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Nightmare on Scrapbook Street - Lessons from a Scrapbooking Organizer by Michelle Schmidt

It was an eerily quiet Sunday. The kids had gone to their friend's house; somewhere in the bowels of our home my hubby was hunkered down in front of a football game. I sat at the kitchen table gazing into a cup of steaming tea, allowing the stress of the whirlwind week to lift from my shoulders.

It had been so long since I had had some me time that I was in a type of jet lag. Then it hit me! I had hours all to myself and free from the worries of day-to-day life. It took me a few minutes that morning to realize this day was mine and I could do anything I wanted without interruption. I jumped out of my chair and cleared the table off. What I wanted to do was scrapbook until my eyeballs fell out. Ideas popped into my head for several great pages and I knew I had all the scrapbooking supplies to get them done!

I raced to the closet and flung the doors open. Out flew fabric, thread, yarn and a sleeping bag. After shoving them aside I began ripping out shoeboxes full of pens, stickers, die cuts, nifty embellishments, and brads. I had every scrapbooking tool known to man and I was determined to use them!

I grabbed a chair to reach the top shelves and tugged on the stack of card stock and scrapbook paper. It was jammed in there so tightly it would not budge. I yanked and pulled; suddenly the whole thing gave way and flew from my hands, paper shot across the room. The box that had been on top of the paper crashed down on top of my head and the scissors from within it scattered. I lost my balance and grabbed for the shelves, down I went, taking all the contents of the shelf with me.

But never fear, a sore hip and bruised ego was not enough to keep me down. I piled up the shoeboxes and carried them to the table. Then I began clearing up the heaps of paper, adhesive, scissors, cutting mat, and templates. I retrieved my son's plastic wheelbarrow and loaded it up with all my pictures. Then I hauled it all over to the kitchen table.

I sifted through the heaps of supplies. I knew what I wanted to do first. The fact is, I am never short on ideas. The one thing that I am always short of is time and this day of scrapbooking was going to teach me why.

I searched through the photos. I couldn't find the ones from the summer vacation. Therefore, I switched gears and decided to work with my son's birthday pictures. I moved to the pile of paper. Now, where were the blue and red striped pieces I had purchased just for those pictures? I couldn't find the paper so I went back to the pile of pictures. I found some cute baby pictures that were curling badly on the edges, found some paper that would work and then started to dive through the shoeboxes. I opened the one that said stamps; I found old candy wrappers, broken McDonald toys and one rubber stamp. I opened the one that read stickers; I found dried up pens, three hair ribbons and a glue stick the dog had used as a chew toy. Nothing, and I mean nothing was where I thought it should be and of course I haven't learned to see through cardboard so I had to open every single box to find this out.

I had just planted myself in front of the first page and begun to fit the baby pictures into photo corners and decorate the page with lace when I heard my husband grumbling from the den.

"Honey, when will dinner be ready?" He called.

I looked up and noticed the time. No! Where had my day gone?

That was the last day I spent wasting my time on a closet full of scrapbooking supplies that I never used for lack of organization. Now, when I have an hour to myself I can get several pages done. How? After fixing a gourmet TV dinner for my husband, I took the remainder of the day and organized all my stuff in the clear stackable drawers that sat unused in the laundry room. I used drawer organizers to separate my rubber stamps and stickers. On the other side, I placed pens and pencils. I even separated each type of embellishment into little cubicles. I used hanging files and scrapbook paper organizers for each color paper and several for themed paper. There wasn't an extra room in the house that I could call the scrapbook room so I stacked it all back in the closet. It was amazing how much less space it took and the next time I had even an hour to myself I would know exactly where everything was!

So the important lesson here is that becoming a scrapbooking organizer, whether it comes naturally or not, will save you hours of frustration and will allow you to devote more time doing what you love.

About the Author

Michelle Schmidt is a professional scrapbook designer who teaches others how to use their computer to create great layouts. For more creative ideas for ">scrapbooking organizer solutions, visit her site at www.pixelpaintpapers.com.