Purge & Organize - Beads & Jewelry Making Supplies

 

I am now on a much smaller decluttering journey, but important nonetheless.  Last week I tackled a bit of a procrastination project in my craft supplies.  Initially when I began decluttering I had three containers of jewelry making supplies, which is quite a bit for someone that doesn’t make jewelry, but I scaled it down and got rid of one container worth of stuff.  I knew what was left needed to be gone through again because it was a bit of a mess.

 

Too much stuff I wasn't going to use

I use beads in some of my crafting projects so I knew I had some things in there I wanted to keep, but definitely not all of it.  I finally decided to sit down and do a deep dive into what I had and be honest with myself about what I would actually use.  It took me a little over two hours to go through everything, sort it and make those decisions.

 

This was straight up a complete mess

The containers I already had were reused to contain all of the beads which I sorted “like with like”.  It was a mind numbing process.  If you have ever sorted beads you know exactly what I mean, but it was necessary. The containers set the limit for how much I was keeping and now there are no more Ziploc bags of miscellaneous stuff or loose items allowed.

 

Much more manageable and I now know what I have to work with

By the time I was done I had eliminated the plastic shoe box and the fishing tackle case.  All of my little containers now fit into a slightly smaller photo box I had left over after a previous purging session of sentimental items.  I used three small food storage containers I had in the kitchen to contain supplies in such as string, clasps, connectors and that sort of thing.  These had previously been in baggies or packages and easily spilled all over the place adding to the mess.

 

Donations!

I am very pleased with how this decluttering project turned out

Even though it was a slow and tedious process at the end of it I was thrilled.  I no longer look at my beading supplies with dread knowing it is a complete mess.  In the process I added four sandwich size Ziploc bags of items to my latest donation bag cutting the amount I am keeping in half.  Now that it is all cleaned up, organized and has been streamlined I am actually looking forward to using this stuff again.  Best of all, it is done and I no longer have to think about it which feels really, really good.  I am so glad to have that completed.