Purging scrapping supplies and more?

I did something very similar 2 years ago when we moved for DH's job. We moved from a fairly large house with a bonus room over the garage I used for my scrap room (huge) to a much more expensive city. Our new house has a very small bedroom/office that we decided I would be able or make work as my scrap room. But it is probably 1/3 or even 1/4 of the size of my old space. I had a lot of downsizing to do!

Here's what I did. I touched every single item in my room and made a decision.
* was I keeping it just because I had space? This applied to a lot of alterable items like blank picture frames, mini albums, etc. I am no longer doing much of that kind of thing so I let most, but not all of it, go.
* how old was the product and did I still like it? I had paper & stickers from when I first started scrapping. A lot of it was ugly to me now. I also went through older paper pads and took out paper I did like and put the rest in a sell pile.
*test all markers, pens, inks, paints, etc. Throw out dry ones. Sell duplicate colors.
* if I havent used a tool in years or never really liked it, I sold it. I had journaling templates and stencils I never used anymore. Those went.
* most magazines and idea books were sold or recycled. I wasn't using them for reference and they take a ton of space.
* punches that I rarely used were sold bc I can cut shapes with my Silhouette. I kept the basics like circles, hearts, stars...

When I unpacked I was even more ruthless with my paper because it had to fit into a certain storage piece and I had no room for overflow.

During my first purge, I sold stuff in our garage sale. In our new city when I further purged, I found a craft sale that benefitted a woman's shelter. Anything left that we didn't sell we could donate to them and I did that.

Good luck! It's not fun but I'm actually so much happier in my new space with less stuff. It's super organized and neat. I love it.

I don't have any suggestions, but I am cheering you on. I need to do this too!

This is what I'm in the middle of right now, and it is UGLY. While there has been a lot of stuff that has been easy to toss into the "Dump it!" pile, there are other things that haven't been so easy to throw on that pile.

For example, I have a huge, and I mean HUGE, collection of shape stencils. Journaling Genies, paper doll and alphabet tracers, etc. I have not one but THREE electronic cutters so I'm probably never going to use those again and it should be a pretty easy slam dunk to get rid of them. BUT, I also have a preschooler at home who might really like to use those stencils for a while. So now that slam dunk is not so cut and dried. I saved them for her.

Another example. I was going through all of my personal papers, stickers, etc. and pulled out a big pile of baby boy and boy type things, thinking hey! Another slam dunk! I can easily get rid of ALL this stuff because I will never have another kid and the one I do have is a girl! Yay! Until it occurred to me that I recently sent in probably 400 slides and had them scanned and saved onto DVDs from DH's baby and childhood days, and some of those pics would be fun to scrap for DD to have.   So, back out of the "dump it" pile for all that stuff too.

I guess if there is ANY realistic chance I could conceivably use it AND I still like it, I'm keeping it for now and will revisit it again after I've worked through some of those projects on my to do list and look at what's left then. Unfortunately, my to do list is really, really long right now which doesn't help matters at all! It's been a perfect storm of having all of my personal scrapping stuff packed up for years, having no where to unpack anything to sort through it before this, and having virtually no time to scrap anyway.

With so many scrapping companies gone now, and access to new stuff dwindling more and more every year, I hesitate to get rid of something I might not be able to find a good replacement for down the road.

As for the question of what to do with the stuff I want to purge, I'm lucky because I have some good friends a few hours away from me that hold a huge craft/stamp/scrap rummage sale twice a year and their spring sale is coming up. The small percentage of sales that they take is the seed money for the annual charity crop in the fall. Anything that I think someone might still buy will get priced well to sell, and anything else will be donated either to my kid's school, to a local Girl Scout troop, or to my friend's charity crop garage sale table. Anything that doesn't sell this spring will get donated to the charity crop's garage sale table too, none of it is coming back home with me. The nice thing is I will get a donation slip for the charity crop and can write off whatever I leave there on my taxes.

There was a thread on here a while back about good places to donate scrapping stuff to, and it ended up being a pretty comprehensive list. It would be worth doing a quick search.

I have been amazed at the things that people have bought at the previous sales my friends have had! Some things I never would have thought would sell did, and other things that I was sure would sell right away just sat there. It's just weird! The storage items and totes are (not surprisingly) usually the first things to sell.

