Stamp reorganization progress report #2

Today was an exciting day in the reorganization of my stamps. I’ve been steadily moving the stamps from their former homes in CD cases to their new places in the Tim Holtz unmounted stamp envelopes, and I needed some more of the DVD boxes that I’m using to hold the envelopes. I’ve had four of the boxes lined up at one end of my stamping table, and I love the convenience of having them right at my fingertips. I wanted a shelf directly above the table so that I could line up four more boxes there.

Off I went to the Container Store, which is tied with IKEA as probably my all-time most dangerous places to shop! After conferring with one of their most amazingly helpful salespeople, I decided on a free-standing Elfa unit. It’s been about 20 years since I installed any Elfa shelves, and boy, have they improved since then! This unit is 36 inches wide and seven feet tall, and I built it in under an hour, with very little frustration and zero bad words! It doesn’t attach to the wall in any way, but is very stable due to its nice long “feet”. It’s easy to move the shelves around any way I want, and I can easily add more shelves or drawers if I want to in the future. I can also add another runner to either or both sides and continue to grow the unit. If I had a big enough room, I could even move it out in the center and add on to the other side! Best of all, I got it during the annual Elfa 30% off sale.

I was able to fit my stamping table (BJURSTA square slide-out leaf dining table from IKEA) right up under the shelves on the Elfa unit. My table is 35 inches wide and its legs just slipped right in between the feet of the Elfa. Pretty cool trick.

Now you can see all eight of the DVD boxes right at the end of my table where they’re easy to reach. I’m hopeful that my entire stamp collection will fit here. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to put my unmounted wheel stamps and my large background stamps in here. If I don’t, then these boxes will likely be enough.

Here’s my CD rack after a few weeks of reorganizing stamps. As you can see, there are a lot of cases missing now. And the ones remaining are getting pretty empty. Many of them are down to just one or two stamps.

This stack of boxes is full of empty CD cases – over 250 of them! I’m pretty excited to get this process finished. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now.