Craft Room Organizing

Today’s post just might be the most exciting post I’ve ever written. Just picture me over here as giddy as Monica Geller embarking on her “I don’t need a man jam plan.” Please tell me someone else remembers that Friends episode?! Today my friends, I am taking you on the grand tour of my favorite room in our home, my craft room. This post has been years in the making and I finally think this room is DONE done. But I know no room is ever really done, so I’m calling it done enough. Today we are going to open all the drawers, peek behind every curtain, and check out all the ways I tackled craft room organizing. Let’s go!

More Than Just A Craft Room

I always use the term “craft room” for this space, because that’s how it started. But how’s it going? Yes, it’s the place where glitter bombs explode, Halloween costumes are sewed, and light fixtures are painted. But it’s also a refuge when I need some peace and quiet. Sometimes I pull up a stool and write in a journal, diffuse some oils, or color in one of those fancy adult coloring books. Other days it’s the space where I blog from. Occasionally I pour through ALL of the old magazine clippings I’ve hoarded kept over the years for non-digital design inspiration. During the pandemic, it was my office away from the office when we Zoomed 24-7.

A better term for this space might be office/craft room/Angie’s retreat where the kids sometimes (okay….all the time) find me. But that’s too many characters for the name placard that will someday sit outside this room for official house tours. I kid, but that would be neat. It is nice that between the craft room and my vintage roll-top desk just outside the room, I have space all my own to work and be creative.

I love this photo below of the craft room and hallway desk space. It’s such a mullet. All business in the front with my laptop at the desk where I often write. Then party in the back with who knows what crazy project is going on.

Craft Room Organizing: Craft Storage Cabinet

The major workhorse in my craft room is the craft storage cabinet. It holds all the things. And by all the things, I mean ALL the things. It’s also a chameleon and changes regularly. Reorganizing the cabinet has become a regular activity as needs change.

Like many items in our home, the craft storage cabinet has a story. I believe in filling our homes with the things that matter, and this cabinet is for sure one of those things. The cabinet was one of several pieces of furniture that came with our first house, a small 1910 cottage in Maine. The sellers also asked if we wanted their couch but we declined. Second-hand upholstered pieces creep me out. I’m thankful we declined said couch because according to neighborhood lore, the seller’s father passed away on it and wasn’t found for days. The jury’s out on whether or not this was true. There were some tall tales in that neighborhood! But I like to believe we did the right thing by passing on the couch.

Back to the cabinet, which came into our possession in May of 2010. We did a bunch of work to repair it but never used it in our home in Maine. When we moved to Vermont in 2015, somehow survived the great moving purge and came with us. When the craft room became our first major project here, suddenly the old cabinet from Maine that we never used was the perfect fit for this space. I refinished it with Annie Sloan chalk paint in Louis Blue and it has been my go-to storage piece for craft room organizing ever since.

Craft Cabinet Shelves

The top of the cabinet holds all kinds of things. Like baby books for the girls, my address book, adult coloring books, pretty pens and markers, garden journals, gratitude journals, and more. I also work sporadically as a Young Living brand partner so I like keeping samples here for friends and family.

The middle shelf of my craft storage cabinet contains all my oily tools and accessories. I may not actively sell essential oils anymore, but I still use them and truly love them. I’m always making rollers, room sprays, and even my own candles. All those supplies are kept here. I also have a stack of gratitude journals. Writing in a gratitude journal has become a near-daily habit and I can’t believe I’ve already filled six journals. My favorite journals have been the ones from Rifle Paper.

The bottom shelf of the craft cabinet has all my miscellaneous crafting supplies. Everything from glue, paper punches, googly eyes, stamps, ink, pom pom makers, knitting accessories, wire, fishing lines, etc. are all stored here. I used to keep craft paint in here as well but since we built Rowan her own art table downstairs, I moved all the kid-appropriate painting supplies down there for her.

My favorite part of this cabinet is having ALL of my journals readily available and in one place. In case you haven’t noticed I’m kind of a journal lover. It’s not uncommon for me to pop in here just before bedtime, pull a journal off the shelf, and write in it for 5-10 minutes. Bea’s baby book has been my project du jour. It makes journaling feel less overwhelming when I do it consistently over time.

Craft Cabinet Drawers

The contents of the craft cabinet drawers just might be my secret sauce to feeling like an organized, put-together adult. Most days…I feel like a hot mess express mom of two crazy little girls. But then I open my craft cabinet drawer of cards and I feel like I got it! Not really, but it does help.

