Organize your Stuff (round 6): Week 4: Paper

Congratulations, All! We have made it to Paper week. Noooooo…. Yes! Actually, as painful as it is, having a firm control of your paper will make the creative process SO much easier… and therefore Creative Me SO MUCH happier. Just work in 5 to 10 minute chunks. Anything more will overwhelm you, and PA Me will take over and lock OCD Me in a closet…and really, we need her to do this.

There is digi paper and real paper for scrapbooking. This layout uses digi paper (reusable and takes up only a thumb drive of space).

…but today, it is all about the real paper!

There are three different things to consider when sorting paper.

First, horizontal or vertical storage. There are different schools of thought on the subject. Most Local Scrapbook Stores (LSS) use horizontal storage to show off all those awesome patterned papers that the Inner Hoarder wants to invite home. Plus side- great visuals. Down side, if you are not doing a lot of turnover, there is dusting and light exposure to consider…and that this storage method uses a lot of real estate. However, if it works for you…awesome!

solid color cardstock

At our house, after some negotiation, the POW vetoed Creative Me and the vertical storage in favor of horizontal storage. PA Me gets out of dusting, the Inner Hoarder gets more paper, and OCD Me gets to use the label maker. The label maker makes all the difference!



by event/subject



Second, sorting method. If you get this one correct the first time around, let us know, because OCD Me and Creative Me are constantly tweaking this. For the most part, we are happy with the solid cardstock which is sorted by color. Then we sorted our patterned paper. The paper that we sorted by stripes or spots, we rarely use. Instead, we have evolved into a hybrid of manufacturer vs. activity files. Now all of the sports paper is together, and the Valentine’s Day paper is together…except if Creative Me thinks it is generic enough to live by manufacturer.

by manufacturer

Creative Me sometimes says to herself… “I just want something with that Graphics 45 feel…” or “this just needs something from Simple Stories…” or whatever manufacturer with whom she is currently in love. The cool thing is, that over time, many of the manufacturer colors will coordinate. Sometimes that “Side B” that you never thought you would use from two seasons ago will work perfect as an accent with that one piece from this season that you HAD to have (OK, Inner Hoarder got two pieces each from the whole line…shhhh….)

This leads us to number three, Purging. It is time to distract your Inner Hoarder. This is where the Jedi Mind Tricks, those blackmail pictures from High School, and the disclosure of your secret stash of snacks are all used against you. The Inner Hoarder guards her paper almost as much as her memorabilia. (This is not the memorabilia you are looking for…move along). If you have been scrapbooking for more than 5 years, this applies to you. We admit, the Inner Hoarder still has paper from 1998 that she is sure that we will use…someday. The POW and OCD Me knows that Creative Me never will…but try telling that to the Inner Hoarder. If leggings and bell bottoms can come back into style, so can this paper (no, it will not).

We challenge you to purge or “donate” 10 pieces of paper…or tell that Inner Hoarder that she can only buy 1 piece for every 3 that you use…purging the 10 pieces will probably be easier. It will hurt. But in the end it will make you happier. (Schools, Girl Scout units, Women’s shelters and Children’s Hospitals are great places to donate).

As usual, here is the Mr Linky if you want to share your blog or your picture of your paper storage...

Organize your Stuff: Week 4 (round 5): WOYWW#127 and Paper

It seems like just yesterday that we were on the internet perusing crafty goodness… How did Wednesday sneak up on us so fast? Well, it is Wednesday, and that means that it is WOYWW (What’s on your work desk Wednesday) across the planet… where we get to see crafty goodness in every form thanks to the Wonderful Julia at the Stamping Ground and her charming Mr. Linky!

Here is our desk…not too terribly bad today. OCD Me was busy tackling our front room and entryway all morning, so mild chaos was left behind on the desk.

We were working on our Design Team entry for this Week’s Tuesday Trio Sketch #92: color challenge (banana yellow, pink, brown and blue). When the POW hears these colors, her mind automatically thinks… baby. However, that is not what Creative Me wanted. Out here, we are at peak Fall Foliage! One good sneeze, and the trees will be naked until June.

