As I’m sure you can imagine with my OCD Type-A personality, I am always looking for clever new ways to store things away. After soaking up a little online inspiration, I’ve used an over-the-door shoe rack to hold cleaning supplies, a vertical storage rack for pot tops in the kitchen and baskets screwed to the wall for rolled towels. And for some oddball reason, my idea to use a metal filing system to hold my hair appliances has emerged as THE most popular Dream Green DIY project to-date. Don’t ask me why, I’m still scratching my head over that one…
So when I stumbled upon this simple, yet effective idea for ribbon storage (using an emptied CD holder) on Pinterest, I knew I had to give it a go.
Simply put, my then-current ribbon storage system left a little bit to be desired. Ziplock bags…GREAT for keeping grapes/lettuce/chicken fresh. NOT so great for storing ribbon. Sure, it got the job done by keeping it all in one place, but in order to grab a certain spool I had to dump the entire thing on my work table. The system just felt like it could be improved upon.
Enter an empty CD holder – You know, the kind with the prong in the middle. Lucky for me, I had a couple on hand so this project was FREE.
Ten seconds was all it took to dump the ribbon out on the work table, grab some of my favorites and slip them right over the prong.
Cute as a button, for sure. I loved that I could really SEE my ribbon and that I could unwind it without having to remove it from the CD-turned-ribbon “spool,” as I’ll call it. I could even keep the ribbon protected from the elements by slipping the plastic cover right over top.
All of this SOUNDS like a win-win. But then I realized that only three out of the twenty spools of ribbon fit…I guess I gravitate towards the chunkier widths of ribbon, making this project kind of a waste in terms of space savings. The big plastic CD holder takes up WAY more room than the original Ziplock storage did.
Then I thought maybe I could use my washi tape instead, thinking they’d be thinner and I could fit more. After all was said and done, I definitely could have fit more tape on the prong than ribbon, but it still would have taken up valuable real estate in my crafting closet without much gain in terms of honest to goodness storage.
Truth be told, I slipped everything back into the Ziplock bag for another storage idea to hit. But all is NOT lost, because I am now anxious to try out Plan B for this ribbon/washi storage.
A nice and taaaaalllllllll paper towel holder is sure to carry far more than the CD holder, so stay tuned when I try that out in the not-so-distant future.
Hope you had a great weekend and an even BETTER beginning to fall. We spent the very first day of autumn revamping our front door with new fall-themed decor – I can’t wait to share the details this week.
