Magpie Ethel

The Bin That Was The Final Straw

I don't have the best organization in one spot in my studio.  I have a cute little vintage crib turned into a daybed.  It is intended for people to sit on that visit. In reality it is a catch-all for everything. I stack stuff on the seat cushion. The crib is skirted and underneath I store lots of plastic bins. 

There are two rows of bins under the skirt and they are stacked about three high. When I want a bin I have to lift up the skirt and pull bins in and out.

Recently I was rummaging around under there and discovered I had completely missed a bin of vintage Valentine tidbits.  I have pretty much finished Valentine Day crafting. I kept thinking while I was working on Valentine's Day things that I was missing this or that, but thought perhaps I had used up my stash with crafting the previous year. NOPE. I missed a bin under the crib.

I knew it was time to figure out a different storage system in that spot. I hit a couple of antique malls looking for a cabinet and came up empty handed. I had a bee in my bonnet to find something that worked and since I wasn't coming up with something vintage, I headed to my IKEA catalog. I thought this TV stand might work for the studio. I liked that it was metal and the blue color was awesome.

Tom and I made a trip to IKEA and picked up a pair of them.

I took out the old crib. It is easy to store in my garage.

I piled up all the storage bins outside the studio that had been stored under the crib while I set up the new shelf.

Tom and I put together the two units.  I wanted to stack them on one another and it worked like a charm.  The cabinet takes up a much smaller footprint in the studio. It has just as much if not a bit more storage. It also has a flat surface on the top which is always handy.

The shelves aren't adjustable, but they perfectly hold the storage bins I had. I may switch out the bins with the turquoise handles for something vintage, but for now they work.

I like the perforated doors that slide back and forth and can hide the plastic bins. I am not a fan of plastic bins, but they are such good storage. I may add some of my vintage style flashcards to the front of each bin to pretty them up.

The IKEA saleswoman suggested we bolt the two cabinets together with L brackets. We decided to use extra strength magnets and L brackets to see how that worked rather than having to drill holes in the cabinets.

I used the magnets and L brackets on all four legs. I also used two straight brackets with magnets on two of the legs. The magnets/brackets actually work really well and it doesn't move when it jostled. Since I am the only one working in the studio I don't worry about somebody pushing into it and knocking it off.

Seriously in love with this new cabinet.  Fun to have a flat surface and decorate the top.

A much needed change.  In a roundabout way I am kinda glad I missed that bin of Valentine crafting supplies.

Happy day!

Everything Has A Place (Sort of)

Awhile ago I had a blog reader ask me about storage. Here is what she wrote.

After your tour of your house last week, (and my reorganization of my storage), I thought of you and how you do your storage (to rotate decorating themes).

I know we have toured your studio and and how things are grouped together there,  but do you have a "system" for everything else? Colored bins, cardboard boxes, closets? And lordy, what kind of space do you have?

First, I don't live in a big house. It is around 1900 sq. ft. I am lucky to have a fairly decent storage/laundry area and then storage above our garage.  It is pretty much packed with stuff. Pretty much.

Most of my holiday decorations are packed in bins and held on shelves in my laundry/storage area in the basement.  I just buy regular clear plastic bins as I can see what is in them. I try and keep like holiday bins together. I do use cardboard boxes as well if they fit into the shelves. It becomes a storage jigsaw puzzle. It looks quite jumbled, but I can find stuff.

I have three shelving areas that are packed floor to ceiling with bins. 

I don't just store holiday in this area.  I also have household stuff like a rice cooker, blender, trays etc. You may also notice some vintage items that I have not popped into the appropriate bins...they are newer finds that I have not tucked away yet.

The ceiling in this storage area is open so there are rafters. I hang stuff from them as well.

While the majority of my holiday decorations are downstairs, some find their way onto the main floor.  I have two vintage suitcases tucked under a cabinet that are full of my New Year's goodies.

I live in an 1940s tudor house that has original built ins.  The built ins hold pottery and dishes. This one holds my wedding topper collection and is  one of a pair in the dining room.  I have a larger one in the nook in the kitchen.

I have storage over my garage/studio in the backyard.  This is where we also keep sleeping bags, golf clubs, ice chests and other misc. household stuff.

One corner of the attic holds my collection of Santa blow molds.

One corner holds my (messy, as I am adding to it week to week with estate sale finds) assortment of Christmas ornaments and doo-dads for crafting. I drag them out closer to the holidays for crafting. 

I also have some extra stuff up here...like a box of vintage boxes. I have trouble passing them by with the graphics. I also have some overflow crafting supplies up there like this big bag of vintage bump chenille which had its own blog post.  I am slowly crafting my way through it.

In one corner of the garage I also keep some of the props for my shows.

I wish I had some ultra organized space for all my collections, decorations and crafting supplies. I make do with what my house has and utilize every space I can. I also have a understanding husband.