I did not read all the responses, but I have this one:

Get a friend that is not interested in crafting to help you purge. To them it will truly be just things. AND then...make sure you have no access to the stuff you decide is donate, giveaway, or trash. Ask me how I know.

My friend helped me to clean out my garage and when she left I took back a least 2-3 things...lol

I 'shop' my room... I have those bins from the Container Store for my paper and once the piles on my desk and floor get to be too high, I go through all of my papers and can only 'buy' what will fit in the bins... I've given away stuff I've really liked - but it's because I kept something else that I loved...

I do the same when it comes to embellishments too, except that some of that stuff goes into the office/junk drawer or in with the gift wrap stuff (paper clips, labels, twine, tags, etc)...

If you have duplicate tools, pick the one that's the most versatile... I have a bunch of circle punches that I love because they're convenient, but if I had to pare down, I'd get rid of them... I find using my Silhouette a bit of a pain to use to just cut a circle, but in a smaller space I'd rather have the Silhouette and space than the punches and clutter...

Like a pp said, check your inks and markers and pens and paints... Get rid of worn out and dried up stuff... Toss the bottles with just a little bit of glue, packages with two foam dots left... The time and cost of moving stuff like that just isn't worth it...

Purge with the idea that you're setting up a new and better space... One with only your favourite things, with working tools, with fresh new projects to make...

I did a big purge a couple of years ago. During my first pass, I finally gave myself permission to get rid of things I know I just won't use like ribbons, naked chipboard, light weight patterned paper (unless I really really loved the pattern), etc. On my second pass, I asked myself would I buy this item right now? If the answer was no, then there was my answer. There were a few things I was on the fence about and I challenged myself to use them on the next 20 layouts - if it didn't make it to page, it was gone too. It took a while to go through all this but I got myself down to things I really love.

I find I need to purge just so I can actually use stuff, otherwise I get overwhelmed.

One thing I do suggest is a "maybe" box. When I clean out, I always have a little plastic container where I throw things that I think I want to keep but haven't really used. I keep it in the closet. Then if I find a need to go in a get it out, I keep it, otherwise next time it goes right out to the donation pile.

Surprisingly sometimes I do go back to get something out, but it's usually for someone else to use on a project or something not related to my scrapbooking.

I'm doing the same thing right now. We just got new carpet in our house so we've been slowly going through everything as we put it back. I have about 8 mini albums that I got when I worked at a LSS back in the day (I left there in '08) YIKES! I have not used them so they are getting donated. I look for a lot of organizing ideas on Pinterest and that gets me even more excited to purge and organize. I also have a binder full of stickers I need to get rid of. Have fun and Good luck!

when I purged I didn't want to spend too much time going through my stash. so anything more than 2 years old I put into the giveaway/throwaway pile. after that I still had lots left.

Another thing that really helped when I did mine was I took everything out of its packaging and then grouped by color into Iris boxes. Just the packaging alone saved me tons of space and I find I use stuff so much more now because I can see it and its organized.

on the old 2peas board, I met someone in another country who made cards for hospitals and such. I donated about 75lbs of stuff to her so far. crazy thing is that it didn't seem to make much of a dent in my stash. probably because I've kept shopping and that void was quickly replaced. LOL

I really need to do another purge. this time mostly embellishments since I already did a major paper purge.

I've purged my scrapbook supply a few times over the years.

I knew we would probably not go to Disney again...

(we've been to the parks 3 times and then the Disney Cruise).

But for some reason, I kept all the papers that I had.

Well now I am making cards for Operation Write Home

(I have in the past but not that many)

and the Disney paper is great to use for cute cards.

I used them for birthday and I miss you cards.

The box I sent in April had 140 cards : )

It makes me happy to craft and have it be appreciated!

I mostly gave things away to teachers. I sent one carton to the library where my mother volunteers and another to a woman on a message board I was active on who had a house fire. The rest I either tossed (junk) or sold. Oh and my niece & nephew got a bag of craft supplies.

One thing I did was to be honest with my scrapping style, trying to keep only the things I actually use in my pages.  I love the look of certain things, but realistically was not using lots of things like punches, stamps, paper style, stickers, etc.  Those are the things that I was able to weed out. I need to go through the process again, as I just bought a huge stack of paper at a garage sale.  I am getting closer to having the things I use the most.