So we broke out our Tattered Angels Mists and made our banana yellow the kind of yellow a banana is …right before it is made into banana bread or banana muffins. Mmmmmmmm….

This week also starts getting us into the weeds for the Organize Your Stuff Challenge. It is time to take a closer look at your paper. (Nooooooooooo!) If you have an Inner Hoarder in your life, then this could potentially be a problem. If PA Me lives in your house and is close friends with your Inner Hoarder, then we are soul sisters (and misters) and we KNOW that there is a problem.  There IS a reason we keep doing this challenge over and over again.

Hello. Our name is Scrappnbee. It has been six days since our last paper purchase (but come on! It is Simple Scrapbooks Yearology… and Creative Me NEEDS more Christmas paper because we are only three years behind on Christmas albums, and they need cute new paper!).

Yes, we will return our no shopping token when we can find it. We think that we left it under some paper. Here. Somewhere.

In the interest of almost honesty (because we are not sharing under the desk again, and OCD Me has forbidden us from showing the supper scary clutter stage left of the crafty semi-cleanliness), we still have not sorted and put away all of our papers and projects that we got from the CKC Portland Scrapbooking Convention back at the end of March. OCD Me is mortified. PA Me just keeps moving her hand around and whispering, “this is not the paper you are looking for.” *Sigh*

In personal news, we have retired our sash and are no longer the acting Lady of the Shoe, as Awsome Auntie and her family returned to their duty station.  It has been a great nine months, and the house is eerily quiet now.  We miss them!

 Illusive Middle Child's football team did the impossible and won their playoff game in arctic like temperatures (30 degrees Fareinheit anyways). (no pictures at this time as blogger is giving me an error message. Will try again later). Therefore, we are double and tripple booked for kids activities everywhere! This weekend we are in the Championships! (Woo hoo!). Then, come heck or high water, the season will finally be over! ...then wrestling starts up... (actually, they already started without us)!

We probably should make an effort to put at least some of this away before next week… and not replace it with even more new stuff! …well, after we visit all of you and your desks, of course… *wink*!

Organize your Stuff: Week 4 (round 4): Paper Part 1

Yes, we took the week off. PA Me had us spending quality time sitting on the couch with Fabulous Spouse, who was home for a change, letting the animals and children run amok without a care and doing all sorts of Easter Stuff… So belatedly… Happy Passover to those who celebrate, and Happy Easter to those who celebrate that too!

Here is our card for Tuesday Trio’s Sketch 64.

Creative Me rotated it so that the diagonal ran left down to right, and then finally got to break out the Alice in Wonderland stamps that the Inner Hoarder got when we went to Portland in March. The coolest thing for me personally about this card was that I was able to custom color clear rhinestones to match using my Copics! Since Copics are alcohol based inks, they stick to the glass/plastic. Cool, huh?

As for papers, we have come a long way since round 2! The big thing now, is that Creative Me and OCD Me have begun to see eye to eye in the paper department. We have found ourselves separating all of our major scrapping holidays, reoccurring sports, and clubs from the rest of the patterned papers. The big thing that the POW has to remind us, is to not break it down too much, or we will not be able to find anything… again!

Another lesson learned this week, do not try out the free internet games that your kids are playing so that you can relate to them. If you do, PA Me will take over your lives, and you will be sucked into a black hole of nothingness… BTW-it is called Minecraft, and the graphics belong on an Atari, but it will still mesmerize you. Keep Away!

Organize your Stuff: Week 4 (round 3): Paper Part 2

Layout for this week- Alternative Rock/ Grunge Layout for the Glee Club Challenge at Dixie Pieces.

Do you know how hard it was to get this layout done?! Believe it or not, I am usually a pretty strait forward scrapper. OCD Me takes credit for that. Alternative Rock? I immediately think of the naked baby underwater or the chubby kid in the bee costume… or Kurt Cobain, greasy, in flannel. However, from Pearl Jam to Blues Traveler, Alternative Rock Cover Art is an homage to the psychedelic 60s/70s. Something OCD Me (who was doing lots of Google research for this project) was not expecting after The Beatles week.

