Stash Week Day 2: Ribbon

Yes, this is the drawer directly above yesterday's drawer. Let me start by saying that this does not include Christmas ribbon. Christmas ribbon goes with the Christmas stuff. I know that super-organized people like Martha Stewart keep all their ribbon on the spools, then put a dowel through the spools and then hang the dowel somewhere. It looks nice, plus you have information about each type of ribbon in case you need to get some more. This method doesn't work for me because I don't have a good place to hang it. Instead everything but sheer and satin ribbon (which gets picked and runs too easily) gets taken off the spool, and the empty spools get tossed, repurposed or recycled. Here how it's all organized.

1. I used an empty roll from home decor weight fabric to hold wide ribbons (1 inch wide or wider), which are secured with teeny gold safety pins. You can ask at your local fabric store if they have any empty ones they'd be willing to give you. If you buy the end of a roll or enough yardage, the store will sometimes give you the roll, too. In any event, I just need to figure out how to mount this thing on the wall. I'll add it to the "to do" list.

2. Ric-rac how I love thee. I cut a strip of a very stiff cardboard and wrapped all my ric-rac around it so I could have it all in one place. I used a tiny piece of double-sided, removable, acid-free tape to hold the ends in place, wrapped the ribbon around and secured it with straight pins.

3. Sheer and satin ribbon stays on its spools and resides in this shoebox. There are also a couple of rolls of paper ribbon that I got on clearance for pennies at Ikea.

4. This little basket holds super skinny satin ribbon that's just loosely piled in there. This is the kind that you can get on sale three rolls for $1 at Michael's. I use it primarily for hanging tags on gifts and hanging ornaments on the Christmas tree.

5. This tiny toddler sneaker box holds scraps of ribbon, generally shorter than a foot long.

6. This old cardboard box holds all the rest of my ribbon, namely, the half-inch ribbon used to make kids' hair clips. I just sort of loosely "fold" the ribbon and lay it in the box. I can't see it all at once, but I know what is in there, so I generally can find what I need.

So, yes, I have (in the past, I swear) amassed quite a bit of ribbon. But like I said, as soon as I get the two-year-old trained, we'll be cranking out crafts like sausage. Just wait and see. Come back the rest of the week for more stash talk. Have a great week!