I just pulled out my vintage Easter decorations.  It was easy to do as they were all in one area in my basement storage area.   This pile left me wondering where I store it all too?!!

Happy Weekend!

Sweet as Chocolate Storage

In my world I can NEVER have enough storage.  My studio is one of those rooms that is jammed packed and I am always trying to weasel more storage into it.  I was at a  local antique store the other day and saw this sweet Brown and Haley display shelf.  I liked the price.  I liked the flowers and I liked the sweet pink stripe at the bottom.

I just had to find a spot for that candy shelf in my studio.

As much as I loved the little turquoise highchair, it did not have much storage potential.  It fell into the eye candy category.

I swapped out the highchair for the candy shelf. This of course snowballed into lots of studio storage rearranging with the newly acquired space.

I had a bunch of these boxes made from an old sign.  They were tucked away in an out of the way spot and now I can enjoy their great green color and graphic appeal.

I still kept some eye candy like this silly toy stove and the pink pig.

My supply of mercury glass picks is easier to access now.

I had some vintage children's shoe boxes full of goodies that were tucked away in a cabinet. Now I can enjoy them more.

The shelf provided lots more storage.  Lots of things stayed in virtually the same spot, but It was fun to add new goodies and rearrange.

You can still see the sweet little graphic on the side as well.

My, oh, my storage makes me happy! As you can see my vintage finds almost go floor to ceiling....making the most of every available space!

ps. A friendly reminder that St. Patty's day Etsy will be listed tonight at 5 p.m. (pacific time)

You Asked...Storage

I often have a comment left on my blog asking how I store everything.  I take no offense to that as I do have a lot of collections and vintage decorations. I do not live in a big house. I utilize every nook and cranny that I can, but there are two major areas that I store things.

This is not a glamorous post.  My basement has cement walls and floor. The duct work is open on the ceiling. In my basement I have shelves. They are full. Very full. I store most of my holiday decorations in the basement.  My washer, dryer, freezer, water heater and furnace are also in this area.

When you walk in the door this is what you see.

To the left of the center wood divider there are three shelves that are full of Christmas.  For the most part I store in plastic bins.  Every space is taken with something. The large Santa faces live in plastic bags and hang from overhead pipes.  Everything to the right of the center wood divider is for assorted holidays.

You can see it is not a wide area for Christmas.  It is from one wood support beam to the other (they frame the photo).
Everything has a bin or a spot. This shelf is to the right when you walk in the door.  It is full as well.

To the left of the door is this shelf. That one is full too.  In addition to all my holiday stuff, I also store household misc. like a pancake griddle, batteries, fabric, extra kitchen supplies etc. 

I have a bin for pretty much every holiday.  Christmas (too many too count), Valentine Day (1 bin), St. Patrick's Day (1 small bin), Easter (4 bins), Fourth of July (2 bins) Halloween (4 bins), Thanksgiving (1 bin).

I also hang things from the ceiling. I put a nail in the wooden joists. The plastic buckets hold plastic easter eggs and holiday lights.

Above my freezer is more hanging stuff. All my plastic Halloween blo molds are in one bag. Some Easter hangs in another. A decorated Christmas wreath also hangs over here.

I also have storage above my garage in an attic. It has sloped walls so it is not the best, but it helps out.  It has a pull down ladder and this is what you see when you peek up. My wooden Santa bungie cord strapped to the sloped ceiling.

One corner of the garage attic holds my blo mold Santa collection

Another corner of the attic holds my insane amount of Christmas ornaments for crafting and other assorted Christmas.

The attic also holds more stuff like luggage, suitcases, skiis, golf clubs, ice chests and other misc gear.

Not a pretty post.  My storage is certainly not beautiful, but it does the trick and I know where things are.  My Dad is super organized so I grew up with things having a spot.  A good system to have, especially in a tiny house with a bunch of stuff! I also really love plastic bins. They are easy to stack and see what is inside.

I don't think a person can ever have enough storage....happy day!

 

IKEA Lust

I have been seeing this IKEA cart on a few blogs.  It is part of IKEA's spring line.  I love the color.  Luckily we have an IKEA here in Portland and I ran out there the other day. They had two in stock, so I grabbed one (it also comes in gray).

I put it together and decided it would work best in the studio for now.  I had no trouble filling it up and organizing it.  All my craft paint fit really well on the bottom shelf.
If you happen to venture out to an IKEA, they also have a Liberty of London look-a-like line right now.  Dish clothes, plates, napkins and glasses.  All kinds of fun springy stuff.

Glad I got that heads up in blogland about the cart...tis a happy day!

 

Eye Candy Organization

Half of the fun of crafting and collecting is figuring out to organize in an eye candy manner.

I love my collection of vintage wooden flatware trays (originally intended to sort your knives, spoons and forks).  They have an assortment of colors and patterns on the ends. I stack them up on a shelf in my studio.

