From handmade seasoned pros to the kitchen-table crafters, we LOVE every single one of the shops that purchase supplies from us. It’s such an honor to help supply you with the products you need to make your own personal and business goals a reality!
If you’re a handmade home-preneur or a small business owner that operates out of their home, you’ll know how challenging the balance can be between home life and work life! Space is limited and sometimes you just don’t have the option to have a ‘studio’ or dedicated work space. The kitchen table and kids-in-bed routine is when your business hustle comes out. We’ve been there! We get it!
We’re diving into storage solutions for businesses like yours! Keeping your supplies organized and efficient is key to keeping your production up! We’re breaking down three different ways you can keep your supplies easy to access - and easy to clean up.
Rolling Cart
Sometimes the best ideas are the most obvious! We love rolling carts here at Cara Supply, and we initially started using them when hand-picking your supplies!
Rolling carts are very cost efficient, and because of their ability to move, they’re easy to store when you’re not using them. We have a clear rolling cart in the front office that we use, but we also love rolling carts like this pink one from Amazon. The hooks and hanging organizers look like they would be super handy for tools!
If we were setting up a rolling cart for our own handmade business, we would probably put shipping and packaging items on the bottom, and our beads, cording & other most used supplies on the top. You can roll your cart over beside your kitchen table chair and have an efficient L shape work space!
We used a few drawer organizers found at the dollar store to help us separate out some of our items in these photos, but you could easily use any baskets or bins you have available to you.
Storage Bin Business
If you’ve got space for one, a small storage bin is a great way to organize your handmade shop supplies! We found ourselves a bin that has a secure snap on lid (because no one has time for beads to go flying if this bin took a tumble!), that also conveniently fit some super cost efficient drawer organizers.
Drawer organizers can be found at any dollar or home goods store, and we managed to find ourselves a set of organizers that had silicone bottoms to them! Our bin was also under $5, and we liked the idea of being able to see all our supplies through the clear sides as well!
Simply stack up your supplies in the bin to clean them up, and pull them out as you need them when making products!
A storage bin is usually a small enough container to find a safe place to store at home, but if we were using our kitchen table to make products, we would probably keep our bin above our fridge for easy access (well.. easy access for you, and less easy access for little hands at home :P).
Cleaning Caddy
For the business that only requires a few tools or supplies, this cleaning caddy is a great solution for small business storage. It’s compact, easy to organize, and very mobile!
The cleaning caddy that we found at our local Walmart even had handy sections already in it, so we took advantage of those small sections to hold tools, cording and other small miscellaneous items.
We also found that organizing your supplies with secure closing craft organizers (like the ones we sell here!) are super easy ways to make sure that you get the most use of space out of your caddy.
Another great way to store your tools is to wrap them in the mat you craft on! Yep, just like a fine-arts brush roll, you can roll up your crafting supplies in your silicone craft mat to keep everything secure and pulled together. Simply line up your tools, roll your mat to hold them, and tie off your roll with a cord or hair elastic.
There’s so many creative ways to keep your home based business organized, and they don’t require a big studio or fancy custom storage! There are ideas you can use that are cost effective and efficient!
Do you have any tips or tricks that you use for your own home-based business? We would love to hear them!!
Happy (home) crafting!!
Xo
-the girls