Workspace Wednesday | Melanie Louette

Hi, everyone! Melanie here for the Workspace Wednesday. I’m happy to say that I have something in common with Simple guru Cathy Z - both of us use our dining room as a scrapbook space! 

I have a very small house, space is at a premium, and I don’t have an extra room for myself. When I started scrapbooking years ago, I slowly took over the dining room little by little. Today, it is fondly referred to by my kids and husband as "the room formerly known as dining room," aka Mom’s scrap room - though they sometimes drop the "s" at the beginning of the word if it’s particularly messy. 

We are in the midst of repainting the entire house this summer, and doing a MAJOR de-clutter of every room in the house, including many years’ worth of unused and neglected scrap supplies. I am not showing full pics here because, well, it just looks bare and gross right now,. Everything has been taken off the walls, and I have basically swatched nearly 20 shades of paint in every room trying to find a perfect one. (I finally did. YAY!) We painted this room dark grey about 5 years ago (what was I thinking in such a small space, right?), and I am really, really going to enjoy the almost white walls that are about to happen. 

Because this room is dual purpose (we do sometimes actually eat in here, LOL), I’m constantly on the lookout for multi-purpose storage, trying to find stuff that looks good and not overly container-y looking, and that is a challenge. I’ve also decided this past year that I want to pare down my supplies to a bare minimum. I recently gave away five pizza boxes of old supplies to a friend who teaches art to kids. Coloured cardstock (I only kept white, grey and kraft), a ton of patterned paper, embossing powders, Thickers and many embellishments got the heave-ho. I am slowly Konmarie-ing years’ worth of supplies, and man, it feels really good. 

Ali Edwards posted a photo of these bamboo Ikea boxes on her Facebook group a while back, and I decided to try them out. I’m sold! They look great, and they fit 3x4 documenter cards perfectly. I will be going back for a few more sets. They come as a set of two, and the bigger size is great for 6x4 cards, which I don’t have a lot of. But they would also make a neat little box for 4x6 stamp sets. I love, love them. They come with a lid that is perfect for holding embellishments while you scrap (I am the worst at losing stuff on the table when I scrap, anyone else?) or you can actually use it to close the box and put the cards out of sight, kind of like an index card box.

I also have the ever-popular Ikea Raskog cart. For a long while, it just accumulated dust in a corner, but since I’ve been re-organizing my stuff, I’ve found it super handy to push into the living room to sort stuff or work on a project while I watch TV. In the two lower racks, I have more Ikea storage (plastic divider bins that fit neatly into the cart itself), and I store older Documenter cards and embellishments in those two containers. I’m currently storing older embellishments in the old SC kit boxes on the bottom, but will likely try to figure out a different solution. I can’t bear to throw away these boxes, and I know one day I will find the perfect project for them. 

I have an older Ikea Expedit in my dining room that holds my paper, books, stamps, and tools in various baskets. I’m always working on paring it down as I find it’s easy to just throw stuff into a basket when cleaning up, which ends in chaos if I don’t keep at it. I store all of my stamps in two SC 6x8 binders. I used the page protectors that came with each binder, and I love how it is accessible and easy to leaf through. Recent stamps that I have yet to use get stored in a wire basket, which I keep together with my inks, stored in a black box on the shelf. These are the items I reach for the most, and I have them at arm’s length from the table when I scrap. Recent SC kits are also stored in a basket in the cubby under the stamps. I don’t break up my kits because I prefer easy access to them if I need a particular item I know came from a specific kit. Otherwise, I don’t think I’d be able to find anything! Another reason I don’t break up my kits is that the zippered pouches they now come in are genius, keeping everything together and at-hand very tidily. Lastly, my older albums are stored on the bottom shelves of the Expedit. I tend to keep the working album out on the table or otherwise accessible to put my layouts and pocket pages in as soon as they’re done. One thing I do not have is piles of layouts - I’ve always been careful to put them away ASAP, even though cleaning up my table after a scrapping weekend may take several days ;p

Having a limited workspace *is* challenging, and I dream of day when I will have a little room of my own, with big white drawers and lots of light. I tend to work on several projects at once, but I HATE having to put stuff away before I'm finished, and I won’t lie, a lot of times - I just don’t. If I have a few in-process layouts, I put them in page protectors with the unglued elements, put everything into a 12x12 flat box and slide it under my credenza. And then, voila, I serve dinner!

Last, but not least, our cutie cockatiel, Pete, shares a space with me. I need to constantly watch him when he’s out of his cage as he has a great fondness for paper, and chewing the corners of my layouts ;) And he’s fast!

Thanks for taking a peek at my ‘non’ studio!

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5 comments

  1. Brinkleyboy says…
    06/29/2016

    Thanks for the tour. Pete must be a crafter too;)

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  2. Sarastella says…
    06/29/2016

    I had a cockatiel named Copper.He loved to chew on book page corners.

    Pete looks like he's posing!

    0 Reply 0 Replies
  3. gina200 says…
    06/29/2016

    Thanks for the tour. I too use the dining room. I love being in the center of the house and not out of the way so I know what's going on and can pop in to work on something for a few minutes. Amazingly I can pick it all up for bigger family dinners if necessary. I had one Mom who was dropping off her daughter to play with mine look in disgust at the crafty goodness. I said oh don't mind that, that's our craft stuff (my daughter loves to craft and scrapbook too) and she said "oh,, doesn't your husband mind the mess?" Nope!

    2 Reply 0 Replies
  4. sandrakarls says…
    07/01/2016

    I love seeing your space! I'm always so curious about other people's spaces. I've been holding off the Dragan bandwagon, but I love the way it fits the 4x6 cards. Ikea has a sale now and seeing the way they look in your space is convincing me to make an Ikea stop on my way home from work.
    Thanks for sharing!

    0 Reply 0 Replies
  5. Ella67 says…
    07/02/2016

    I really got inspired by your boxes for the documenter cards. And tha ziped pockets. already changed a bit here as I work on resizing my space to share my office with my oldest son. I can assure you that having a big room is not makng it easier, hehe. Overview and access is a keyword anyway. Thanks Melaine!

    0 Reply 0 Replies