About almost eight months ago, my awesome husband remodeled one of the bedrooms in our house and turned it into a craft room... Well, really he calls it craproom. LOL He just got so sick of my stuff spread all over the house and taking so much space where it is making my house look like a giant craft room with the dining room as the main hub! : ) I wasn't enjoying it either because I was alway losing so much stuff, especially my small craft tools that costs money. But I made do with the situation for the longest time because I knew a craft room can never be a priority considering our house, although really beautiful and cutesy is a total blast from the 70's! Anyway, I did get a craft room and all the awesome embellishments too-- recessed lights, a beautiful tray ceiling, the bamboo wood floors I have been wanting forever, crown molding and a few new great crafting tools to add to the whole shebang! :) With a little help from his Dad (who I call my Dad, too), John was able to put the whole room together. It took a couple of months but when it was done, boy was it sooooo worth the wait!!!
Months later, and a few hundred $$$'s of craft tools and supplies later, or as John would say, "one Archivers store later" [because I go there a lot], I found that I actually needed storage like they do at Archivers because I was starting to lose stuff in my own craft room. Whatever doesn't fit in the storage that I already have gets shoved in a folder in my closet and doesn't get used and gets totally forgotten. I haven't bought two of the same thing but I didn't want things to get that bad.
Being that my husband and I don't intend to stay in this current house we're living in, we don't want to over-do the updates, we don't want to overspend on stuff for it and we don't want to put anything in my craft room that is too permanent... We always think about re-sale value, and spending money in the right renovations and updates. So since he finished putting my craft room together, we have been brainstorming and thinking of the best storage solutions that won't be too hard to take out or uninstall when it is time to sell the house. And the cheapskate in me doesn't want to spend any more than fifty good ones on a storage system especially the ones made out of particle board. It makes me sick thinking spending $500 on something that is not even real wood!
After thinking all of it through, and pricing stuff, we decided we were just going to go to a storage store like The Container Store, the Home Depot, Ikea, etc and just MAKE UP MY MIND. We have found a ton of storage solutions that do not cost a lot of money that we can buy a piece or two at a time that LOOKS REALLY GOOD.
So to give it a good start, since I didn't ask for anything on Valentine's Day, John decided to take me to stores 3 or 4 weekends before 2/14, and listened really close and made sure he kept note of the stuff I liked and bought them for me on 2/14 and put them together and installed them all for me. Even though he knows that I still need a couple more, all the stuff he got for me have eased my storage problems somehow.
We found these slat boards at the home store at the laundry storage isle. I have been wanting these things for the longest time but every store we went to they would only be sold in the usual 4x8 ply. And I didn't need that much. So it was a big relief on my part to find smaller versions of this board and at @$6 a piece, is huge bonus!!! The hangers I already had, I bought them from a crafter lady that I met at my local craft store, she had a rummage sale and she reserved the hangers for me. I got a great big bag of the hangers and organizers for $5! It is a dream come true being able to see all the stamp sets I have.
You can find these cube storage systems all over the place and they come in different sizes and prices too. These particular ones are from Martha Stewart Living and we got lucky, they were on sale and we got it for less than $50, the cube is good as is but since the little colorful baskets were on sale too at $4, I went ahead and bought four of them. :)
Here is the cube storage put together. That is my cat Foozie checking out the cubbies! She is a lazy butt so I am kindda thinking she is trying to figure out a way how she can finagle herself in there when she feels like napping!
John laughed so hard when he had asked initially what I wanted for Valentine's Day and I said, "nothing, I don't want something bad enough I have to have it now." So after he put all these storage things for me, my husband tells me, "I love you, you are an easy Valentine!". Although he says this a lot, I never realized how easy I really was. I am not a buy me flowers kind of girl. I do not like flowers and I am not a fan of how much they are... I am a very sentimental girl. I prefer my gifts to be something that I can see or use constantly and remind me of the person who gave it to me. This is the scrapbooker, and memory-keeper in me talking right now.
Till the next post!
