Spring Cleaning: Photo Prints

This spring I am all about organizing and cleaning!

Well trying to be.

I decided to start with something small: my little photograph box. I don't have gobs of photo prints but they needed a go-through. I came home from work, put on some comfy clothes and good music, and then began sorting.

Previously they were all stored in a photo box and held up with plastic grocery bags for a good 8-10 years. I don't think the photo box was acid free and I could feel that the grocery bags were starting to deteriorate. I needed to organize and find another storage solution if only to protect my pictures.

Here is my sorting/purging before and after,

Before                                                After

I got rid of a good 2 inch stack of pictures and reorganized the remaining by year.

I have come to realize that the most important pictures were of the people I really care about. I don't really need tons of pictures of strangers in costume or pictures of objects (those are cool, but I don't really want a physical photograph of them- I can keep the digital copy).

Then it was time to find another way to store them. I contemplated photo albums but they really take up a lot of shelf space and I don't find myself going through pictures enough to justify the expense/space hog.

Then I found these little acid free plastic photo containers at the craft store in the scrap booking section,

Plastic photo boxes

They were on sale for 40% off and then I had a 20% off coupon I could stack with it. I got 5 of them total for about $10.

I'm currently on the hunt for a decorative box to put them in since they are just a little too high to fit in a standard photo box. Right now I have them in my big memorabilia box. Still, I think this will work for now! I figure if I ever change systems, these boxes will work great for small craft supplies.

First project done, way more to go!

Organizing: Hair Pins

I'm going to organize all of the things!

Today's project is really small but feels so satisfying. Sometimes the little things make all the difference.

I don't have an extensive hair pin/tie hoard, but finding them was a pain and they previously didn't have a home. They were just scattered everywhere with my makeup and shower stuff. I went shopping at Joann Fabrics and found a little container for bobbin storage. They were with the regular storage containers on an end cap, then I found more hanging up front by the registers. 

Even though it was a tiny purchase, I still used a coupon (why not? hehe) and it was somewhere around $3 if I remember right.

They fit perfectly!

They stay in their compartments too!

I do have more hair elastics than that, but I keep them with the rest of my toiletry back-up (I buy extras when they go on sale). If I give myself access to too many elastics at once, I keep track of them less and them lose more. Oops. 

So this one was easy. Now I'm trying to find a system that works with all of my big fancy hair toys!