Really Useful

This is going to sound like an advert now, but here is my paean to the Really Useful Box. When your house is tiny you have to be pretty inventive with your storage for craft stuff - so many things which could be swallowed by your own toddler or visiting babies, or stolen by the cats, or even just to keep everything clean and free of hairs. I can't remember when I discovered these boxes but they really are great and I can't seem to get enough of them (that would be the ever-growing stash, then). They're not the prettiest thing to grace my house but frankly I don't have the space or the circumstances for delightful wicker baskets, open racks of fabric and enormous antique armoires to keep our stash in. They fit the bill of tidy and airtight, what more do you want?!

Here is K ready to start work on a birthday crown for her toy cat - all our "tiny bits" from glue sticks to stampers to sequins to foam shapes are kept in these two sets of drawers, which can easily be lifted down onto the main table so everything's at hand. Actually I think we have as much fun sorting into boxes as we do crafting! There's just something about knowing everything is organised (if only the rest of my life was like that). We quite often get craft kits on the fronts of magazines or inherit other people's leftovers and destash, and it used to drive me absolutely crazy trying to keep track of them. These are really neat.


And here's some of my own - the green and pink boxes belong exclusively to Seawood Designs to keep all the shop materials seperate from my own. It is a bit higgledy-piggledy at the moment as I've been so busy but the sort-out is always ongoing. This is mostly yarn, painting/drawing items and cross-stitch equipment.

What you can't see (and I'm not going to show you without an enormous tidy up!) is my bureau full of beads and randomness, all my crochet working bags and boxes of fabric, my poor old sewing machine still camping out in the original box, the shelves full of books and lever arch files of patterns...and the five flat RUBs lurking under the sofa full of paper...