This week I bought a ‘destash’ of metal letters from another artist. As I sorted the letters to go into my studio, it reminded me of how much I LOVE how my alphabets are organized – and I thought I would share this ‘reblog’ with you.

Letter-ary Mess

Do you feel overwhelmed by the alphabet?  I did!  I had so many chipboard alphabets, monogram stamps, grungeboard alphabets, letter charms, etc.  but flung all over my studio.  So one day, I decided to conquer the alphabet soup that was taking over my studio.

The first thing that struck me was the wealth of letters that I had.  I had packages of this and that everywhere – but I don’t normally use my letters all in one style.  For example, I made a piece the other day, and this was how I titled it.

So if this is my style, there is no reason for me to keep things in the packaging they came in.  Instead I decided to abandon all of the original packaging and break everything apart into more usable single- letter bins.

Consonant Containment

Looking around my studio, I had one kitchen cabinet in a corner that was just filled with odds and ends catalogs, magazines and even books that I’d wanted to read at some point.  But is this necessary to have in my studio?  I normally read in the family room (while my husband is watching Ghost Hunters (shhhh!))  So I purged a lot of that material and moved the rest into a shelving unit in my family room.

I measured the space and figured out what size I could accommodate for the full alphabet.  Then off to the store!  I verified the dimensions to make sure that my kitchen cabinet could hold enough boxes for each letter on the shelves and that my largest individual letters would fit in the containers I found.  I ended up purchasing Kassett boxes from IKEA, for $3.99/pair.  They are inexpensive, and roomy enough to hold a lot of pieces or varying sizes.

I took over the kitchen table and started sorting everything that was greater than an inch in size and put it into the boxes.  I broke apart sets, discarded packaging and filled them with glee.

You wouldn’t believe how much great alphabet stuff gets overlooked when it’s kept in it’s original packaging.  The adage, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ – is very true.  Look at all this treasure, and it’s only the letter ‘V’!  I began to have images of that vampire on Sesame Street that would say the alphabet letter of the day….

Metal, chipboard, cardstock stickers, even individually packaged monogram-sized alphabet stamps go into the boxes.

Shaped Up and Punctual

Once I started breaking up the alphabets, I found numbers, punctuation and generic shapes could also become a part of this new organization.  Three more boxes were purchased and everything still fit nicely.

I stuck an identifying sticker onto the label holder on the front of the boxes.

Little Letters

As I mentioned before, I use the boxes for anything about an inch or larger.  I figured that really tiny letters would get lost in that cavernous space and be hard to see.  So for the little things, such as scrabble tiles, letter beads and letter eyelets and brads I needed a different solution.

I chose to put these into my ScrapRack, using the embellishment storage pages.

Each letter occupies a little Ziploc bag inside of the pocket.

So I can easily see the tiny contents inside.  In this scenario, I made a pocket not only for each letter, but each number got one as well.

And now I have an organized, and very usable collection.  No more alphabet soup!

So the result is an inexpensive solution that is easy to reach, easy to access (and keep organized) and attractive.

So why not get on your crafting apron and shout out, “No Soup For You!” to your studio?  You’ll be so happy you did.

Originally Posted on Julie Fei-Fan Balzer’s Organization Week Challenge: http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/balzer_designs/2012/01/organization-week-specific-solutions-part-2.html