Welcome to the 2nd Annual Great Computer Spring Clean-a-thon Day 2! If you’re just popping in for the first time, be sure to check out Monday’s post explaining the details of this week-long organizing event! I’ll be back this afternoon to share my Day 1 progress but in the meantime I wanted to share some tips about the importance of matching your organizing style to your scrapbooking style.

As scrapbookers, we all understand this idea of finding your scrapbooking style – that common thread that runs through each of your layouts and makes them “yours”. But have you ever stopped to think about how your scrapbooking style relates to your organizing style?

I can tell you as a newbie scrapbooker, I never did. And as a result, I wasted a LOT of time following the organizing advice of much more established scrapbookers than I, building systems that didn’t mesh with the way I scrapped. Even though I felt like my supplies were technically “organized,” there were times when I felt like I couldn’t find anything! But what I learned overtime was it wasn’t that their advice or system was bad or that I had done anything wrong, it’s just what they were doing wasn’t right for me.

The Key to Organizing Anything

And ultimately that’s the key to organizing anything. It’s not about finding the perfect solution or system, it’s about finding the perfect solution or system for you.

Easy peasy, right?

I know, you’re probably thinking, yeah right Lynnette, if it was so easy we’d all be organizing gurus by now.

So perhaps easy isn’t the right word, but there is a simple key to organizing anything and that is this:

Before you begin organizing anything, whether it be scrapbooking supplies, photos or anything else, you need to first understand HOW you actually LOOK for those items. What goes through your head in that moment?

Because once you understand how you look for things, you can then tailor your organizing system to help you find things in a way that matches how your brain works.

How to Match Your Organizing Style to Your Scrapbooking Style

Let’s take for example scrapbooking. When you’re working on a layout and find yourself in need of something, say an element, what runs through your head?

For me it’s two things:

1) The basic type of element – ex: a flower

2) A color – ex: red

Essentially, I’ll think, I would really love to add a red flower right here.

Which means for me, organizing my elements into fairly broad categories like flowers, ribbons, etc and then tagging those elements by color so I can narrow them down is probably the way to go. Since I don’t ever think, say, I need a red gingham ribbon or I need a piece of twine not string, it’s probably not the best use of my time organize my elements to that level of detail.

The Key Questions to Ask Yourself Before Organizing

But of course we all think about things differently when it comes to our creative process, so how can you determine how the key to matching your organizing style to your scrapbooking style?

Well here’s a couple of questions to ask yourself:

• Are you a kit scrapbooker or do you like to mix and match?
• Do you look for supplies by designer or store?
• Do you think about color? Style? Pattern?

The more detailed you can get about HOW you look for things, the easier it’ll be to know how to organize your files and more importantly how detailed to get in your organizing. No point tagging all your files when you only scrap from kits, right?

And, the same key to organizing holds true for your photos. Ask yourself, what are the most common types of photos you look for?

For me it tends to be people, seasons and themes because of my CT requirements, but for you it might be something else. Maybe you’re big on chronology or maybe you’re not. Do you think in terms of seasons or months/years?

Choose a Style That Works For You

Ultimately, what it comes down to is this: there is no right or wrong way to organize your supplies.

Yes, you heard that right.

There is no right or wrong way to organize your supplies. There is only a right or wrong way to organize your supplies for YOU. And the more attention you pay to your scrapbooking style and how your brain works when looking for things, the better and more efficient your organizing system will be.

Well, I hope you found today’s organizing tip helpful! I’d love to hear your thoughts about matching your organizing style to your scrapbooking style so feel free to share in the comments.

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