Stamp Organization: Part 1 - Stamp Drawer Maps

Every crafter who uses rubber stamps has their own way of storing and keeping track of them.  I found that as my collection grew, I needed both a place to store my stamps, and an organization system so I would know what stamps I had, and where they were.

Back in the day, Ikea used to sell boxes like this:

They came in various sizes and drawer combinations and widths.  First they were ready-made units.  Then the sizes changed slightly as the wood shell and drawers became thinner and slightly more flimsy.  Then Ikea went back to the sturdier version of the wood, but flat-packed the unit so you had to construct both the shell and the drawers yourself.  I have all three types in my craft room.  My only regret is that I only have one more unused flat-packed unit stashed away...

Each drawer in each unit is mostly full of stamps, with a few drawers dedicated to paper or supplies.  In all, I have about 65 stamp drawers, each numbered. 

Each drawer has 2-3 layers of stamps.  

When I first started storing stamps in these drawers, I made a small attempt at grouping stamps by category:  sentiments, tea, moose stamps, etc., but I quickly found that a category didn't fit neatly in a drawer.  I either had wasted space in a drawer, or not enough.  And if I used multiple stamps in a project, I didn't always remember what drawer they had been in, or how they fit in the drawers.  As a result, stamp clean-up from a project took forever.  And when I had friends over for craft parties and pulled out lots of stamps from many drawers, it would take me over an hour to put them all back.  Hence the stamp drawer map project was born...

Focusing on one drawer at a time, I pull out all of the stamps and make sure they are arranged in a way that maximizes the drawer space.  If there's a gap, I sort through the newer stamps in my collection that haven't yet found a home to see if they fit better.  Once I've settled on the arrangement, it's time to document.

For each layer of stamps, I draw a pencil outline, and then stamp each stamp in its place.  Each layer has its own page.

 

Once the maps are complete, I cross-reference them against my full stamp catalog to make sure each image has a drawer number next to it.

In some ways, this mapping process, which has been going on for quite some time, seems like overkill.  But as tedious as it all seems, my maps make stamp clean-up easy.  And the mapping process has given me a chance to look at all of my stamps and think about how I want to use them. In some distant future, after the mapping project is complete, I want to challenge myself to use each of my stamps for a card or somesuch.  If I can't figure out how to use it, maybe I don't need it.

65 stamp drawers.  41 mapped.  24 to go...  Summer project???

In my next Organization post, I'll show you my stamp catalog.

 How do you keep track of your rubber stamps?