The drawer on the left is for my card collection. There are note cards, birthday cards, thinking of you cards, and more. I have a habit of buying cards when I come across the ones I love. If I’m shopping for birthday cards and see a couple I really like, I pick them up. When I’m at a craft fair and find some beautiful thank you cards, I purchase them. I like having a stash of cards I LOVE at all times. It’s so much easier for me to just shop my card drawer when I need a card than to go to the store for one.

The drawer on the right is for gift tags. One of the other major uses of the craft room is for gift wrapping. I love gift wrapping. Like bring over a bottle of wine and all your Christmas presents and let me go to town, oh no it’s no problem, thank you for letting ME wrap your presents because this is my idea of a good time. So naturally, I hoard gift tags when I find ones I love or during that post-Christmas everything is 70% off in the Target Christmas wrapping aisle sale.

Craft Cabinet Bottom

The bottom of the craft storage cabinet is for all things sewing, other than the fabrics which are stored in a vintage trunk. Someday, I would love to learn how to sew quilts and have my sewing machine out on the craft desk at all times. But in this season of life, sewing Halloween costumes for littles and bear clothes for Teddy is where I’m at.

The baskets on the shelf have all kinds of string, ribbon, and other trimmings. Most of it is recycled or picked up from thrift stores. I also keep twine and jute down here which has come in handy more times than I can count.

Craft Room Organizing: Table With Storage

Let’s move on to the craft table and storage area, shall we?! The craft room table is another piece I absolutely love. One, because it cost us precisely zero dollars. It’s built from repurposed materials like old shelving and fencing. Two, because it’s a workhorse.

The craft table stores so many things that I grab regularly. I also love that just about every storage accessory is vintage. Like a vintage sugar mold filled with pencils, scissors, and rulers. Or the old ceramic vase overflowing with paintbrushes. I even found an old tape dispenser for wrapping that reminds me of the ones we had in elementary school.

Vintage Card Catalog Storage

One of my favorite storage solutions I used during craft room organizing was a pair of metal library card catalog drawers. These drawers are filled to the brim mostly with office supplies.

One drawer holds extra ink cartridges for the printer. Another is filled with pens, mini notebooks, sticky notes, and other writing paraphernalia. There is one whole drawer of tape. We’re talking masking tape, scotch tape, invisible tape, packing tape, and even a roll of duct tape. And a last drawer filled with the extra essential oil roller bottles.

The best move I made in this space as of recently, was adding a power strip with USB to the top of the desk. It’s essentially a fancy data strip extension cord. But what a game changer that I no longer crawl underneath my craft table to plug in a hot glue gun or my cell phone charger.

Craft Room Organizing: Corralling Small Items Together

One of my favorite tips for creating a functional, organized, and stylish craft table is to corral small items together. What that looked like for me was using a tiered tray to hold things I reach for regularly, like basic wrapping supplies and tools on the bottom tray, office supplies like paper clips in jars on the top tray, and floral frogs collected in a brass bowl. Having the things I use most right here is handy and grouping like items together makes it cohesive.

Storage Underneath A Craft Table

The things I use less often can be found tucked underneath the craft table. For me, it’s a handy spot for a printer and paper supplies since I don’t print things very often. However, if you’re someone who prints things often, ducking under the table to retrieve things and reload the paper would get old pretty fast.

One of my prized possessions is my collection of magazine clippings. Organizing magazine clippings in black design binders has been something I’ve been doing for a long time. There must be 15 years’ worth of clippings in those binders. I don’t add to them or look at them often, but I love having them tucked under my desk for when I need to pull them out for inspiration. I tend to pull pages out and tack them to the bulletin board when I start a design project in our home. Although, I feel like I’ve permanently had the bedroom/bathroom inspiration up there for the last five years. Those projects are coming to a close soon-ish (emphasis on ish) and I’m anxious to pull images for our next project.

Underneath a craft table is a convenient place to store other items that aren’t used as often. Boxes, packing paper, tissue paper, and other bulkier supplies have found their way underneath my desk. It’s also a great place to stash works in progress when it’s time to quickly clear off a desk. I usually keep a basket somewhere to tuck half-finished works away. Right now it’s next to the blue craft storage cabinet. Hot tip…if you place a burlap bag on top of said project basket, your children are approximately 0.0087% less likely to get into it. True story backed by years of intense research.

This concludes my craft room organizing tour. Things I forgot to picture…the essential oil shelf, coordinating wrapping paper storage rack, and a vintage metal trunk filled with fabric. I swear I legitimately forgot to picture them and I’m not hiding dead bodies, a collection of kewpie dolls, or bags of celebrity hair. Or am I?! Kidding!