook paper

Other decor items, such as ribbons, buttons, stickers, letters, etc)

Hot Glue Gun

X-ACTO Knife

1.  First, make sure your Pringles can is clean and 100% dry.  Measure the length of the can and subtract 1 inch.  Measure that length on your scrapbook paper and mark it with a pencil.  Cut off the remaining paper.

2.  Place a strip of glue vertically down the canister.  Attach the paper to the glue strip, leaving about half an inch of room on the top and bottom of the canister.  Roll the paper around the container and secure with more glue.

3.  Decorate your container as you’d like!

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

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August 4, 2010 · 7:00 pm

Decoupaged Wrapping Paper Box

Hard to believe that Christmas day is just a mere 142 days away…and I’ve got a project for you that will get you in the mood for the holidays in no time.

I can’t take credit for this…this was actually my parents idea…but they used all those left over scraps from gift wrapping and used them to wrap the wrapping paper box!  Who would have thought?  It’s so cute and makes finding the Christmas wrap about 100 percent easier.

Wrapping paper box

Wrapping paper box

Simply stock up on Modge Podge and scrap away!  Let dry for 24-48 hours before storing any paper in there because Modge Podge can take a while to dry.

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

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June 2, 2010 · 2:44 pm

How to Make Curtains with Buttons

Okay, so my kitchen literally has four cabinets.   Four.  One is for baking stuff, two are for dishes, and one is too high for me to reach…so it stores holiday dishes and dust bunnies.  Therefore, I have to store my food in a separate storage unit…some ugly wire thing I got on sale from Target.  Granted it does a great job holding my food, but I didn’t like that everything inside was visible.  I didn’t want to have to worry about buying a certain brand of pasta sauce because it matched my color scheme (don’t judge!) and I didn’t like that everyone could see what I kept in my pantry.  So, it was off to the craft store I went to pick up some fabric and see what a little 7th grade level sewing would do for me.

My Pantry!

Here’s the result.  An adorable polka dot fabric attached with buttons.  I seriously used stuff around my house to make this and the only thing I had to buy was the fabric…and I can almost guarantee that you have some of this stuff on hand, too.

So do you have a pantry, TV, computer, workstation, or gun rack you want to cover up when necessary?  Here’s the super easy non-Martha Stewart-way to get it done.

What You’ll Need:

–Depending on the unit, you’ll need something to hold the curtains up.  Since my unit did not lend itself to using a pole or curtain hangers, I used heavy duty string and wrapped it from one end to the other about 10 times.  You can use utility string, wire, or if you can use a pole, go for it.

–At least 2-4 yards of fabric.  Measure around the unit to see how much you need.

–Variety of buttons

–A spool of ribbon that compliments your fabric choice

–Needle and thread

–Sissors

–2-3 Metal paper clips

–Tape measure

  1. First thing’s first…clean out your unit.  You’re going to have to move it around and it’s much easier when nothing is inside.
  2. Attach whatever you’re going to use to hold the curtain to your unit.  Like I said, I used heavy duty string and it worked perfectly.  Otherwise you can use a dowel rod or you could attach the curtains right to the unit if it will allow the curtains to slide.  If you’re not worried about having the curtains slide or can easily sweep the curtains to the side to get to what’s underneath, you can simply attach the curtains to the unit itself.
  3. I only attached the string to the front of the unit, since that’s the part I’m using.  If you’d like, you can wrap the string around the entire thing.  For easier stability and to help hold the curtain up, I attached the fabric directly to the unit on the sides and back…so only the front is moveable.

    Attach fabric to the unit so it doesn’t move

  4. Prep your ribbon by cutting it into 2-3 inch strips.  Using the metal paper clips, clip the fabric to the unit to help hold it up.  Every 2 inches or so, wrap the ribbon around the unit and secure it to the fabric by sewing a button on the two ends of the ribbon and the fabric so it makes a kind of sandwich (back of ribbon, fabric, front of ribbon, button).
  5. Continue on the side until you get to the front.  Repeat the same pattern on the front but instead of wrapping the ribbon around the unit, wrap it around the string so the curtain will be able to slide.

    Use clip to hold fabric and attach buttons to string

    Wrap ribbon around fabric and string

  6. Repeat on other side.
  7. If you’d like, you can secure the bottom of the curtain to the unit by doing the same thing you did on the sides to the bottom, leaving the front free.  I did this on mine but it’s not necessary.

    Attach fabric to bottom with buttons

If you’re not into sewing, don’t sweat.  A hot glue gun will do wonders.  Use the metal clips to hold the fabric up and glue the ribbon to the backside of the fabric first.  Wrap it around the unit/string and glue it to the front…then simply glue on a button.  Easy as pie.

I know these directions can be confusing, but it really is easy to do.  As always, feel free to ask questions if something is unclear 🙂

Happy Crafting!

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

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May 5, 2010 · 5:47 pm

How to Store Cookie Cutters

Wanna add a little life to your kitchen while saving on storage space at the same time?

Check it out, fellow flour flingers!

My Cookie Cutter Wall!

This is an easy and adorable way to store your cookie cutters without taking up valuable storage space in cabinets and closets.  Not only does it make baking easier, since you can see everything in front of you, but it adds a cute homey touch to your kitchen.

I used tacs instead of nails to help limit the amount of holes in my walls.

Don’t have a lot of cookie cutters?  No problem!  Go to any craft store, garage sale, or even look around your own home for a large wooden frame.  If the glass and backing are still in the frame, take them out so you just have the wood frame itself.  Hang it on the wall and place your cookie cutters inside.  It gives organization to a small amount of cookie cutters and doubles as a funky piece of artwork!

Here’s a larger pic for the full effect:

Don’t do much baking?  No problem!  Stay tuned tomorrow for a bunch of other things you can do with cookie cutters.

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

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