planner supply storage and organization

I spend a lot of quality time with my planner in the summertime. I first reflect on what pages I used and didn't use in my planner last year, and what pages I wish I had or wish were set up differently to decide what pages I want to include in my planner this year (see a quick tour of my planner for next school year here). Then I print the pages out and get everything set up (see this year's planner setup, with links to everything I use, in this post). Then of course I get to start filling it out! My planner helps me so much in keeping me sane, I think it's only fair for me to show it some love too ;)

This past school year I started getting into using more supplies to use my planner more effectively (and make it prettier / more fun). As a crafter I already had some supplies on hand that I use in my planner, but my collection has definitely grown! I recently re-organized my planner supplies to make it easier for me to find what I need, so I wanted to share those ideas with you today.

After re-organizing my closet, I was able to clear out the 3 drawers in the armoire I have in my bedroom for planner / crafting supplies. The top drawer has all of the supplies I use most often in my planner, including washi tape, sticky notes, stickers, stamps, glue, and scissors:

The biggest organizational challenge was, of course, the washi tape. About a year ago I made myself a washi tape dispenser, which looked like this (click on the picture to see how I made it):

Although it served me well, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has a decent but not crazy amount of washi tape, I needed a new storage solution for two reasons: 1) I accumulated too much washi tape to fit in the dispenser and 2) I found I often wanted to hold the entire roll in my hand rather than rip a piece off of the roll from the dispenser. So when I started organizing my supplies in my drawers, I decided it was time for a change.

All I did was take an old box I had on hand, cut off the lid, and arranged the tape rolls in rows. In order to keep the rolls from rolling around the box, I cut strips from the lid and stuck them between the rows of tape. As you might have noticed, my tape didn't even all fit in this 8.5x11 box (I know, I *might* have a problem) so I just found another box and did the same thing, except I only needed one row so I just created one "divider" from the lid and use the rest to store stickers:

I arranged my sticky notes and page flags along the back of the drawer, which both allows me to find them easily and also keeps the boxes, which don't quite fill up the length of the drawer, from sliding around. You may notice my re-purposed washi dispenser in the corner- that now holds my other basic supplies, like scissors, glue, and stamping stuff, and I also use it as a caddy if I'm taking my planning to another room- I pull out the washi, stickers, etc that I want to use that week, throw them in the box, and I can easily carry everything wherever I want to go!

The second drawer holds all of the other planner supplies that I use less frequently and/or are too big to fit in the other drawer:

Right now I have extra pens, stamps, and ink pads, white out, my hole punch, paper cutter, and supplies for setting up my planner (which I only need to use once a year) like tabs, pen loops, and pockets.

Below that I have an entire drawer just for my paper pads:

In my defense, this collection has been growing since I was in high school, and I use the paper for all kinds of different projects besides my planner. Paper stacks are an easy and cheap way to decorate all sorts of things!

There is one set of supplies that I keep on my desk instead of my armoire:

To be honest I did this mostly because I had these mason jars left over from a baby shower I hosted a few months back and I didn't know what to do with them! The jars full of brightly colored pens are just as much decorative as they are functional :) It is nice having the pens out and handy though, since I use them more than any other supply on a regular basis.

If you're interested in seeing a round-up of my favorite planner supplies, here's a post I wrote last November:

And if you're wondering what kinds of pens those are in my mason jars, stay tuned for tomorrow: I've recently found some new pens that I absolutely adore so I'll be sharing those in more detail in tomorrow's post :)

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