Purging & Organization - Sewing Supplies

 

I’ve had my new sewing room area set up for a couple of months now and in that time I’ve been using it quite a bit.  It is definitely my happy space and I really do enjoy going in there and working on projects.  As a result I’ve been able to figure out what is working for me in there and what is not.  Amazingly, this time around, most of what I’ve set up in there has been working perfectly.  However, I did come up with a couple things I wanted to tweak a little bit.

 

It takes a mess to clean one up!

I don’t know why, but it always seems to take a mess to clean one up, but I was totally fine with this because I love nothing more than a good organization project.  I really needed to organize my trims and laces as well as my bin full of ribbon so I can manage and use those supplies better.  After my first go at decluttering I had done a pretty good job getting rid of items I no longer used, needed or wanted, but these two bins still needed some work.  As it was I had a hard time finding items to use and knowing what I had on hand.

 

My helper

My organization style is a Cricket which means I like my stuff well organized and out of sight as much as possible.  I also prefer to have items categorized and micro organized within those categories.  That is totally fine with me.  Since my current items were categorized, but not organized it made total sense to me as to why I was struggling.

 

It was a time consuming process but it will pay off later

I started with the laces first, separating them by types and colors and then I wound them on boards so they were all neatly organized and won’t get tangled.  I put the white laces on one board and white eyelets on another, then I did the same with the off white.  These are the two types I use most often and the bulk of my inventory.  In the process I discovered I had quite a bit more of some laces and trims than I realized so I was able to declutter some of these as I worked.

 

Christmas trims

Next I did the red laces and trims and my Christmas trims followed by the other colors until I had worked my way through the entire pile.  I had quite a few Ziploc bags of stuff that I needed to go through and organize as well.  Again, anything I had too much of or knew I most likely wasn’t going to use got decluttered.

 

I had some small trims on little boards

Once the trims were done I went through my bin of ribbon spools.  I already had all of my spools organized by color, I’m weird that way, but I had a large bag stuffed to overfull of ribbons that I wound onto ribbon boards so now I can easily see what I have and use it.  I am trying my best, moving forward, to not have an abundance of things stuffed into bags.  That just doesn’t work very well.

 

A large bag overstuffed with ribbons

These are all the ribbons from that bag

My lace and ribbon boards were made from cardboard I cut from an Amazon shipping box and after wrapping each piece around the board I secured all of my laces, trims and ribbons with sewing pins.  It doesn’t get much easier than that or thriftier either.

 

I love this!  I know at a glance just what I have to work with

I filed all of my lace and trim boards back into the bin in the order that I use most often, white and off white, then all of the colors and the Christmas trims and pompom trims after that .  I was thrilled because they all fit neatly with plenty of wiggle room.  Now I can easily go through them and select what I want.

 

My ribbon spools

The ribbon boards sit neatly right on top

My ribbons spools stay in the bottom of that bin and the two new ribbon boards sit flat right on top.  I do keep my glitter craft ribbon spools in a bag so they don’t get sparkles all over everything and keep things neat and clean.  I also put the few smaller pieces of ribbon I had in a snack size Ziploc bag and will use those to make little bows.  Anything smaller than that was tossed in the trash.

 

I put the small trim boards in a pocket on the front of the vinyl bag

Three hours later and everything fits!
Definitely worth every minute spent to get here!

My ric rac, seam bindings and piping were already in great shape.  I had gone through all of that and organized it last year and in that time it has been serving me quite well.  Right now I have all of the ric rac wound onto small boards and in a plastic shoe box organized by color (of course LOL) and the packages of seam binding and piping I have are currently contained in an old vinyl case that I got with a set of sheets from the store.  I have plans soon to upgrade that to a plastic shoebox as well so it is easier to get to what I need.

 

The declutter pile 😃

Everything back in its home

Once all was said and done I had a nice pile of items I hope to sell on eBay and half a small basket of trash.  More importantly, everything is neatly organized, I know what I have and it all fits where it is supposed to.  As time goes on and I find items I’m not using I will be purging those, but honestly, the best way to declutter more of my sewing supplies is to use them and that is what I am planning to do.  Doesn’t that sound like fun?