scrapbook paper organizer

Okay, this is just genius.

Does your scrapbook/craft closet look like this?

Or maybe you're lucky enough to have a whole room dedicated to these kind of pursuits.  Anyway, I haven't scrapbooked in a LONG time, but I've been meaning to get back into it, if only to finally order prints of my son's first 20 months and put them in an album already!  When I did scrapbook on a regular basis, I bought packs of paper when I saw it on clearance (or in places like Ross or Goodwill, believe it or not!).  All that paper ended up being crammed into this big white box.

Which was falling apart, incidentally.  Clearly I needed a better system.

One night, I found this solution on pluckymomo during some insomniac craft blog browsing.  This blog has a ton of brilliant ideas (check out her awesome picnic play mat under "tutorials") and a great playlist to boot.  When I saw her idea for a scrapbook paper organizer, I knew I wanted to try it.

So I ordered a set of those white wire storage grids from Walmart's website since they're not available in the store (at least they have site to store!).  They were around $16, which is more than I usually spend on just about anything, but given the fact that most of my storage containers come from the dollar store, I figured I could splurge just this once.  They arrived at my store today, so I went and picked them up along with some zip cable ties in the hardware section.

Once my kid went down for a nap, I got to work.  Turns out this is SO easy.  The only tedious part is fastening all the cable ties and then snipping off the excess when you're done.  Just one episode of Phineas and Ferb a cooking show, and I was done.  I got out my paper and started filling the shelves.

How cool is that??

I mostly organized mine by color.  I love how it's so much easier to thumb through the stacks now, rather than dumping all the paper out of a box to see what I have.  I had to rearrange some stuff in the closet to make it fit (the grids each measure a little over 14" square), but doing so sparked a total re-organization of the entire closet, so that's always a good thing.

Ahhhh.  Much better.  Let the scrapbooking begin.  :o)

Linking up to Creations by Kara!