Just One Tip ~ A Quick Idea For Your Paper Scraps And Leftover Embellishments

I wanted to share the tip that I posted on Craft Storage Ideas for this week! I am excited to share a Just One Tip idea for putting your scrap papers and leftover embellishments to good use!

If you asked me what the biggest clutter issue is in my house, I would say one thing: “PAPER!”. There is a constant stream of paper piling up everywhere in my house…my office, my kitchen counter and my craft room! It’s a constant chore to keep up with it all.

I recently found a great tip for using up that pile of papers, ribbon bits and random embellishments in my craft room from a great home organization/decor website called At Home With Nikki!

I always have a pile of paper strips, extra die cuts or punched pieces and bits of ribbon that I just hate to throw away because they are still useable for projects. Honestly, I never seem to grab anything from the pile and actually use it. It just keeps piling up!

Nikki saves those small scraps of papers, ribbons and twine in a magazine holder under her desk. When it gets full or when she has a little extra time, she creates little card kits from the leftovers that she doesn’t plan on using. She punches shapes out of the card stock and creates little kits using sandwich bags. She then donates the bags to local organizations.

You can see this tip and many other tips for organizing your craft room by watching her video on How To Keep Craft Room Clutter Under Control.

I love this idea so much that I’ve started doing this myself!

That is my current pile! This should not go to waste, but I’m a realist. If it’s in the pile, I won’t pull it out again. I do have a system for the larger pieces of scrap papers that really works for me. Now I keep this Littles Carry-All Caddy for $12 from Thirty One on the corner of my desk and toss all of those still useful little bits into the tote. It doesn’t take up much room on my desk and it’s not so large that when it gets full I’ll be overwhelmed creating the card kits.

I tried to create kits of several sizes. I used my punches to create some little punched pieces and I tried to coordinate the papers and embellishments as much as I could.

Where will I donate this?

I’ll be donating these to one of our after school care programs. As a working parent, I had to find after school care for my children when they were younger. We had several wonderful care programs to choose from. They gave the kids a snack and then they played games or crafted. They were always asking for donations of supplies and materials. I will keep the age of the kids in mind as I’m creating the bags. Certainly the kits with the small buttons won’t go to the programs with the younger kids. I do know that my own kids were delighted to get little goodie bags to create projects to bring home and hang on the refrigerator! Each of those projects eventually got retired to a scrapbook of course!

I also think this would be great for fabric scraps as well. I have no doubt that the 4-H and scout leaders would find those useful.