The real fun comes when I take them out to start my Christmas crafting.  The trays hold my collection of vintage mercury beads sorted by color.

How can you not be happy when you have something like this to work from?

Nothing like sorted mercury glass beads to start out the crafting week!

I Know What You Are Thinking....

I KNOW sometimes when you are reading my posts you are thinking "Where in the heck does she store everything?"

I got all of my Christmas put away today...ALL of it.  I thought I may give a glimpse into where it all lives during the year.

My blow-mold Santa collection lives in a corner of my attic over the garage.  The largest Santa (usually inside by dining room window) lives at my parents house in their huge attic.

The remainder of my holiday decorations live in bins in my basement on shelves.  Christmas takes up the top two shelves on the left (the wooden post divides it).  The area to the right of the wooden post holds Halloween, Easter, Fourth of July, Valentine's day etc. I hang items from the ceiling and the wooden supports.

Stuffed to the gills!

When putting away decorations today, I had to snap a photo of some of my favorite ornaments before they hibernated to the bins for the winter. I love the flowers.

It is nice to get all my Christmas goodies organized and put away...on to the next holiday! 

Organization Procrastination

I am getting ready for my trip on Wednesday and have a very long list of things to do...VERY LONG.  However, due to the glitter that I bought this weekend, it snowballed into glitter organization.

The culprit.

I was going to put it in with my other glitter containers.  I have them stored in 5 areas in my studio.  This is not a good glitter system. The graphics on this box were cute and deserved to be displayed.

I had this shelf sitting in my garage and dragged it into my studio and then went to work dividing my glitter by color.

I am now happy with my glitter organization.  I still have two other drawers full of glitter, but now the CUTE glitter is out and can make me happy when I look at it.

I have now procrastinated further by doing a blog post on glitter organization.  I must go cross things off my list for the trip and get busy!

happy day!

 

Give Me an "O"

"O" for Organization!!!  When I show my estate sale finds I can often hear you whispering..."Where in the world does she put it all?"  Luckily I am pretty organized...on a scale of 1-10, I would give myself and 8.

I am going to show you some of the tips I have to keep things in order in the studio.

First, there is the obvious - glass jars.

Then there are the ugly plastic storage bins.  They just fit too neatly up on the top of my cupboard not to use them.  I have them labeled with tags that I just printed out on paper I cut from manila file folders. 

 

The tags look like old flashcards.

I tie little circular tags to knobs and tie with cute ribbons.

Sometimes I will label the drawer with a vintage label from something inside the drawer.  The drawer below with the old crepe paper label is full of that very thing!

 

Cigar boxes are labeled.

 

Sometimes in addition to a tag that is stuck onto a tin with a magnet, I will hot glue one of the item on a magnet as well.  I did this with this can that holds old buckles.

This old wooden box obviously holds cards of buttons.

The round tins that I am forever collecting become a tall tower. I hot glue old bingo pieces to magnets and then label each can with a little paper tag secured with the cute magnet.

Even suitcases used for storage have tags hanging from their handles.

No guessing what is in this tin.

 

Here is another example of putting an item on the outside of a tin for quick identification.

Just a little insight into my organization madness...

there really is a spot for everything!

A Little Pink File Box

When I returned from Farm Chicks I spent some time organizing the business cards I collected in my little pink file box.

I have used this system for awhile to keep track of my blogging friends.  I know I could keep the information on the computer somewhere, but I like the old fashioned look and feel of sorting thru my 3 x 5 cards.  I must admit that sometimes my mind is mush. I have met so many people in blog-land that it is hard for me to keep things straight sometimes.  After I have commented back and forth with a blog friend or if I have developed a relationship with them..they get added to my file box. 

My little pink box - estate sale find.

I found these terrific striped 3 x 5 cards at Office Max.  I thought they were much more charming than those ordinary looking index cards.

I couldn't find ABC dividers that I liked so I made some using assorted vintage looking scrapbook paper cut to size and then added the letter dividers.  I like that is all a mishmash of patterns and not super matchy/matchy.

I made an example card for myself.  If I have a business card I tape it to the side...they make the card more exciting.  I include the blog name and the name of the blogger, or if no blog, just the name.  I would include the home state and city, names of kids, collections or quirky finds. etc. I also list the email for the person and their address if I have it.  Basically any little fact that I need to remember!!!!

I hope this does not sound stalkerish, but rather my attempt to deal with my inadequate memory retention!

In the back of the file box I tuck cards or notes I have received from blog-land friends.  Everything is all neat and in one spot.  My little pink file box is a very good thing!

And just as a side note...I have been busy in the studio working on some red, white and blue fourth of July fun.  I hope to have my things listed on Etsy this Sunday.

Have a great weekend...hope to hit some estate sales tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.