My Scrap Space – Function over beauty

Sharing my space has been on my to do list for a while.  But my desk is often the collect all in the house, so sometimes it’s hard to get it photographed (and it’s still not perfectly clean, but it’s good enough!)

I’ve moved my space several times since we’ve been in this house.  It was never functional enough or something.  I *think* and hope that this is the final move.  Our house is very modest and we don’t have an extra room or much floor space to have a “space” of my own.  Besides, I really enjoy being with my family.  We spend all our time together anyway (DH runs a business from home, and we homeschool).  Being together is an important part of our family.  I love to be able to scrap for a few minutes when I’m done with my chores and the kids are playing quietly.

The theme of my space if function over beauty.  For a while, I had my own cabin on our property.  But it was way too lonely.  I didn’t spend as much time scrapping, and when I did, I didn’t enjoy it.  I moved my stuff back into our office area and with a few minor adjustments to the cabinetry, we made it work.  It’s not beautiful, but it’s with my family, and it works.  (The space is about 1/4 of the space in the cabin, so I do still use the cabin as storage for the items I don’t use often).

This is the full view of my space.  It is just a small corner in our office area.  It is open to the rest of the house, but you can’t really see it because it’s basically a hallway.  (thus I couldn’t get a good straight on photo – I had to snap from the doorway across the hall).

It’s not beautiful, but it’s all about function.  I’ll explain piece by piece some of the details I like that work especially well for me.

(As you can see in this picture, the garbage can isn’t the most “pretty” thing, but it’s extremely functional right there to my right as I’m cutting scraps and have packaging garbage or whatever, it’s very functional being right at my right hand and right below my paper trimmer).

First, is my desktop.  Nothing fancy here.  I have all the tools and embellishments I use regularly on the desktop (the canisters contain buttons).

I didn’t get a good photo, but you can see, the shelf right above my desk has my cricut & printer.  My cricut is always connected to my computer (which is on the left of the desk on the “office desk”.  It fits perfectly on this shelf, and when I use it, I can just pull it out to the edge and the full 12x12 mats fit.  I find that I use the cricut a lot more when it stays connected to my computer.

This photo is nothing fancy, but just a little tidbit of advice.  I have a foam square right on the edge of the shelf.  I stick my needle(s) in it so they are easy to find when I need to floss a button (because I use buttons a lot!)  When the foam gets worn out, I just put a new pop-dot foam up.

The second shelf (the shelf above the cricut) has a basket for my stamps and punches.  The shelf is shared with office/house stuff, so it isn’t all mine.  But as you can see, the second row is my BIA and a few other things on the same shelf.  Stuff used not as frequently is pushed to the back.

We already had this key hook on the wall (because this is also next to our back door).  I just repurposed it for random things that hang and I use frequently.

This is my favorite part of the space.  It is the shelf below the desk (the desktop is at standing height – specific to my standing height).

My favorite part of the space is what we did with my patterned paper.  Because we didn’t want to spend much money getting the space functional, I used the existing paper storage I had (I purchased this crate at Home Depot).  However, my husband built a slide out shelf to put it on.  The drawer slides are self closing, so I just pull out the bin when I want to find my paper, and then just push it to get it started closing and it closes completely on its own!  Ahh…I love fancy hardware.

To the right on this shelf, I have my cardstock and stacks.  To the right of that (sorry no close up) I have a three drawer sterilite bin for scraps.  I have two, one for solids and one for patterned papers.

   This bin contains my patterned paper sorted by manufacturer, and my stickers and alphas on binder rings, also sorted by manufacturer.

The upper cabinetry to the left is shared with the office space.  Inside one cabinet I have a magnetic sheet with my Paper Trey dies on it.  (fabulous way to store the metal dies).  I also have my photos, my crop a dile and an empty space where my camera resides when it’s not being used. The next cabinet is also shared.  But I have my magazines, idea books, photo paper and blank DVDs on the bottom shelf with my apothecary-like jar full of ribbon.  Above that I have some random punches that didn’t fit in my other baskets, jars of flowers and my mists.

Below the paper shelf, I have some random bins for other storage and other less used things like my scoring board.

So while my room isn’t pretty, it’s very functional.  And sometimes, when the situations in our life call for it, function is more important than beauty. 

I challenge you to embrace the space you have, however little or big it is (even if it’s the dining room table and stuff in totes) and focus on function.  When a space is functional, you can be more productive.