OFFENDING HOME OFFICE: PART 6

With snow falling outside I was sorely tempted today to just hide under the covers, but the night before I had remembered that besides the two packed drawers and two full sacks of ephemera I also had two or more storage envelopes full of it taking up valuable space on my bookshelves.  The sorting and culling needed to be done.

So after braving the 10 degree weather, two inches of snow, and wind to feed and release our critters I ran for the warmth of the office upstairs to start again.

First I tidied up a little bit of the leftover mess from the day’s before organizational efforts and then dove in to the first drawer.  

Everything was all mixed together, so I made stacks on my work table of I went, breaking it down by states.

 

Once the states were all laid out I then labeled 1 gallon zipper bags with the appropriate state and site we visited location, and year if I remembered the year off the top of my head. I then put all the small items into the bag.  If an item was too big to fit in the bag it was placed under the bag in the appropriate stack.  The work actually went faster than I expected.

Soon I was into the second drawer and discovered it was all Disney World souvenirs.  This isn’t surprising considering we had been over 30 times.  So I bagged the small stuff up into numerous bags right there at the drawers. 

This I followed up with the items in the bags sitting around the cabinet.  As I went I culled out things that were obviously major duplicates like travel brochures—how many do I actually need of the Fire and Ice cave and volcano to do a single layout? 

 I kept the better copies of the road maps that I might use, while discarding the tattered ones.  

This resulted in a large reduction of materials to deal with. It also resulted in bags of burnable trash and magazines to recycle. I have to admit there was a certain satisfaction in that.

I then bagged up the storage envelopes from the bookshelf to go with these Disney bags because they were both totally Disney as well. 

 It soon became clear to me that my dreams of getting it all down to one drawer were not going to happen, especially since I knew of items that were still in the camper and my room from recent trips. 

So I put the Disney stuff in the second drawer and all other trips in the bottom drawer, laying them flat.I did them in this order because there was actually a lot more of the miscellaneous other trips and it is far better to put the main weight in the lowest drawer, especially when dealing with the Sterilite drawers I was using. 

The end result was two organized drawer of starter kits for scrapbook page making when I had the time.  I could choose a trip then grab the appropriate ephemera and scrap to my heart’s content without having to dig through numerous  junk piles of papers, cards, receipts and airline tickets.  

This is something that has held me back in times past.  When I want to scrap I want to do it right then.  Not dig around looking for things.  I want to be able to lay out what I have in its entirety and go from there. I cannot tell you how many times I've started to do a layout and realized I had no idea where to look for the souvenir map of a historical landmark or something was and by the time I found it would be either out of time or the mood to scrap.  These pre-packaged kits will now make that possible quickly and easily.

When I am ready to scrap I'll grab a bag, print out the photos I want to go with it and be designing a layout in no time at all.  How fun will that be?

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My plans for future trips is to bag as I go while traveling.  I always have gallon Ziplocs with me whether I am flying or driving so it won’t be hard to do at all.  I should have thought of this years ago. 

Once it is warmer that below freezing and I can work in the camper without freezing my tush off I’ll bag the materials from our last trip out there and then add it to the bottom drawer.  I’ve already gathered the stuff from my room. 

So this project today once again not only organized a hot spot it helped free up an area on the room bookshelves, helped take excess out of my room and will, when it is warmer, give items from the camper a place to go.  A major plus all the way around. 

Jan who dreaming of taking another trip and adding more to scrap to this collection soon in OK