The following is a guest post from regular contributor, Kalyn at Creative Savings.
I am currently in the middle of organizing my home office/craft room, and although I thought Pinterest would help inspire me with all sorts of great ideas, it’s actually been quite overwhelming!
Don’t get me wrong, all the craft room pins and photos are absolutely stunning {I only wish I could pull some of those makeovers off!}, but they also leave me feeling inadequate too. Pretty new desks and wall-to-wall shelving units don’t really fit into my budget right now, so I’m working on making do, while still trying to create a space I love.
When it came to organizing my collection of buttons, I was bombarded with pins featuring thousands of buttons in every conceivable color — all sorted into pretty jars and displayed neatly on a wall shelf, of course.
While I don’t have that many buttons, {and I’m not going to go buy more just to get that colorful look I envy}, I still wanted a button organizing solution that was simple, yet functional, and gave me a little bit of room to grow. I think I found it!
If you have a button box passed down from your mother or grandmother, or you save all those button packets that come attached to new sweaters or dress shirts, it’s time to start organizing them so you can find what you need fast. They are so useful in mending clothes, jazzing up craft projects, and more!
1. Invest in a Plastic Organizer Box
Thankfully, I still had one of these plastic organizer boxes floating around from that beaded bracelet phase I went through as a pre-teen, and thought it would be the perfect storage container for my buttons. I didn’t have a ton of different button colors, so 17 compartments was definitely enough.
I think these boxes work really well if you’re short on space and don’t have thousands of buttons to sort. They let all your buttons live peacefully inside one container without the chaos, and it fit perfectly inside any craft drawer!
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen similar organizing boxes floating around at the dollar store, so you definitely don’t need to spend a whole lot on them. You can also find these at craft stores, but be sure to use your 40% off coupon or wait for a sale to nab it at the best possible price.
2. Gather Your Buttons
Maybe you already have all your buttons sitting in a nice box, but mine were everywhere. I had some stuffed in a junk drawers, others were carefully housed inside my jewelry box, and I even found some in my purse, probably from a clothing purchase that I needed to wear right away, thus leaving the tags {and buttons} behind.
Grab all your buttons and stash them in one place so it’s easier to sort and organize. You might find a few extra buttons here and there later on, but this will give you a great head start.
3. Sort Buttons by Color
The easiest and most beneficial way to organize buttons is by color. When it’s time to mend a shirt, or work on a button-related craft project, I know exactly which color box to look through and it saves me a bunch of time.
This is probably the most tedious part of the whole process, but if you have kids that are old enough not to choke on small buttons, have them jump in and help. You can even turn it into a game!
For buttons that are more oddly shaped {like ones I use to replace buttons on my husband’s jeans}, it’s easier just to give those their own compartment instead of sorting them by color. And if you have more than 17 different colors {the maximum amount of compartments in that organizer we talked about in step #1, start combining like colors to save room.
I have no qualms about mixing reds and pinks if it’s going to save me the cost of a new storage container!
I think one of the best things about finally having my buttons organized, is knowing exactly where to put new buttons instead of stuffing them in a miscellaneous drawer that I’ll forget about immediately after I’ve thrown them in there. I find myself using them more too, rather than taking an unnecessary trip to the store to buy brand new.
Need ideas on what to do with all those buttons you just organized? Here are 21 Frugal Uses for Grandma’s Button Box that include everything from the most adorable bookmarks to embellished purses and flip flops!
How big is your button collection?
Kalyn Brooke is a full-time writer and blogger at CreativeSavingsBlog.com, where she gives a fresh perspective on frugal living, and the kick-in-the-pants you need to create a budget from scratch. She lives in beautiful Southwest Florida with her news-photographer husband and the most adorable bunny you’ve ever seen. She loves making to-do lists, reading good books, eating chocolate peanut butter ice cream, and pursuing big dreams….all carefully planned out, of course.
Emma says
This is almost exactly what I did, except that I grouped by vague colour (reds and pinks, blues, greens, metallic etc) because I have considerably more buttons than you do and then stored in resealable plastic bags in a GORGEOUS genuine vintage tin.
Melissa says
I have to admit, my first thought was ‘what kind of grown-up has a button collection?’ 🙂 But then I realized what you meant – and it turns out – I DO! So I guess I better locate them all and do a better job of organizing them. (Or I should toss them because I never ever use them.) Thanks for the idea – love that plastic organizer.
Jamie says
Well. I must be an eccentric kind of grown-up — as I have an antique button collection! They’re beautiful objects. Take a look at the gorgeous website of Button Country. You can look at the front and back of each button. It may get you started!!