Hello all. I've been wanting to do this for a while and I finally got it finished. I find myself using the DS so much it was a hassle to get the carts out of the boxes so this is my organizing solution. I wanted to share with everyone but it's taken me forever to get the photos and upload this post.
There's been a post that I saved I believe from the cricut message board using the snapware containers to store your cricut carts and handbooks in. While I was able to buy the shorter containers I was going to have to order the taller ribbon one for the handbook and overlays. Well with shipping I just couldn't bring myself to ever order them. I'm soo glad I never did. I was in Target the other day and found some that work perfectly and they have green handles to match my bug. :o) I believe I spent considerably less money on these as well. $8 to be exact. Yeah! More money for scrapping! They also have several other sizes and styles I want to go back and get to use in my scrap room to organize other items.
I'll explain step by step what I did starting with my handbooks.
Gasp!
Have you ever been annoyed flipping through the handbooks at all the other languages you can't read? Well I have. I have a very wondering brain so I need things simple and straightforward. So hold your breath; I ripped out all those pages. It was
very hard in the beginning. I mean I paid good money for these and I'm destroying them. About a third of the way through when I saw how big the stack was becoming it became liberating. I mean look at all the wasted space I'm going to save and not to mention the time flipping to find the English. Pages were flying at this point. Be sure and read further down how I redeemed and recycled part of these pages. I'm still grinning at the cleverness.
The boxes I bought from Target are by Sterilite and the have REorganize Room Essentials on the label. The short one for the carts were $1.99 each and hold 36 carts easily. It's called a Small Clip box. The taller one for the handbooks and overlays were $2.99 and hold a dozen books and overlays with out being tight. You can easily flip through them and remove the books. They're called Medium Clip Box. So far I have 2 mediums to hold all my books and one small one to hold the carts with room to grow. I have 22 carts so far.
I used Fabulous Finds and DS to make dividers the right size to between each handbook and overlay. I hand wrote the titles because I just didn't have the time at home to do it on the computer. I cut them all out on the cricut in no time at all.
Now on to the carts and my cleverness (at least I feel clever). I wanted to label the tops of the carts so I could see the names without having to pull them from the box. I don't have a label maker that would work. I have one that runs the plastic type tape through but I didn't want to use that. I wanted a paper label. I looked over at the pile of throw away pages of the handbook and had a light bulb moment. I cut the name out to adhere on the carts and cut the pictures that showed all the cuts to possibly put on the dividers. Isn't that clever? LOL Very quick! Free! My two favorite things in scrapbooking and life. I just used my tape runner to adhere them to the top. You'll see a couple missing. Two are solution carts that don't come with booklets and 1 is a cart I haven't decided if I want to keep or not.
I then took the cricut head I designed in DS and cut a couple more out of vinyl to decorate the boxes with. I arranged the carts in alphabetical order and then Disney so I labeled the boxes A-O and P-Z and Disney.
I'm thrilled with the set up and the cost. Now if I'm designing with DS and just need the carts I can grab one container and I'm ready to go. If I want to cut from the books I can take all the containers to my table to work.
Hope you can use something I did to incorporate into your organizing and scrapbooking. Have an awesome day!