It is definitely not the slick cover art of the Big Hair Spandex bands of the 80s. It is a call back to all things that the back to school specials warned us about… sex, drugs,… and rock and roll. The base of my pages is pink- as was the cover of Train’s Drops of Jupiter (the moderator’s inspiration band for this week’s theme), and a surprising amount of other alternative cover art. Since Train’s latest cover art features a crow with a crown, I could not leave my “princess” out. So, back through my files, I found last year’s birthday –unscrapped, and away I went.

As for paper week… same as last year, PA Me and the Inner Hoarder took control, and where writers get writers block… I got Organization Block. You would think that this year would be easier. I only had 6 inches to work on… yes, 6 inches. 2 inches from January, and 4 inches that the Inner Hoarder has brought into the house (I told you she has a shopping problem) since then… that’s almost ½ an inch a month! Shame on you Inner Hoarder!

Well, because the POW was being so motivational on 2 Peas, OCD Me, who had finished moving my table with the help of Fabulous Spouse, put her foot down. How would it look if we told everyone that they could do it, and not do it ourselves? Inner Hoarder was not convinced. OCD Me, who can be pretty fierce when she has had enough caffeine (and already had three cups under her belt) laid it out for our wayward personalities. Either we are tackling the garage today, or we are talking paper. Amazingly, both PA Me and the Inner Hoarder were suddenly onboard, and away we went.

So, after a day with the label maker and purging this is my new after...Thank you Zen Master Wookiemouse for enlightening us to the ways of the labelmaker!

and here is a close-up of the top and my smaller pieces 8x8 and smaller

See you Monday, for the start of next week!!!

Organize your Stuff: Week 4 (round 3): Paper Part 1

Fabulous Crisann’s Question of the Week: Do you store Paper horizontal or vertical? By color, theme, or manufacturer? OCD Me is in charge of the paper organization. Period. She has decided that she likes the vertical storage. We need to buy stock in cropper hoppers. Solids are by color, my favorites are by company (like My Mind’s Eye and Basic Grey). The rest are patterned, stripes, dots, etc. I probably need to separate holidays, but I haven’t gotten it there.

Alright! The POW is beginning to get her grove on… and is so very proud! Our apple card for Tuesday Trio DT tryouts won Sketch #33, and our smile card placed in the top 3 for Sketch #34. Now we have our fingers crossed for Sketch #35  (below). One of my personalities has a warped sense of humor (probably the Inner Hoarder). So, for a “happy” card we did a Happy Halloween card with spiders in lieu of flowers (they look much cooler in person…when not smushed on the scanner). Girl Friday was happy too. OCD Me is taking bets and managing the pool. It is her belief that sparkly pom poms will be underfoot until at least Thanksgiving/ the end of November.

As for paper week, the POW and OCD Me are in construction mode. Paper was a group therapy week last round, but we were able to find a home for most of it. However, we are yet again at an impasse. While OCD Me is tickled by the jetmax cubes and cropper hoppers holding the papers, it is now FULL with both papers and projects. The Inner Hoarder cannot find anything worth culling to Girl Friday…who, by the way, is always circling like a starved lioness, waiting for the slowest, just barely ignored piece of patterned paper…then it is down for the kill.

This is my Round 2 after…

Note the Inner Hoarder (and part time shopaholic) has overrun OCD Me’s beautifully organized universe. PA Me has waylaid OCD Me with other projects… I am now the proud owner of a marginally unstable core door table that we put together with Girl Friday’s supervision (so only 2 stripped screws). Like many of my round 2 brethren, I have come to the realization that yes, we have made real progress. However, some of that progress may have been smoke and mirrors (You never did see that 2+ inches that I admitted to not filing). So, my goal by end of week is to ignore PA Me (and force her into therapy sessions) and moderate a Peace Accord between OCD Me and the Inner Hoarder. I see much consumption of Chocolate in my future! Wish me luck for the end of the week, when I will hopefully (*cross your fingers!*) have my paper settled, and a layout for Week 2 of Glee Club- Alternative (Seriously!?). Note: the POW is in the corner right now, breathing into a little brown lunch sack, and PA Me is holding her hand. This does not bode well.
Round 3 before...

