Thursday, April 1, 2010

My new Ribbon Storage System

I used to have my ribbons in four different places - I had rolls of plain ribbon in a plastic ribbon storage box, short bits of ribbon wound around themselves in a plastic embellishment box, and odds and ends in shoeboxes mixed in with my fibers and lace etc. It was hard to know where to look to find anything and the mini-rolls kept getting lost in the clutter...
I was thinking of getting a wire mesh basket to put my ribbons in and threading them through the sides so I could pull bits out as needed, and I've looked in Ross a few times to try to get my hands on a suitable container, but I saw a better idea on the Crafty Storage Blog - a few days ago they featured someone who put all their spools of ribbon into a woven basket and threaded them through the back... that sounded perfect to me - baskets are MUCH cheaper than those expensive plastic boxes or metal tins, and you could fit a heck of a lot of ribbon into the right-sized basket.

Yesterday I went to Ross and I found the perfect Ribbon Basket - it's woven from seagrass so it's very flexible and easy to poke the ribbons through wherever I want them, and the spaces between the spokes are large enough for a ribbon up to an inch wide. The only thing it doesn't have is a top to keep the dust (and cats) out, but a piece of cardboard will fix that.

I put the larger ribbons towards the bottom so they wouldn't cover up the narrow ones, and arranged them in a kind of rainbow all around the basket. The only ribbons that I did NOT put into the basket are my very narrowest spools of plain ribbon - since I already have an expensive ribbon box for them, I left them alone.The basket is up on top of my paper storage drawers (out of cat-reach) and sitting on a lazy susan so I can swing it around and access all four sides easily.

Total Cost -
Seagrass basket from Ross - $6.99
Lazy Susan from Ikea - $7.99 (I think, I bought it some time ago)
Time taken to sort and thread all my ribbons - a couple of hours
Having my ribbons stored where I can actually see them all at the same time - priceless

10 comments:

Seongsook Duncan said...

Wow~ you have so many beautiful ribbons. Great idea to store them. Thanks for sharing.

hiscreaton2 said...

Karen, Wow! You did a great job! What a fun way to find what you are looking for AND the best thing is you can GET to it. Priceless.

Paula S. said...

Great idea! Having easy access to something always makes me soooo much more likely to use it. Thanks for the tip.

Lyneen said...

What a great idea...

anne said...

Karen, I'm so glad to see that my idea worked for you! :) Thanks so much for posting the link to this post in your comment. It looks great!

this is fun said...

Clever and funny idea. It looks like the ribbons would get tangled but they don't!

Stephanie said...

I really like your basket. It is so pretty with the ribbons sticking out. I envy you having a place that is out of cat-reach. Mine make ribbon storage a bigger challenge than it should be. *eyes rolling* Mine has to be completely enclosed or one of my kitties will eat it and another will play with it.

Anne-Marie said...

What a clever idea. It looks so pretty as well.

Susan S said...

Very creative - love it.

susan

www.Susan-MyThoughtsMyheart.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Very clever! I make baskets so I will make one to use for my ribbons.
thanks for your tip!!