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I am attempting to help a friend re-organize her craft room. She has boxes and boxes of stamps. She says she is not ready to part with any of them, yet! However, I don't believe she actually knows what stamps she has. She has to "dig" thru the boxes to find a suitable stamp.
Can anyone give me some ideas on how to help her organize and store her stamps? Is there some kind of stamp storage system out there? How do you store and organize your stamps?
Big boxes? Little boxes? Single stamps? Stamp sets? Matching dies or stencils? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
Maybe a good start would be to sort the stamp sets by some type of theme and put them back in the boxes...or some other kind of boxes... by those themes. At least that would be a start. It would also make clear to her where she has duplicate sets (most of us have done that at some time!), where she has way too many of one type, or where she could look for a good set for a particular purpose.
The next option might be to sort by manufacturer, but not everyone thinks that way. However, some kind of sorting will be a major help.
I have swapped around all my sets and put them by company. That's because the way I go looking is exactly that way. That's the way my indexes are. I keep matching dies with the stamp set, in the same pouch. I am sure that I will be doing some cross-reference for sentiments, however. That's my biggest hassle.
Storage is an often discussed topic and people evolve over time whether due to a growing stash or a way did not work for them. Nothing is written in stone. Try not to pressure yourself.
I indexed my stamps by category. so I can look there for what I want to play with. (also I look at it when shopping to avoid duplicating or getting something too close in design but still have some whoops) but it sounds like that would be a huge job.
My stamps are in a couple ways. I have some wood left and they are in boxes by company as they are 98% PSX or Stamps Happen. Then the cling and rubber are in regular 3 ring notebooks mounted on cling doubled sided pages. And then the third way is like Fiona-If I have a die for it, they both go into a DVD pouch with the die in the back on a piece of magnet. (I cut down mag vent covers-I like the 8 x 15 3 pks although I did just get a large bulk order on Amazon. I hope the quality is good) Those are in plastic boxes-the cheap shoe boxes from Container store work but they dont have a lid. All of that is by theme except the woods. I would never remember by brand-or want to go into 30 brands to see all my Christmas for example. A lot of people have that gift though and can remember.
Ask her how she would look for them to play with. Does she want to look for brand or theme?
I agree with Fiona-they need to get organized and then when you see what she has it may tell you how to best store it.
__________________ Margot
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Depends on size of the room she has.Is it a corner of the closet and she uses the kitchen table or did she take over a guest room? I've had both. When I had an entire room and closet I used CD cases (the kind when we bought movie CD, was size of a small book). I had categories (floral, winter, baby etc). I would stamp a piece of cardstock cut to slip into the CD case cover with all the images that was stored. I had those plastic 5 tier shelves in the coset, placed CDs in bins labeled with category. Right now I had to move in to help my 94 yr old Mother, so my craft room is desk in my bedroom. I pared down to essentials. I bought a clear plastic file bin (Bankers Box makes one) with lid. I use legal size plastic pocket folders (w/ velcro) labelled with each category. I try to keep each stamp in it's original packaging so it stays flat and firm & just slip into pouch. No matter what system I am using, I always have an index. It used to be sheets of paper in a binder, now it's online. When I buy a stamp, I save a screenshot of it from online. I have a big powerpoint file, each page is labelled with category, then i insert the stamp image & type under it stamp name, company & if I have matching die. I keep one for die cuts and one for stamps. I can't print it out anymore since it's pretty large & it's always changing. (I save another copy as pdf so it opens faster). I keep out on my computer desktop so I can get to it quick before I go to purchase something new. If I see great ideas online with the stamp, I screenshot those and throw those jpg into doc. I have computer folder under IDEAS and I store great inspiration card jpgs in folders with my categories (birthday ideas, christmas ideas, etc)
Lately I have been watching a few videos of Totally Tiffany, although I haven’t used that system, she has several great ideas
be sure to watch this video first, I think a series of 12 videos, 3 might be the stampshttps://www.youtube.com/live/JRHJ3BDw3Go?feature=share
stamp storage
