Works for Me Wednesday--Reed Storage

(Before)

Dear Friends,
You may have seen some of this in a previous post, but this time I'm going to give you more of a close up of my reed storage.
Not long ago my husband and I shared an office. It was for his work and for my creating. It was a mess and it was not working. He was using a $5.00 garage sale desk, it's in the back left corner, and his work was spilling onto my crafting/creating table. Anytime I wanted to sit at it, I'd have to pile his work up and move it. He needed his own space and a much larger space at that.

(After)

(Before)

So, his birthday was approaching and I wanted to do something really special. He went out of town on a week long business trip and I got to work. I moved everything out and painted. I enlisted in the help of my in-laws and got his desk and book shelves assembled as well as put in a ceiling fan. I hung curtains and bought extra curtains to cover the garage shelving. You see, in the corner, my reed is stored on garage shelves. I was able to relocate my table to another part of the house, but had no place to move the reed. It needed to stay, so I wanted to make it look nice. I used the extra curtains and sewed them to the right length. I attached velcro to the top of them and adhesive velcro to the garage shelving and I covered the garage shelving with matching curtains. It looks so much better and when hubby is working it is out of site for him.

(After)

It is easy as pie to unvelcro and revelcro the curtains to get to my reed.
Below you can see my maple strips are stored in drainage tubes from the hardware store.
The full pounds of reed are stored in tubs.

The dyed reed are stored in bags that I made. These bags are made from mosquito netting that I got at the fabric store. I don't have the size as some are different. I just sewed bags the size I thought would be right to hold an open pound of reed. The mosquito netting is full of holes so there is no mildew or mold buildup as any damp reed will easily dry. PLEASE NOTE: If you are going to do this, make sure you get MOSQUITO netting, NOT nylon netting. Nylon netting will tear the instant you try to put reed in it. Mosquito netting is really strong.

I store my scraps in some plastic drawers. I know plastic is not ideal, but I make sure the reed is completely dry before I put it in them. I used to store my reed scraps according to color. Now I've found that storing it by size works better for me. If you open one of those bins you will find all kinds of colors in that specific size.

This is my reed storage system. By the way, Mike was extremely surprised to see his birthday present, and very VERY happy with it. As they say over at We are That Family, "This really works for me!"

Baskets of blessings,

Nancy