First things first, Happy New Year! We here at ScrapHappy are glad to welcome you to a new year of Blog content. Our Creative Team is raring to go and we have some fantastic topics to share with you. We’d also love to hear from you in the comments. If they’re not showing up, try refreshing the page and see if that helps. When in doubt, you can always email [email protected] and either Alice or myself will get back to you.
Now, what the heck am I on about with all the bug references?
If you are anything like me, January marks yet another attempt to get organized. I am forever trying to get and stay organized but somehow never achieve permanence. As in, I’ll spend hours emptying drawers, sorting through their contents, making piles and creating new “systems” only to come back a week or month later to an equally big state of disorganization. It doesn’t help that I live in a house with people who refuse to acknowledge the clever homes that I have assigned to certain things. I’m sure I’m not the only one, right?
Alice came across an incredibly bright woman named Cas who has studied our clutter tendencies and put us all into categories based on our ClutterBug type.
What?!
She’s discovered that there are four different ways people like to organize based on how they like to see, use and store their belongings, and has assigned each a bug theme. And the kicker is, Cas has a super fun quiz that helps you find out what type of Clutterbug you are. You can take it here – and I highly recommend you do if only for fun! Because quizzes are fun, right?
I'm a Bee!
When I took the quiz I learned that I am a BEE. Which, according to Cas, means I love visual and organizational abundance. I prefer to see the things I use every day out instead of behind closed doors. I’m “busy” which equates to having many projects on the go at any one time. Also, I’m a “bit of a perfectionist” – guilty!! I like an incredibly detailed organizational system and, according to her, this means I will pile items until I can put them away properly. Um, can she see into my craft room?? LOL
When I moved back into my craft room/office after my store closed, I tried to set up some systems to help me work more efficiently. I had accumulated a LOT of stash over the three years running an arts & crafts store, and my new space is fairly small in comparison so I can’t have everything out on display at all times. I did a HUGE purge when I moved everything, but even so I am tripping over my “piles”.
Something needs to be done!
I am planning to do another reorganization and de-stash this month, and knowing my BEE tendencies is going to help immensely. Here are just a couple ways I’m already storing and organizing to my tendency that work but, as you will see, need tweaking to fit my ultra-detailed personality.
Bees love open storage
I use my Distress Oxide inks a lot so when I set up my office in July, I wanted to make sure I could easily see and access my inks but also have them off my desk. I secured a small shelf (found at our local thrift store) to the wall and voila! I can see them all easily. They are in rainbow order (IYKYK) but they are off my work surface and sufficiently out of the way as to not contribute to any visual clutter issues.
Since I use my Distress Oxides the most frequently, they are prominently displayed, but I have other inks too. Those are what you will find in the white baskets on the top shelf. Accessible and organized, but out of the way.
Bees crave detailed organization
On the other side of the room is my 12×12″ paper rack. I had taken this rack to the store for extra display space there, and had my papers stacked in a way that made them very hard to use. For me anyway. And the way I’ve arranged them right now is only half working for me so I need to revisit it.
The papers are currently sorted by designer or company which was how my brain was thinking of them after 3 years cataloguing products in that way to sell them. This is not how my brain works when I’m creating however. While I can easily see the papers and I still retain enough memory of the specific papers or collections to be able to find what I’m looking for … eventually … it takes too much time. Before I had the store, I sorted my papers by colour and/or pattern. I had the full rainbow order spectrum on display as well as sections for ‘florals’, ‘multi-coloured papers’, ‘wood grains’, and other categories like that. My Bee nature needs a return to this way of organizing because when I am in the middle of creating a layout, I don’t think to myself “I need paper number 13 from Paige Evans Wonders collection” it thinks “a pink paper with a small repeating patterns would look amazing here!”
Bees need to see their stuff!
Here is an example of some of my ‘clear storage containers’ that Cas talks about in her write up about Bees. These do work for me, but clearly there’s a lot going on here that is not working! Cas has many useful suggestions for all the Clutterbug types, but two that jumped out at me for Bees are:
1 – Use Project boxes that contain all the supplies needed for a specific project. I already do this but I’ll be honest, I’m bad at returning the items to their original homes when the project is over. I LOVE having project kits though. They work great during LOAD months or when I am working on my (super tardy) 2023 December albums. If I could stack my shelves with nothing but project bins I’d be a happy gal! I don’t logistically have enough shelf space currently to make that happen, but it’s also a concept to explore more. Perhaps a happy medium would be a shelf designated to project bins, and another designated to the more detailed storage that I love – journaling cards sorted by size, die cuts sorted by motif, and then my bins of enamel dots and other embellishments (also sorted by size/manufacturer/colour – did I mention I love detailed organization? LOL).
2 – Let it go! Oh I’m so bad at this! She says Bees tend to keep a lot of things “just in case”. Yup! That giant purge I did in the summer helped me let go of so many things I no longer loved and hadn’t used in years. I think I need to institute a system where twice yearly I go through everything and get rid of stuff.
