Peace of Mind Organizing

December tiny projects challenge: Day 1

13 December 2021

During the lockdown in 2020, I did three tiny projects challenges and blogged about them. These were small organizing projects I could complete in about 30 minutes or less that I did for five days in a row. It was a great way to keep busy and I loved the results. I realized I didn’t do any in 2021, so I thought I would wrap up the year with another five-day tiny projects challenge. Feel free to join me in on challenging yourself to complete one small organizing project a day!

Day 1: Organizing my lettering pens

I love pens. And I love doing hand lettering. The combination of those two loves has led to quite a collection. I primarily do my lettering in the living room, on a clipboard while watching TV or, if I’m doing something that requires more concentration, at the dining room table. So the bulk of my pens (the ones that aren’t on my office desk) are stored in the living room.

A couple of years ago, I blogged about how I organize my lettering pens. In short, I organized them by type of pen and I used a Linus 9-inch divided turntable to store them, divided between GODIS drinking glasses from IKEA and Yoplait Oui yogurt jars. But my pen collection swiftly outgrew the turntable and the categories got a little squishy.

Here are a couple of before pictures:

So yesterday I decided to reorganize the pens. Originally, I thought I would just refresh the categories, but then I realized that when I was looking for a pen, I was often looking for a particular color. So on a lark, I decided to organize them by color. I know from clothes closets that organizing by color can be really attractive and beneficial. I figured it was worth a try for my pens, with the reassurance that I could always go back to organizing by type.

It was a simple process. I started by plucking out all the blue pens. There were too many for one container, so I sorted them by hue, with the purplish-blue pens on one end of the spectrum and the greenish-blue pens on the other and the true blue pens in the middle. I put them into three containers and moved on to the next color.

The whole project took just 40 minutes. Here are the after pictures:

So much prettier! Time will tell how functional organizing by color will be. (I’ll try to remember to report back.) I did keep four types of pen together, in a mix of colors (because function is more important than aesthetics to me): the Mildliner highlighter pens I use all the time, the metallic gen pens I’m currently using to write in holiday cards, some paint pens, and some dual-tipped brush pens that were much taller than the others.

In an effort to keep the session tiny, I did not test all the pens. But that’s an easy project for another day and it will doubtless allow me to trim my collection.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s tiny project!

Tagged with: craft rooms, crafts, pens, tiny projects

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