It's All in the Drawers!

    Over the past 19 or so years I have tried and discarded many different organizational bags, boxes and assorted methods of sorting. The most important discovery I have made is that I only keep things organized if the system I use to sort them is quick to get out and put away. The easy access answer? Drawers. I keep almost everything in a drawer or file of some kind. I find that it is easier to open and close a drawer than to lug out a plastic storage box and open it just to put away what I did not use on the layout in progress.
     A year or three ago I purchased a couple standard hardware storage boxes. (You know the ones your hubby has all his screws and nails and etc in.) It was perfect for sorting my chipboard letters and various metal alphabets in. The only trouble was, it was not very portable. After one very long weekend of trial and error, my very sew-talented mother and I invented a bag that fits snugly around it to keep the drawers in place while traveling.
      Personally, I would not recommend it for the very small buttons and loose etc, as they do tend to gravitate from drawer to drawer, but it works fairly well for my chipboard letters.  To solve the gravitation problem I cut tagboard to the size of the drawers and insert the tagboard snugly on top of my little things. (note: I have strung a piece of twine in one end of the tag board to use as a pull string for easy removal.)
     I keep my smaller unpainted chipboard letters by letter in the smaller drawers so its easy to dig through and mix and match fonts on the unpainted letters as needed, and the alphabet sets that have color by color. This way when I know I need a white letter, I can see all of my white letters in one place.
    So here are some shots of my perfect little drawers. I hope it inspires!