Organizing Ribbon

I have always envied people like Martha Stewart who have rooms dedicated solely to crafting. I think it would be so nice to have a special place where I could do things like this, but our house seems to be missing a room.

When I decided that I really needed a place to dedicate towards doing my hobbies, my husband suggested an area downstairs in our basement.

The former owners had mounted a door onto the wall and used that as a desk. The door knob opening was the perfect place to feed my hot glue cords through and a folding chair pulled up perfectly to my new location.

My crafting collections have seemed to really grow though and the ribbon situation was out of hand. Everywhere you walked, you would step on a roll of ribbon. I couldn’t find anything in the mess and things that should have taken minutes turned into hours when having to hunt for the perfect color.

I went online to see if they had any ribbon organizers that I could buy. Ah, there were many solutions, but not any that fit my price tag.

A trip to Michael’s was equally disappointing as they only had one ribbon organizer. This organizer would have held a fourth of my ribbon collection and at $19.99 the price was way too high for my taste.

In front of our craft table, I had a giant bulletin board so after much thought, I figured out a way that I could mount my ribbon onto the board and still be able to easily access it.

I took dowel rods and fed my ribbon spools through them. Then I took wide ribbon and stapled a loop on each side to rest the dowel rods into them. By leaving plenty of room on each side, I am able to slide ribbon in and out as needed or just pull on a spool to get the ribbon that I need.

If you have a large ribbon collection, this might be a good solution for you. If your ribbon collection is smaller or you just need a place to store ribbon that you use for wrapping gifts or for scrapbooking, this idea from Real Simple Magazine is also a great & thrifty solution. They also offer up a great idea for using a paper towel holder as a place to store your ribbon.

While we are on the subject of creative storage, be sure to read our new article on Frugal Storage Solutions as spring cleaning & organizing time is upon us!

What are some creative ways you have organized your home?