I purged about 3/4 of my art supplies I’ve been collecting over the years. The area I kept them in (a floor to ceiling shelf with boxes on each shelf) did not inspire crafts for my family because it was overrun and not terribly well organized. I had done a few passes over the years to gather like materials together, but it was too much.

Here’s how I organized it. The discarded materials were gathered together to give to Goodwill, they are all still usable, I just had too much!

  • If I found the craft, in general, pretty much uninspiring even in theory, I removed 100% of the items. For instance, there was a loom and an unbelievable amount of tiny beads that I couldn’t picture ever using.
  • If I had too much of an item, I reduced the amount of materials to a manageable set. For instance, any felt piece smaller than 5″x5″ I stuffed in a bag and removed. I did lose some color options, but the remaining large pieces are more likely to be used.
  • I took a reasonable quantity (a shoe-box full) of fresh-looking pens/markers in good condition, saved them, and condemned the remaining ones to be removed.
  • I removed lots of small and large duplicate paints, but kept dry tempera. I removed paint-brushes and paint that were unsalveagable.
  • I threw away unsealed clay, lots of partially used colored paper, etc.
  • I allowed myself one ‘misc’ box for crafts that didn’t fit into one of the ’standard’ categories. A reasonable ‘misc’ box is a bit of a conceptual breakthrough, I think over-categorizing demotivates a lot of decluttering projects.
  • I allowed myself a ‘unique’ set of tools, and gathered them together. While having a melon-baller in the craft tools is arguably useful, it’s much harder to justify having three.
  • I removed finished art-works and never-to-be-finished projects from the craft shelf. They don’t belong there.

    • When I finished I had a shelf that had about 1/4 of the material, but it was much more approachable, and allowed for about 90% of the craft types that it did before the purge. That’s a pretty good clutter trade-off. Like any other decluttering project, just getting started creates nearly all the momentum you need to finish.

    Good luck!