Ribbon Organization

I'm still waiting for a 12 step program for craft addicts, but in the mean time, I am trying to trudge along with organizing and pretty-ing up my craft space.  A while back I got a great shelf meant to hold all my ribbon... well, it held a good amount, but definitely not all of it... bummer. 

So, I put the ribbons on in rainbow order and stacked additional ribbons inside and out of a box on top of the shelf.  It continued to bother me.

Plus, I was trying so hard to put all the ribbon in rainbow order, I forgot that half of the ribbon I was putting on there was little spools from the dollar bin.  Every time I went to use one, I'd use all 18 or 24 inches up and have a cardboard roll empty in the middle of the rack.

I set out to solve the problem and I'm quite pleased with my current solution.  First, I removed anything that has wire trim since it really isn't meant to be used on clothes, plus it is mostly holiday related.  That is all now packed away with the holiday it belongs with.  Then I only put spools of ribbon that were four feet or longer, this way when I use a small amount, I won't be left with an empty spool.

Now those cardboard spools take up a lot of space, so the short ribbons came off.  I thought about just putting all the small pieces in a jar or something like that, but it would bother me too much that they were all mingling together (I have strange OCD to things like that).  Recently, I saw someone who used the old rounded clothes pins (the ones without the spring, just the rounded top) but I couldn't find them and I really was hoping to keep this a low budget project.

On a quick trip to my local dollar store the solution came to me... foam hair rollers!!!  After a few evenings of rolling up the ribbon pieces here is my final result:

I was trying really hard not to get the clutter around the space in the picture!  I picked up the little blue buckets for $2 each, I just love the color, plus it pulls from the wall color in my living room and adjacent hallway.

Some of the curlers I put two ribbons on, some three.  There are a few random ones that were wide but short in length (usually saved from something else instead of the trash) wrapped with a piece of pipe cleaner.  There were a few that I had several short pieces of the same ribbon, they filled up a curler by themselves.

Check that off as one more space that looks pretty and organized in my craft space!

Peace be with you,