Syd, Thanks to your suggestion a few weeks ago regarding the trading
card pages, I’ve reorganized my stones & findings and I’m quite
pleased! I had been using the 30-drawer (or so) nut & bolt things, 4
of them, to store all of my stones, beads, and some findings (the
rest of which were in little zippies all stuffed into various little
plastic boxes). I had the stones sorted into different drawers, or at
least in separate compartments in the drawers, all labeled on the
front, and then different shapes & such separated in the drawers with
little cardboard box halves. I could open the drawers & see each
stone easily, and they be taken out & put away very easily, but I did
miss the days when I didn’t have as many & I stored them each in
little zippies, clipped together on a large metal ring, and I could
peruse the stones, getting ideas by looking through them. With them
in the clear pages in the binders, I can once again peruse. Also,
with my findings I really wasn’t happy having small drawers and boxes
stuffed with little zippies. They each had their own little box, but
the boxes were quite full, and I didn’t like having to look through
the bunches every time for just the size or shape I wanted. Now they
each have their own pocket in the sleeves in my “Findings” binder.
Soooo much better. The process cleared out two of my 4 multi-drawer
things & I was still able to spread out my beads into more different
drawers, making looking for them more user-friendly, too, and now I
only have two of them in use. Yes, I still have the multi-drawer
things for my beads.
OK, so even with all of this organizational wonder, I still have a
problem with it. I do store the binders up on end so that they are
easy to access, and there’s no weight potentially damaging things as
would be if they were stacked on their sides. Most of the stones just
go into the sleeve pockets just as they are, not in any sort of
baggie. Although, if I have a collection of 6mm round garnet cabs,
for instance, I will put them in a baggie and then put that into the
sleeve. For almost all of the stones, though, and the bigger they are
the worse it is, as I flip the pages, the turning action tends to
fling the stones out of their sleeves. It doesn’t seem to matter,
either, if I have 5 stones in a pocket or one. I know you said you
put each in a zippie, noting vendor info & such, do you find the
added bag helps them stay in their pockets? Though, I find even the
ones I do put into little zippies still want to fling out. I’ve
employed little strips of masking tape to at least mostly close off
each pocket, but it doesn’t always hold right - I wanted to use
something that wasn’t so tacky that it was hard to get into, or that
would gunk up the plastic, but maybe it’s not tacky enough. Do you
(or whoever else uses the binders with pocket sleeves to store stuff)
use something to effectively close the pockets, or do you not seem to
have a problem with them flinging out?
Thanks!
Lisa
Designs by Lisa Gallagher
www.designsbylisag.com