Fabric Organizing & Inventory

Today I'm sharing this inexpensive and effective way I'm organizing my fabric stash.  I have lots of fabric in lots of containers and when I want to use something I usually empty out the entire box to see what I have and then put it all back (or sometimes I don't and the clutter takes on a life of its own!)

So here's what I did:

I cut a one inch or so snippet of every fabric in the container.  Then I sprayed a piece of 8 1/2 x 11 card stock with spray adhesive and stuck them all on. 

 You could also use glue or tape but I liked the spray adhesive because it's tacky. I could peel pieces off and move them around if needed.

*UPDATE* The spray glue does Not stay sticky over time. I've had to go back and re-glue my swatches to the cardstock. Just use Elmer's or other, stronger glue that'll hold up or you'll get this: 

Once I had all of my snippets on the card I slid it into a plastic notebook sleeve and attached it to my container.

Now I can see what I have at a glance.

  Notice the jumbled mess underneath?  I admit I thought about cropping that out. Do you ever see someone's super tidy work space or fully completed organizational project and imagine that they totally have their act together and got it all done in one day? Well, I am definitely not one of those people! I'm just going to work on it a little bit at a time in between other projects. I plan on doing a couple of boxes a week until it's done. 

Marker Caddy Project

I had my markers in this basket for portability as I draw here there and everywhere. But I'm always having to rummage through looking for the one I want. Murphy's Law dictates that the marker you want will somehow burrow itself to the bottom of the basket even if you just used that one. I wanted something that was 1.) portable 2.) allows me to see which markers are where at any given moment and 3.) allows me to store them on their sides as this keeps them from drying out.

I've been collecting these coffee cans. They're the right size and I think they'll stack well.

I took off their lables.

I stuck them all together with some cool looking zebra duck tape.

I then sorted my markers by color.

The caddy can be used either upright, when I'm moving around with it, or on its side when I'm in my office. Probably, if I were doing this project again, I could do something a bit more sophisticated than duck tape but I'll see how this goes for now. So far, it's holding up fine! I also think it needs a handle but I haven't figure that out yet.

 

****UPDATE

After a while, the duct tape started to loosen and the the caddy was listing to one side.  I cut it apart and glued some cardboard inbetween the top and bottom cans to keep it stable.  I wanted to glue them in the first place but the metal rims on the cans lifed them up just enough so they wouldn't touch.  If I had it to do over, I'd use oatmeal boxes which have no rims.  Still, it's functional in the way I wanted.