Organizing My Craft Room / Home Office

Once the walls had been painted, the furniture given makeovers, and decorative pieces put in place, it was time to organize! Since this room is used both as my craft space and our home office, I needed to find efficient ways to blend the two. I started by clearing out every drawer in the room. Every thing was placed in boxes to be sorted through. The next step was to clean out the storage closet. That was an all day task! Bins were emptied, sorted through and lots of items that should have been discarded ages ago finally found a new home in the recycle bin. Starting with a clean slate was key to figuring out how to best use the furniture and closet for storage. 

Below are a couple of photos of what the space looked like before I began this makeover project. I’ve mentioned in other posts about the makeover that the space was dark. It wasn’t an inviting space to work in and it did nothing to spark any creativity. 

I didn’t take any before photos of the storage closet, but trust me when I say it was a hot mess. I use bins for storing craft items, but they were not organized and they were not easy to get to either. I had also gotten into the habit of just cramming items on top of the bins creating even more of a barrier to get to the items I needed. 

I started the makeover for this room in August and for the most part, it was finished during September. But over the holidays with lots of crafting going on, I let it get pretty messy. I spent last week adding a few more storage pieces to the space and giving the closet one more round of cleaning out and purging items that were just taking up space. 

The large desk is used primarily for our home office. I do use the surface space for crafting, but the drawers and shelves are dedicated to items that relate to our home organization. I bought several small plastic baskets at the Dollar Tree that I used to hold bills, saved receipts before filing, and paperwork that needs our attention. These are all placed on the top shelves of the desk along with some decorative bottles and peacock feathers. These came from Michaels.

 

The drawers are full of documents, important paper work, and file folders. Just because the desk is used for those items didn’t mean it I wanted to leave it plain.  I wanted the space to have lots of peacock accents, so bottles with feathers, pretty jars, and a few other decorative items give the desk a fun look. I used card stock to give the small white containers a little color. The card stock is glued in place. Paint brushes and other crafting items are stored in the containers. 

Since the room is not a large space, I have to utilize as much of the floor space as possible. Tucked beneath the lower shelves of the desk are bins, a paper shredder, and a basket that holds items to be shredded. I also have a cloth bin that holds some of the smaller items that I’m currently working on. 

One of the things I wanted to avoid was having lots of clutter on top of the two desks in the room. I can live with bins and storage containers even though they aren’t that great to look at if it means I can keep the surface areas of the desk well organized.  I found this drawer storage at Target recently in the perfect color for the room. 

Every crafter I know has ribbon. Lots and lots of ribbon. Storing ribbon so that it’s easy to get to has been a challenge for me. A couple of years ago I bought a small wall organizer for ribbon. It didn’t hold nearly enough and the dowels would slip out easily causing a cascade of ribbons onto the floor. I gave up on it. I’m using this wall mounted storage rack to hold a lot of my ribbon spools. While I’m not able to just pull the ribbon from the spools, it does keep all of it contained. I also have a storage bin that is full of ribbon, too. I put the ones I use frequently in the wall rack and left the seasonal ribbon in the bin. I added a little bling to it using self adhesive jewel strips.

I wanted my paint stash to be easily accessible and I wanted to be able to find what I might be looking for quickly. I found this metal storage unit at TJ Maxx. It’s a good size for the space and it holds lots of paint. To give it a little pop of color, I trimmed down card stock and lined the bottom of each rack with it. 

Now for the closet! I’m continuing to use storage bins for holding a lot of my craft supplies, but I have reorganized them so that items I use most often are easy to reach. Seasonal items are all grouped together and placed in bins. Since I’m currently crafting for Valentine’s Day, Easter, and spring, those bins are the easiest to get to right now. I’ll change the arrangement of the bins as the year progresses. 

Along with lots of ribbon, we all have lots of silk flowers! I found a solution to having the flowers stuffed in bins or being strewn about by using a metal cube storage unit that had been disassembled years ago when Gloria moved out. She had used it in her closet, but it’s been gathering dust in our storage room for years. I put together two of the cubes and used the grid to hold flowers. I can quickly see what I have and can pull them out with ease. I placed some stemless flowers in wire baskets that I bought at the Dollar Tree. 

The small desk in the room has deep drawers that hold a lot of my crafting items. Tape, paint, glue, my palm sander, extra glue guns, paper cutter, and cleaning supplies are stored in the drawers. Keeping the surface area clear with only the Lazy Susan on top gives me lots of room to work.  The only thing that I haven’t found for the space yet is a chair for this desk. I’m using a black folding chair until I find just what I want. 

I gave a quick makeover to an old bulletin board using washi tape, a peacock feather, and adhesive jewels. I added some note pages and I use it for reminders. It’s a good place for me to glance at to see what I’ve got upcoming that I need to give my attention to. It’s uncluttered at the moment, but I doubt it will stay that way! 

I always have a few spare wreath forms on hand and finding a place to store them in the closet wasn’t working. Adding a wreath hanger over the door to the room gives me a place to keep them that’s out of the way and with the door open, out of sight, too.

I can’t say that everything is in a perfect spot or that there won’t be some ongoing changes to the space, but considering how it looked when I started, I’m more than happy with the space now. Changing out some furniture, painting old pieces, and adding storage containers and decorative pieces all help to make the room one that I now love to work in. 

Thanks for following along with this work in progress! I hope you found a tip or two that will give you some ideas! 

Pin Me, Please!

Organizing My Craft Room / Home Office

 

We’ll be sharing at lots of these great parties!