Before I had kids, when a friend had a birthday or a baby, I would stop and pick up a card on my way home from work, or I'd quickly run into the store for a card on my way to a birthday party or wedding. But after kids - well, there is no such thing as a quick stop at a store, nor is there any extra time on the way to an event... so now I have to plan ahead.
Planning ahead means that I've started to stock up on greeting cards, picking up a few cute ones here and there when I'm at Target, or buying packs of cards at Costco. Overtime, I've built up quite a collection of cards for every occasion, but as my stack of cards has grown, it's gotten harder to keep track of what I've bought and to find the one I need in a hurry. So I finally decided to do something about it, and in just five minutes I created a new system to keep me organized!
The closet in our guest room serves many purposes, including a place to store all of our gift wrap, bows ribbons, tags... and greeting cards. It was semi-organized at one point in time, but after each birthday and holiday it was becoming more of a mess. So in preparation for this season of present wrapping, I decided to finally get it under control. I'll share the entire pretty, organized space with you next week, but today I'm giving you a sneak peek at my organized greeting cards and stationery.
Here's what I started with - a shoe box sized box full of cards that I stored on a shelf.
I could have simply added divider and organized the cards within this box, but since I was looking to free up some of the shelves - I decided to look else for storage space. And I found the space I needed on the back of the closet door! We installed an Elfa Door Rack System, including several Elfa Deep Baskets.
To keep my cards and stationery organized within the deep door baskets, I picked up some clear deep drawer bins {4in x 8in x 3in}. I divided my collection of greeting cards into two of these bins.
Next I needed to create dividers to make the cards easy to find. I grabbed out some of my favorite paper - a stack from Michaels with pretty patterns and a scalloped edge. I made a list of all of my categories of greeting cards, then wrote the categories at the top of the paper with a Sharpie. I used the tallest of my envelopes as a guide to determine how tall my dividers should be, and trimmed the extra from the bottom of the paper.
With my dividers created, all that I had to do was place the dividers between the cards and place the bins into one of the Elfa deep baskets. The two bins fit perfectly side by side.
I placed the greeting cards in the door basket right at my eye level, making it easy to quickly and easily flip through to find the card I need without having to remove the bins. But if I do want to take all the cards to my desk for writing, I can easily lift the bins out while keeping the cards organized.
Now it takes me no time at all to find the card I need for the right occasion.
This system worked so well for organizing me greeting cards that I decided to free up some more shelf space in the closet by also moving all of my Thank You cards and blank stationery into the same clear bins.
Then I placed those bins into more deep door baskets.
Here's one more look at how all of my greeting cards and stationery look on the back of the guest room closet door. Organized and pretty - my favorite way! The back of the door was previously completely unused space, and now, by moving all of these cards into the door bins, I've freed up an entire shelf of space inside the closet.
Visit the Organized Gift Wrap Closet post to see what else I've organized on the back of the door, and how I've organized all of my gift wrap, gift bags, and other supplies in one side of the closet. I'm so excited! I can't wait to show it to you!
Labels: closet, Five Minute Friday, organization, organizing
