Organizing Fool! {Ribbon Storage}

Yikes... Over the years, my ribbon and trims stash has exponentially exploded. I started out with one plastic box like this:


It worked well when my ribbon stash was confined just to one box. Everything was organized by color. No problem. At a glance I could pick out the size and color I needed. Then it turned into this:


Not so easy to peruse when looking for just the right embellishment! Searching the web gave me lots of ideas. Lots and lots of cute, adorable ideas.


My problem with these is that I like my craft stuff organized and protected from dust and accidents (just waiting to happen). I don't like the idea of having dangly ribbons hanging out holes, or mounted on rods. What a pain if I needed to take out the entire roll of ribbon. I wanted to do something to reduce the amount of space my ribbon stash was taking up. (No, getting rid of it was no an option, LOL) Being on a thrifty kick, I also wanted to see if I figure out a solution with things I had on hand.

I did take some inspiration from this:


On several scrapbooking forums, crafters talked about the Cropper Hopper Spools and Clips. Doesn't that bobbin look familiar? Can you see the light bulb going off in my head?

Since I wind my DMC on bobbins, I thought "Couldn't I do that with ribbon?" Like in the basket above, only separate like the CH spools. The CH clips didn't trip my trigger, though... adding extra bulk and what if the ribbon was too thick? Would the clips hold?


Do you know dollar stores are a great source of inspiration? Oh yeah! Look what I found for just (I'm sure you guessed) one dollar?!?





This is what I came up with!

I took scrap mat board and cut rectangular pieces. I labeled and wound the ribbon on each one. After winding a few of them, I realized how much space those round spools were taking up!


I made two size bobbins. For 1/4" widths and less, I used 2 x 2 3/4". Larger sizes, I used 2 x 4 1/4".


With the exception of a half dozen wide ribbons, all of that stash mess I had fit into ONE small drawer! How awesome is that?


To keep the ribbons nicely held in place, that's where my dollar store find came into play. One hair band wrapped around each bobbin keeps it neat and tidy.


I found these cute little containers in a box I have for misc do-dads.
Perfect, don'tcha thing?
To organize my ribbon stash, all I spent was $1 and two evenings worth of time. Everything else I had on hand.


P.S. I had 100 bobbins of ribbon and trim in my one drawer.


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