One of the things that irks me most about my studio is my paper/cardstock storage system - in particular, my offcuts. They are encroaching on my floor space and the pile is threatening to topple over - it's not an attractive sight!
Here's what I'm talking about - I have 2 of these tubs overflowing with cardstock scraps, as well as various other cartons and containers stacked in the corner taking up way too much space. It's time for an overhaul of this system!
This is how I've been storing my offcuts - in ziplock bags, sorted by colour. Not a bad solution but it's become untidy as the collection of offcuts has increased.
So I toddled off to the shops yesterday to find a solution that would work for me and I found some good ones: Howards Storage has great mobile carts with drawers but they are well over the $100 mark; K-Mart had some sturdy file boxes which looked promising and were within budget, but they are made of chip board and you can't see the contents at a glance; Officeworks has a plastic version of these file boxes which I liked, but the draw back with these is that they only had coloured ones in stock and no clear ones - I want to see the contents without having to label them. But they also had some desktop drawers with clear drawer fronts. Ah, just the thing! So I came home with a couple of sets of these and at $17 each I think this is a good value solution to my untidy collection of offcuts.
I pruned the collection quite a bit, much to the delight of the local primary school. I'm glad that they will be able to use those scraps. And my useable offcuts are much tidier now although I can't imagine that the contents of the drawers will stay this neat for too long!I've got the units side by side here, but they are stackable so they'll take up less bench space.
Oh, and just one more thing. There's a little stopper on each drawer to stop it from pulling out. Hmmm..... that's no good..... it has to come out so I can take it to my work table.
So here's what you do. Press the stopper and the drawer will flex enough for you to slide the drawer right out.......
so you can take it to your work station.
Perfect!Well that has certainly tidied up my offcuts. One day I'll tackle the full sheets of cardstock and patterned paper collection but for the moment, I'm feeling good about having sorted the offcuts.
'Til next time.....
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