Hey everyone! So, this is sort of a random post. It's very random in fact. Someone asked on one of my Instagram photos if I had any tips for packing up a scrap space, and it made me realize that I had never shared anything about my packing process when I was in the thick of it. I think the only reason I never shared anything, was because I didn't actually share that we had sold our house and would be moving, until the day we moved out of our old house.
I did take a few photos during that time. Mainly pics that I snapped super quick to share with a friend that knew what was going on, as I would share my progress with her here and there. So I thought I would toss up a few photos, and share a few tidbits about how I went about packing up my space.
The very first thing I took into consideration were my albums. I have over 75 12×12" albums. Crazy? Excessive? Maybe. But I've also been scrapbooking for over 26 years! All of my albums were located upstairs in our loft, so they weren't actually in my scrap space. But I knew I had a TON of them. I knew they were bulky. And I knew they were heavy.
I ended up using the medium boxes from U-Haul for all of my albums. I didn't want to pack them totally full of albums, because again – albums are HEAVY. The medium boxes were the perfect size, in that I could stand 4 albums up inside the box, one on each side. They fit perfectly! Then I would go about filling up the center of the box.
I would start with maybe a box or container on the bottom. Anything that would fit in that space. I looked for things that were sort of heavy, but also not super heavy. Then I would just fill it with lighter things. I didn't spend too much time overthinking it, but I did try and make sure I wasn't making them overly heavy. While we did use a hand truck to move the boxes around, we also did need to be able to pick them up and move them as well.
Once I got them mostly filled up, if I still had space on the top of the box, I would add softer things. I used towels, blankets, pillows, etc. This sort of acted like padding, to keep the tops of the albums safe. And since these boxes were all getting stacked in a storage unit for a few weeks, I didn't want the tops to crush in if I could help it.
I also didn't limit what I filled these boxes with to JUST scrapbooking supplies. This might sound like an odd way of doing things. But I would also add in things like home decor items, or memorabilia boxes. I have a lot of decorative boxes that hold memorabilia of all kind, things from the girl's childhood days, etc. I'm super organized when it comes to having a place for all that sort of stuff, and most of these boxes were stored on my Expedit shelves along with my albums. So it just made sense to add these in with my albums. I would also add in things like candles, small photo frames, baskets, small greenery plants, etc.
I like to think I'm sort of a ninja scrapper, in that I can pack a mean box. I made the most of every little nook and cranny in each box I packed, and would often walk around the house looking for something to fit that one little space I had left – because I hated to not make good use of it. Lol.
I should note that at least half of our boxes, once we were done packing, said "scrap stuff + _______". Lol. It was kind of funny.
I also used a lot of the small boxes from U-Haul for the rest of my scrapbook supplies. You can pack the smaller boxes fairly heavy, and still be able to carry them fairly easily. I went about these sort of the same. I packed the bottom with heavier stuff, and then added lighter stuff to the top.
For example, I would pack some of my smaller albums in the bottom of a box, and then add some chipboard alphas on top, and then add a few large Ziploc bags of embellishments, etc. Because I store most of my supplies in baskets on my Expedit shelves, I simply emptied each basket into a large Ziploc bag. That was quick and easy, and because my baskets aren't filled to the brim, once I had a lot of my supplies in bags, it condensed down really well.
Because we weren't moving far, I didn't have to worry too much about packing up my storage baskets, storage bins, large storage jars, etc. I actually just packed them up in my car, and drove them over to my brother's house to store in his garage. If I had to actually pack them up to move to another state or something, I'm guessing they would have gone in boxes or something.
I was also able to simply bring all of my paper trays, vertical paper holders, square wooden storage cubes (with everything in them), plastic Iris cases, tall plastic storage drawer units (I had four of them 8-drawer tower units filled with supplies in my closet), etc to either my brother's house or my parents house. So I had a lot of stuff that I didn't have to pack up. This definitely made things easier in a sense, because I didn't want to have to try and fit those types of things into another 50 boxes. Lol.
I'm not sure how helpful that is, but if you're going to be moving your space anytime soon, maybe a tip or two in there can be of use to you 🙂 I'm sure that there are a ton of scrappers out there that have moved their spaces, and might have better tips. I just dove in and got started and I think it worked out really well.
Laura Vegas 