How I Organized My 5′ x 17′ Craft Room

How I organized my tiny craft room using vintage storage ideas.

Don’t we all feel the need to organize something when the new year rolls around? My craft room, which also serves as my office, was the first room to get the “treatment”. It was a mess. A really bad mess. Really, really bad. I was tired of turning sideways to get to the computer, tired of seeing the cat have to jump over a little pile of stuff to go outside. Tired of the chaos. So I went to work. Two and one half days — yes days — later, I can say done. Here are the results. We’ll start with the vintage suitcases.

I adore the look of suitcases and vintage boxes stacked for storage. But for efficiency they’re really not the best. It helps to have them on shelves like this instead of stacked on top of each other, but then you have to pull each one out and set it down somewhere to get to the contents. Kinda hard in a 5′ wide room. Ideally, the shelf itself would pull out, but hubby is way too busy to concoct something like that. I’m lucky to have the shelves!

Now let me say this isn’t a glamor post. You’re not going to say, I want a craft room just like that! Oh, you might pick up a few ideas. I’d like to think I helped in some small way, but friends, this ain’t no magazine worthy room. It’s real. It’s a real room for a real person. It’s just me doing the best I can with what I have to work with. A five feet wide, seventeen feet long room (Okay, I exaggerated. It’s a few inches more both ways. But only a few.), a couple of neat-o pieces, and way, way, way too much craft crap. I’m grateful to have the room, which used to be a porch. It’s more than most people have. But let’s face it. It’s not the dream craft room for any of us.

I was pretty pleased with the handiness of this next workspace:

A little typewriter table, a turquoise vacuum cleaner attachment holder and two, super duper, awesome, industrial storage bins that hold jewelry bits. Have you seen how much those little bins sell for?! Check out the most recently sold listings of metal drawers on eBay! Scroll past the plastic drawers. I was lucky and found mine for $5 each at an estate sale.

Another “pretty” shot:

Those ceramic wheels are in this metal tray:

The tray sits in this wonderful, old cabinet:

The top is handmade and sits on an iron stove base.

Still looks pretty messy, huh? But it’s an organized mess. Let’s rest our eyes on this 1970s beauty pageant badge:

Whew! That’s better.

So, if you stand with your be-hind backed up to the cabinet we just saw, this is the view of the rest of the room.

I got the metal shelves at the far right for a song at an estate sale. Had to take them apart to get them home. And the man conducting the sale Would. Not. Help. Had no intention of helping. But that’s just how he is. The taller shelving is a Restoration Hardware knockoff I had my hubby make a few years ago. I didn’t put them together right and the top is leaning. I’m not inclined to correct that any time soon. And that little enamel top table is my desk. Where I’m sitting at this very moment. No, really! Probably when you’re reading this, unless it’s the middle of the night and sometimes even then, that is most likely where I’ll be!

Let’s see another “pretty” picture or two, shall we?

And remember the cat? When I first brought the old cabinet in, she found a spot to lay. Lie? Lay? Which is the proper grammar? That spot has been cluttered for quite a while, but I fixed a cushion for her using the same bark cloth that’s on the windows.

Oreo was unavailable for pictures.

So that’s it. Don’t ask to see the room a month from now. I’m notorious for my messes.