My Scrap Room & Organization

I always love seeing other's blog posts about their scrap rooms and how people organize all of their scrap stuff - so I thought I'd give you a little peek into my world!  Let me start off by saying that I'm very envious of anyone who is lucky enough to have some space that is 100% dedicated as their scrap space!!  I may have such a space one day but for now I use our formal dining room for my scrap space.  It is a nice big & bright room, but I do have to be able to put stuff out of the way when we are actually using the dining room for dining! 

Anyways - I thought over the next several days I would dedicate a series of posts to showing you my scrap room and maybe give you some organizational ideas along the way! 

This first post will give you a general idea of my work area . . . I'll provide some more close ups and details soon!

As you can see from the pics - I use the IKEA Expedit shelves for my main source of scrap storage.  I love these shelves!  You can customize your storage by adding drawer or door inserts and can add perfectly sized baskets or bins to hold all your stuff!  And they are the perfect sized shelves (both height and depth wise) to hold your 12x12 scrapbook albums and paper! 

As you can see, our dining room also holds our piano . . . so I use that for storage too (as well as display)!  And luckily the IKEA Expedit units that are two cubes wide fit perfectly on either side of the piano! 

This next picture is taken on the opposite wall from the piano wall:

I have another one of the same IKEA Expedit units, this time laying horizontally under the open 'window'.  It is the perfect height for a little 'countertop'!  (This window opens up to our family room, which gives me lots of extra light and also allows me to chat with my hubby in the evenings if he's watching TV while I scrap!)

And finally - this picture shows my workspace:

I sometimes configure the tables differently depending on how many people I have, but this is the setup I usually have.  The larger table is my actual dining room table.  It belonged to my grandmother - so to protect it I keep a padded white vinyl table protector on it.  The other table is a 6 foot folding table from Costco. 

Somehow even when I'm working by myself - I spread out so much that both tables are often fully covered!  I'm trying to get into the habit of putting stuff away as I finish using it - - but it is hard to do! 

(And just in case you are wondering - the bowls in the middle are my standard scrapping snacks - pretzels and chocolate M&M's!!)