How to Organize a Craft Room

As you begin to go through your craft supplies and tools, think about how often you use each item. Do you use the rubber stamps frequently, or have they been collecting dust? Maybe you have one stamp you use often but seldom use the rest.

Take note of the tools you have in your craft collection as well as the supplies and then consider your current storage situation. What kinds of furniture and containers are you using? Decide if your present setup meets your needs or if you need more drawers, shelves and spaces to put all those different colored beads. Do you plan on getting more supplies in the near future? Are you unearthing old supplies you'd long since forgotten?

Maybe you love your glitter stash but are only hanging onto those felt scraps because you don't want to be wasteful. Figure out what your crafting priorities are as you inventory your supplies, tools and storage systems. As you get a sense of what you already have, think about what you want out of your craft station once it's complete. From there, you can decide if you need a new storage system [source: Able].

When you've figured out your priorities and goals for your new craft room, you'll be ready to start sorting your supplies. Continue reading for tricks and tips on sorting your crafting collection.

When you've assessed the usefulness of everything in your craft room, you may be wondering how you're going to organize what you've decided to keep. You could group all the seasonally themed supplies together or you could categorize supplies by color. Whatever you decide should be based on your personal crafting habits.

Group all supplies into common themes that are meaningful to you. Your themes may be as simple as scrapbooking or sewing supplies, or may be complexly driven by an abstract inspiration behind your craft [source: Booy]. You'll also need to group your tools. Group tools by how frequently you use them because this will dictate how you end up storing them -- be sure that tools you use often are easily accessible to avoid frustration later [source: Country Living].

While you likely won't be putting your storage containers and furniture into piles, group these things mentally. Think about whether your current storage options are capable of housing your supplies and tools the way you categorized them.

If your craft room is small, you may need to get creative about storage options and make sure no space is wasted -- this means taking full advantage of corners, cabinets and shelves [source: Country Living]. For information on the accessibility and aesthetics of storing the contents of your craft room, read on.

Before you put away all your craft room contents, set up any furniture or large storage containers. If you have a passion for several distinctly different crafts, set up multiple workstations -- you don't want paint accidentally spilling on fabric [source: Kichura]. As you set up your worktables, also consider whether you stand or sit for particular activities. Make sure your tables are the right heights so you're not uncomfortable when you're in the middle of a project.

Once the larger elements of your craft room are in the right place, you can start to put away the smaller pieces. Store each type of supply in its own container so you'll know where to find something when you need it. You may want to use clear plastic or glass containers for some supplies, so you can find items at a glance Martha Stewart Living]. On the other hand, some supplies can easily look messy, such as piles of leftover beads and buttons, so you may want to keep these in opaque containers. Either way, you don't have to spend money on storage containers if you don't want to -- just reuse old jars, and label them so you know what's what.

For subcategories of similar supplies, consider containers with multiple drawers or multi-tiered baskets. That way, you can keep similar things together and still be organized. You'll likely have a number of small containers for groups of supplies, and after putting these together, you'll need to decide if you want to keep them on shelves or hidden away in drawers or cabinets. The amount of space in your craft room will likely influence this decision, but you should also take into account how accessible you need each item to be.

For more ideas on organizing your craft room, see the links on the next page.