(do you notice that there are a few more cubes of paper than in the previous picture?)

Organize your Stuff Challenge: Week 4 Paper

Week 4: Paper. Arggghhh! I think that the theory with last week (Clean Slate) was to make us come to terms with and confront our Inner Hoarder. I think that I failed...

Instead, there was a small turf war between Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Me... or OCD Me, and Procrastinators Anonymous Me... or PA Me (I think that they will be visiting a lot over the next coming weeks), finally both ended up giving way to Plays Well with Others... er... Plays with Others Well/Follows Directions Me... or POW Me. I used pink square post-its, which made OCD Me happy, and really we didn't clean anything- we just shuffled it around a bit so that it looked neat, making PA Me happy, and we did as we were told and completed our task as any POW would.

Inner Hoarder Me and Creative Me were totally shut out and not allowed to play. Creative Me is OK with that... she gets to peek in the boxes during the week and make a layout. This one was made with memorabilia from 2007 unearthed during Week 3 and set aside. Inner Hoarder me was rocking in the corner in denial... and that is where she stayed until this week...

...Because, as a grown-ups, we can only be a POW for so long and then something snaps. It could be that broken "No" button gets tested one too many times, or that "work flexibility" to cover shifts is taken advantage of one too many times, or...you get the idea. When the pile of papers went down stairs to be measured for posterity before the Big Purge, Inner Hoarder suddenly perked up, made a bee line (no pun intended) for PA Me and began a coup against the POW! (I need help... got a good therapist? Anyone?)

Anyways...Week 3 was finished by Monday, when I posted last. I walked by that stack-25 inches high with another 18 inches in Cropper Hoppers, many times, every day. Yet, I did not touch that pile of paper until Friday...Friday!, and that was only due to some grumblings on the couch by Fabulous Spouse, who had been out of town since Monday and noticed (to OCD & POW Me's horror!) that nothing had been done. I was sensing that the native was getting restless and with just two weeks left of football, he might fight for the territory that I was claiming. This dining room is MINE!

So, Friday, I made a real concerted effort...with the stuff that I was keeping no matter what. For four hours I sorted solids and patterns and florals and plads. Every time I came across something that I was not prepared to deal with...like that QVC color block paper that I thought was SO cool in 2002...You know it, its in your stash too...That stuff from 1999 that I got on clearance from JoAnn's because it would be perfect for...but never did....all those got set aside. Inner Hoarder had her heels dug in, and PA me was enabling. However, by 11 PM, this is what I had... (just under 10 inches left!)

Saturday, Inner Hoarder and PA Me were loving life! I had a noon to midnight church crop planned for Creative Me, and with all the organizing and packing required by OCD Me, nothing got done on my remaining 9+ inches.

Sunday, was horrible. Not really. The POW and Fabulous Spouse teamed up to help me through those last few inches. Fabulous Spouse turned up the TV, giving up video for audio only, and camped out in a chair with me to cheer me on, and get me back on task if necessary and OCD Me and the POW could not handle things. He even figured out my new toy that I got for Christmas 2008 (and was still in its original packaging)! It was a P-touch labeler. Wookiemouse, I can so understand that affair now!

So...This is my After- Paper, and my P-touch. Honestly, paper will be ongoing, because I purged 3 inches *gasp* (to the eternal delight of Girl Friday, who had been banned from the room), but cheated and put at least 2 into the kit category....& I ran out of Cropper Hoppers...and space.

To answer this weeks organizational questions from Zen Master Wookiemouse...

I store paper vertical, not horizontal.

I sort first by company, then by solids, patterned, graphics, plads, etc.

There are misc files for those papers that do not belong to my favorite companies, but there isn't too much of those.

Christmas has its own file, no matter the company.

In 7-10 weeks I may or may not finally finish that last inch...ok 2!