Operation Organize: Sweet Stamp Storage! with Jennifer Stricker

Happy Sunday everyone! I hope you had a wonderful weekend. It goes way to fast, right?

Jennifer here to help you GET ORGANIZED! This post I am going to focus on organizing your STAMPS! I know we all have a lot of them. It took me about four different systems to finally get it right.

There were a couple things that I had to take into consideration:
1) Space- I did not have table space for them, nor did I have any extra shelf space for them.
2) Accessibility- Will they be out and within reach.
3) Easy to see what I have- They can not be "hidden" in a drawer.
and
4) Have a way to index what I have- I don't want to fumble through the stamps themselves.

Boy....seems like a big task. DON'T worry IT'S NOT.

The first thing I figured out is that I knew I wanted to store my stamps in CD/DVD cases. I bought a few stamp sets a while back that came in CD cases and I thought it was genius. They are thin, don't take up a lot of room, you can see through them and label them.

So I bought CD cases where ever I came across them. I found a majority of them at the Goodwill. I never paid more than a few dollars for them.

Now onto organizing...
I divided my stamps into a few different piles. Design Teams, Holiday and Major Brands.
I first put all of my acrylic stamps in CD cases, then it was onto the wood. YES, I UNMOUNTED WOOD STAMPS. I know a sacrilege. I did keep some of my stamps on wood. Most of my "special" SU ones and the "artsy" ones that I mostly use for display stayed on wood (it just looks better). (Oh, side note: I microwaved the stamp for 10 seconds-rubber side up, and it just pealed off of the block). There is enough residue left that it stays sticky enough for an acrylic block, the wood will be hot.

Onto storage:
I found that I had some narrow space in my scraproom for some sort of racks/stands. Off to the trusty IKEA.

Here is what I bought (see the 2 in the photo):

It is called the Benno DVD Tower. It is really tall and narrow it is just under 8" wide and 80" tall. PERFECT for those wasted spaces in your room. It hold booth CD's and DVD's. I LOVE IT.

Onto indexing:
Now I won't lie this last step is a task. It takes a while, but the effort is well the results.
I stamped ALL of the stamps I have on white paper and put them in sheet protectors in a binder.

Then each CD case is labeled, and the corresponding image in the book labeled the same way.

 

 After all of the images are stamped I put the pages in the correct place in my index binder.

 

Now you have an easy way to see all of your stamps in one place, at your fingertips. The first thing I do now when creating, is grab my binder and look through it to find the images I want. It is SO EASY and convenient.

I hope this helps those who want too /need to organize their stamps. Please share with me what hints you have to a more organized space.

I hope you found this helpful.
Enjoy! Jennifer



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