Craft Room Makeover:Ditch Plastic Bins for Vintage Containers

I don’t yet keep my craft room as green and organized as Lenore does, but it is one of my New Year’s resolutions to decorate my house more nicely (along with learning to sprout seeds, exercising every day, and getting a book contract), and it is part of our family ethic that anything we do must be done as green and thriftily as possible (per my green crafting manifesto), so Lenore and I are going to be craft room buddies pretty soon, I think.

I work almost entirely with found and recycled materials, so one of my biggest problems is the storage of…stuff. Old postage stamps, orphaned game pieces, costume jewelry, wrapping paper, comic books, beach rocks, buttons, and tinsel–you name it, and it finds its way into my work, and if I can’t see it and access it, I can’t use it.

Yeah, I’m tempted every time I wander into some big-box store, 40%-off coupon in hand, by all those clear, organized, neatly-portioned craft bins they always sell. Look, a different compartment for each kind of bead, and I can see them all! Look, slide-out drawers for each different kind of paper!

But I also want my craft room to have character, to not only contain the things that inspire me, but also, itself, BE an inspiration to me. So I have not bought those clear, organized, handy-yet-bland plastic bins. Instead, I try to find vintage, thrifted, or otherwise recycled containers for all my storage needs. Here’s part of my collection of vintage containers:

• » See also: More Green Halloween Makeovers
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A mason jar that used to hold some of my Aunt Pam’s delicious salsa now holds some of the beads I found at my mother’s house one vacation. My daughters string these onto cording while I do my own wire-wrapping and beading.

A souvenir mug from the summer camp I went to as a child (Yep, I’m a nerd. I went to Space Camp!) holds my pencils.

Lockers formally from the IU Wrestling Team’s locker room now store projects in the works, such as clothes to be mended or remade, the organic cotton I’m (slowly) binding for towels for my family, my button maker, quilt blocks, and the fleece I bought for making mattress covers.

A Pyrex bowl I found thrifting holds the essential oils I use making soap and cleaning supplies.

And one of the glasses that my mother registered for when she got married in the 1970s now sits on my desk, a loooooong time after both the beginning and ending of that marriage, and holds my paintbrushes.

I still have a long way to go in my own personal craft room makeover. For intance, I share this creative space with my girls, so more separate storage is need for materials they may use independently, materials they must use with supervision, materials we share, and materials only for my own use. I also plan to do some painting (low voc, of course) and, ideally, put in separate work areas for my separate creative pursuits–sewing, writing, jewelry-making, etc.

Can one tiny room even be asked to do all that?

We’ll see…

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