Small Space Planner Supply Storage... a.k.a. what to do with all that washi!

I love looking at pictures of people's planning spaces. Those ones where they have a whole room with shelving and cabinets dedicated to holding little jars of colored pens and drawers of washi tape.

I happen to have a whole room with shelving and cabinets, too. It's called my kitchen. The cabinets are dedicated to holding jars of food and the drawers are full of utensils (not tape).

But I still need a space for my planning. A place where I can sit with my coffee and reflect on what needs to be done for the day, or outline my week in color coded squares to make the dishes and laundry and errands seem more appealing. (Really?) Yeah. It does.

And since I have children instead of rooms, and they insist on eating food, I use my kitchen the best I can. At first it was a problem figuring out how to have things organized and usable. Having to go around and gather up things that were stashed in various available places around the house when I needed them was a total joy-sucker. But unless I could convince the kids to give up spoons I had no place for my supplies nearby.

And then I came up with this...

 

A stack of acrylic (paper sorting) office  trays, some cheap acrylic photo frames, and cardstock. 

Which I turned into this...

A five tiered super-special-sorting-stack for all my planning supplies that takes up less than 1 square foot of counter space! Can I get a woo-hoo?

It's ok if you don't.

I'll still tell you how I did it.

I realized that one acrylic photo frame turned upside down and acting as a drawer in the paper sorting tower could hold a lot of stuff, but as you may know, I like things lined up in neat little rows, not swarming about a container in chaos... so the tricky part was figuring out an easy and inexpensive way of dividing the frame/drawers.

That's where the cardstock came in.

Like this....

Now this is the only part of actual work this project required and I will do my best to explain the oh so complicated method of cardstock folding...

I used my scoring board and a lot of trial and error that probably could have been prevented with some proper math skills to figure out where to place the score lines.

The acrylic frames I used are 8 1/2 x 11 and clearly from the 1992 angry baby edition.

Which turned out to fit a 12x12 piece of cardstock perfectly once trimmed and folded. 

First, slice off a 1 inch strip making the 11 inch length of the drawer (frame) and then turn it on the scoring board to make your folds spaced across the 12 inch area.

I tested and wrote my score lines using the inch I'd cut off as a scrap piece first...

(Actually I wasted three pieces of cardstock first, then got I smart and used a scrap piece, but you may have better luck or a mathematician on hand to prevent the waste.)  

I placed a singe score at 1 1/4(inches) to flip up for the outer edge of the frame (the part you see when looking at the drawers in the tower) then three scores together to create the little walls between rows at:

3 1/4, 3 1/2, 3 3/4

5 3/4, 6, 6 1/4

8 1/4, 8 1/2, 8 3/4

then one more single score to flip up for the back edge of the drawer at 11

This made the 12" width of the cardstock a perfect fit for the 8 1/2" width of the acrylic frame.

The folding takes a bit of patience but you can see the directions of my folds in the picture above on the scrap piece that I used to find the proper measurements... and how it turned out using the actual cardstock cut to 12" x 11" and scored, folded, and placed into the frame below...

I found that one tray with four rows holds about 80 rolls of washi depending on the size of the washi.

For my little tower, I created two trays with four sections for tape,

one with larger sections to hold all my sticky notes and such,

one with no sections to hold my planning sticker sheets,

and topped the tower off with an empty tray to hold my planner itself...

Then, because the clear ends of the sorting trays needed a little something, I used washi in alternating colors to draw it all together and take the eye's focus off the myriad of stuff inside the trays.

Voila!

Now, if you have actually made it this far in my attempted DIY dribble - thank you! Leave me a comment if you have any questions, or just to let me know I'm not alone!