She’s got three decluttering rules that I will be putting into place for my next purge:
1. Have I used this in the last year?
2. Do I love this?
3. If I didn’t already own it, would I buy it again?
I know I have so many items that fall into that last category!!
I promise to keep you all posted on my progress as I work toward reorganizing my craft space using Cas’s tools and suggestions. As time has passed since closing the store, my crafts of choice have also changed. I’ve kept up my crochet teaching business and started an online store for yarn sales. I have created a lot of space in my garage for my crochet WIPs (works in progress) but issues arise in my craft room when I’ve got several yarn-y projects underway as well as paper projects. My space simply isn’t big enough for both AND hasn’t been designed to accommodate both. Time to change that! I will take you on that journey with me – all you need to do is follow me on Instagram. And while you’re at it, are you following the ScrapHappy Instagram account yet?
What about the ScrapHappy Creative Team?
I’ve talked a lot about me and my Clutterbug type, but what about the other members of our Creative Team? I asked them to take the quiz and it turns out, we’ve got a whole kaleidoscope of Butterflies on our team!
Butterflies also love visual abundance but unlike bees, they need their organizational systems to be simple. It is very much “out of sight, out of mind” for a Butterfly. Clear bins and wire baskets work great for them but don’t be shocked if they still have piles everywhere!
Here’s what some of our team had to say about being a Butterfly.
Lindsy is also taking to heart some of the solutions Cas offered up to Butterflies. Here’s what she said about that:
“Cas recognizes the biggest challenge for Butterflies is maintaining organization because we’re easily overwhelmed by hidden storage and prefer to keep things visible, which can lead to clutter. Decluttering regularly sounds like the key to overcoming this struggle. Two ideas Cas highlighted, which I’d like to incorporate in 2025, are:
– Limit My Storage: Instead of trying to organize everything, focus on using my storage containers as boundaries. If it doesn’t fit in the bin/basket, it’s time to let it go.
– The 21-Item toss: Every month grab a bag and race around my space to find 21 items to get rid of as fast as I can. This seems like a manageable and fun way to purge!”
I can’t wait to see how Lindsy puts these ideas into practice, and to be honest, can see a lot of cross-over between my Bee tendency and her Butterfly tendency. The tip about limiting your storage is brilliant! Instead of buying more and more (in my case clear) containers, simply stop when the bin is full and do a declutter before adding new items.
Laurie also has purging plans, or should I say, more purging plans. She recently got rid of over 30 paper pads as she’s found that she simply doesn’t enjoy using paper pads any more. Wow! Can’t wait to see what else she will let go of (and also wish I lived closer LOL).
Claire C and Alex also chimed in to say they are butterflies too.
Alex went on to say “I can really relate to being “a really visual person”. Pretty things make me happy and it is important for me to nourish my aesthetic feeling. I have a lot of stuff in drawers and yes, most of them are labeled! And I love transparent bins! And this feels so me: “Butterflies are easily distracted by the clutter and have a greater emotional attachment to their belongings than the average person.” And I actually did what Cas suggested: “Have a friend or family member help you with organizing projects to keep you on track and to help you let go of items that you are struggling to purge.””
I think it’s a testament to our visual craft that we have so many butterflies in the group!
What do Crickets Crave?
The other Clutterbug represented by our group (so far anyway) is the Cricket. Who has that Clutterbug tendency you ask?
Alice brings up another point that will require further investigation – how do we maintain the Clutterbug systems we need in our spaces if we are living with a different type of Clutterbug? Or in my case, someone who is clutter blind?! Alice says she’s tried to convince her husband to take the quiz but so far he’s resisting. I can totally see my husband thinking this would be a waste of time. That ‘we’ (and really he means me!) should just be able to keep things tidy.
Remember how I referenced that I love to create “homes” for items (especially in my kitchen!) and get frustrated when others refuse to return said item to said home? Clearly this is because their clutterbug type either doesn’t assign homes to objects, or would have assigned a completely different home if they’d been doing the tidying up so can’t /won’t see the worth in the home I’ve assigned.
Cas has a free e-book that you can have emailed to you that goes into more detail about your Clutterbug type and includes real life examples of organizing solutions that work for you. It also details how to work with other Clutterbug types! Honestly, she’s thought of it all. If you want even more help, she’s also got a free masterclass, a podcast, and several books so there is plenty of support on her site for all of us.
We will be talking more about our types and how we use Cas’s tips to help us develop better ways of organizing our spaces throughout the year. If we are very, very lucky, we may even be able to get Cas to come onto the ScrapHappier Podcast to chat with Alice. If you take, or have already taken, the quiz, we’d love to hear your results and thoughts in the comments. Any A-Ha! moments? What tips will you implement this year?
Let’s make 2025 the year we get more organized so we can scrapbook more!