lost + found: anabela of fieldguided

This week, I'm so tickled to have Anabela of Fieldguided sharing her organizing ways for the Lost + Found series. Anabela + Geoff have a fantastic Etsy shop full of handmade ties, bookplate mugs, doily drawings, and vintage finds. And you can also find Anabela's work on Bakers Dozen. I've been a fan of Anabela's handmade wonders and then found her blog, which captures her fun, creative spirit. Here's Anabela on how she organizes:

magazines
I love my magazines! I have what feels like a thousand of those simple white cardboard magazine holders; they are inoffensive to look at and handy. I store them on bookcases. I keep all the titles together, but the individual magazines aren't in chronological order. I rely quite a bit on intuition and memory for retrieval. For example, when something pops into my head that I remembered seeing in a magazine, I am fairly good at being able to find it again. I am actually not as organized as I should be for someone with a degree in library science. No post-its anywhere or ledgers with cross references!

photos
I need a better way of organizing my photos. I just started using iPhoto and I am going to try making better use of metadata. Tags are actually a really wonderful tool since they are intuitive; I have to stop being lazy about using them. As for prints, I rarely have any made. I have a few in boxes, and they're not even archival boxes! Oh dear.

tax paperwork + receipts
I have a purple folder that I use to store my tax papers. The purple folder, when I see it, screams "important!"  As for receipts, I keep them in a little zippered pouch I got from Forest Bound on Etsy. It's not a very good system, I know, but at least the pouch is cute.

 

craft supplies

I am lucky that in my new apartment I have a dedicated sewing room, which helps, as in my last apartment I had my supplies in about five different places!  I put a large bookcase in the room and I plan to stack my fabric on it, as well as my collection of craft books. I also love collecting things for small storage. I have a couple of fold-out sewing baskets, as well as a few clear acrylic bins. I use jars and antique tins as well. Again, I tend to rely on intuition to find everything, and it usually works. I might have to take advantage of pegboards and additional shelving to keep everything handy. I am determined to keep everything in one room this time.

and Anabela just recently moved, so I asked her to share how she organized for her move: 

Before we moved, I spent a few weeks going through my closets and storage to purge things that I could live without. It helped, because it's amazing how much stuff I managed to accumulate in two years at our last apartment. I had to be ruthless, but I don't even remember what I donated to Goodwill, which probably means that I never needed it in the first place.

A big thanks to Anabela for being a part of Lost + Found! Purging is so key to moving — I'm so glad I purged stuff at my stoop sales. I probably saved myself packing about 10 boxes of stuff I don't miss anyway!

{photographs via fieldguided}

last week's lost + found: emilia of auburn & ivory
next week's lost + found: tricia of eating is art and pietopia
what's lost + found all about? find out here