Moving and storing my scrapbook area has been truly eye opening, as I’ve come to address issues that I was facing.
I have been focusing on evaluating what I have, and reorganizing my supplies to make them easier to find and use, and make sure I don’t duplicate.
For instance, I noticed immediately upon packing up items to move, that I had a plethora of idea books and scrapbook magazines. In fact, apparently I was so enamored by certain issues of scrapbook magazines that I had two copies of several, and three of one. I have no idea how that happened, but I am sure it won’t happen again. I’ve fixed that problem.
But was I was setting up my tool area, I moved one of my Iris carts, and out of habit ignored it. After a bit, I started thinking about it. I realized that in that Iris cart was my outdated but very huge collection of paper punches.
Yes, once when they were popular, I was highly addicted. I returned to the Iris cart in question and began opening the drawers. Glancing inside, I confirmed my suspicions. There were so many paper punches inside those drawers, I just knew I’d never use some of them again.
Paper punches come in all sizes and shapes. There are fancy corner edgers, border punches, mini punches, hand held mini punches, small, medium, large, extra large and what I dub enormous. There were even a few plastic shaped variety that came in party bags my children had received.
I hadn’t counted those punches in years. So I was quite curious as to how many I had accumulated over time.
It was a startling fact when the numbers were in. There were a grand total of 517 punches, with only 3 being duplicated! Wow!
I realized at that moment there are several things I need to do over the next few days.
- First, I need to address the issue of storing all those punches I do not use. I really don’t feel that I am going to need a small airplane punch anytime soon. So I need to sort through them and decide which I want to keep. For my own personal tastes, I’d like to keep all the basic geometric shapes, the swirls, hearts and flowers. And probably stars too. I’m sure there are a few others I’d like to keep as well.
- Second, I need to figure out what to do with the rest of them. Right now I am leaning towards throwing some of them into a container for my 5 children to play with. This would be a fun addition to their craft area since normally I don’t “share” my supplies. The rest perhaps I’ll throw in a garage sale.
- Third, I realized that there are other supplies in my scrapbook area that need some evaluating in addition to the paper punches. I also need to evaluate the number of rubber and foam stamps I own, the number of templates I have, and do I really need all those decorative scissors?
So, I guess I know what I’m doing this weekend. How about you?
Is there a product, tool or supply that you have become obsessed with?