It’s a Christmas-in-July miracle! I organized my art supplies! I’ve been art journaling in “small” spaces for years. From the floor of my high school bedroom to a desk with one drawer in my first dorm room to a few bins under my bed in our apartment. One day I will have an awesome, wonderfully organized office/studio, but that’s still years away. After hundreds of scrapbook layouts and art journals, I’ve realized two things about organizing art supplies in a small area — everything needs a home and the main items needs to be easy-access. Because if you need to grab a stapler real quick, you want it to be right there, not under a pile of paper scraps you dumped on it after your last project. I was doing okay with the everything-needs-a-home bit and I’ve had an okay-system going, but it’s been in distress for awhile and I could never keep it clean. So I bought that super popular Ikea Raskog cart and decided it was finally time to get my life together. So far I really, really like it and it makes me want to make all the things.
My art journals have been living in that corner in our room since we moved in 6 months ago (and they had been living under my desk in our last place 6 months before that, oops), so I knew I needed them off the floor, but still in a place where I could admire them. Having them on top makes me want to create a million more art journals. The rest of my 8.5×11” scrapbooks are in our living room.
For the bottom two levels, I decided to organize my tools for easy access. I bought some cheap, mesh cup holder things at Ikea too. I wanted my tools to be easy access and organized by type, so that I had no choice to put it back where it belongs. Plus if I’m painting in another room, I can easily push the cart to the living room to work from while I ~create~.
The rest of my supplies, like my paints and papers and all the weird stuff I’ve accumulated over the years live in (mostly) organized low plastic bins under my bed. Like I said, mostly organized.
Somethings are still in half-way organized stacks, but this will do for the meantime.
And for good measure here is a photo of Pip giving bitch-face (I raised her well), while she sits in or on whatever I am currently photographing. Thanks, cat-child.
I love your little art trolley! I need to organize my space better. Very inspirational. I love your cat too!