Efficient ribbon storage for as little as $10,000.00.

Remember a while back when I made fun of that gal who had a dressy pantry and a casual pantry because basically I was just jealous of her pantry?

Here's another ridiculously organized pantry from Sand & Sisal.  I will admit, it looks great but the mechanics of it are what makes me question its efficiency.  Think about it.  You get home from the grocery store and instead of just putting your groceries on the shelf, you have to open the package and dump the contents into another container.  But what if your container isn't empty yet and you can only dump half your contents, then what do you do??  That must be the reason for those baskets...so she can hide the stuff that won't fit in the bins.  Or that's where the casual pantry that no one ever sees comes in.  That's where the real food storage is happening, this one is just display.  I'll bet she has a glass door fridge too and it's always full of fresh vegetables.  I hate her. 

This pantry is nothing compared to others I've seen where it looks like they have emptied their canned goods into glass jars and recanned them because it looks better on the shelf.  Okay maybe they don't actually do that but I guess what I'm saying is that although it looks great, these kinds of pantries are high maintenance and just not practical for most of us.  And I will be switching to this method just as soon as we move to Houston.  Just to prove how bad it is.

I don't think I blogged about this ribbon storage from Delightful Order but I did talk about it on Facebook.  I don't have a whole lot of ribbon but what I do have is unruly and I've never found a storage method I'm happy with.  I love this idea of wrapping it around wooden clothespins and vowed to try it as well after we move.

During the organizing frenzy I have come across a couple of wayward spools of ribbon and decided to deal with them now instead of later.  I've found those round clothespins online for as little as $.10 each but the problem is that they're not in my hands right this minute.  What I did have in my hands right this minute was several packages of jumbo craft sticks, aka tongue depressors.  I can't remember what I originally bought them for but I'm sure it was fabulous.

I decided to try out the craft sticks for now since I have them and they're free.  I'm sure they will cause a little kink in some of the ribbon but since I seldom use it that's not a huge problem.  I did discover that this cute little storage idea is not as fabulous as it looks since I didn't consider the time and effort involved in wrapping each and every ribbon around a stick.  Yes, the result is great, but is it worth the time involved?  I dunno yet, we'll see.  I've just done the skinny ribbon so far and haven't tackled all my fibers which is a much larger issue.

In case you missed it, that was the connection between the pantry and the ribbon.  It looks great but is it worth it to repackaging something that was already packaged?  I'll have to let you know but my first impression with the ribbon is a definite maybe. 

Naturally I forgot to take a "before" picture but I did snap one of the empty ribbon spools.  That's about 30 spools of various widths but mostly 1/4".  I've had them in a box, in bags, skewered on dowels, hanging from a string, just about every way there is to store the dang stuff, I've tried it.  Some of them worked better than others but they all took up quite a bit of space.

Checkout how much space those 30 spools take up after they've been wrapped on sticks.  Big difference, huh?  Well, okay I guess it's impossible to tell in the pictures, especially since Jayson still has the good camera and I'm making do with my phone.  You'll just have to trust me on this.  That's a little bread basket they're sitting in which is not where they'll live permanently but I'll deal with that after the move.  I can grab those sticks and hold them all with my 2 hands...impossible to do with 30 spools of ribbon.  I'm sort of impressed.

So the next time you find yourself with waaayyy too much time on your hands, grab some ribbon and some popsicle sticks and go to town.  It will save you lots of space and cost you only about $10,000 for surgery caused by the repetitive motion injury it creates.  It's a trade off.