BRIGHT AS THE BUTTONS

Do you remember this chest? I showed it as part of my clean-up/organizing efforts, downstairs in my craft room. It was a really good buy--100% metal, in nearly perfect condition, for just $12.50--but beautiful, it was not.


I had already decided I was going to use it for button storage, assigning a color per drawer, except for yellow and orange, which get to live together.

As I put the buttons into their new digs, the colors ran through my mind, and pretty soon songs were, too..."Yellow bird, up high in banana tree..." "Blue, Navy, blue, I'm as blue as I can be..."

I've been reading a wonderful book, Organizing from the Inside Out, by Julie Morgenstern, and one of the things she says in it is that you're more likely to use an organizational tool or item if it's attractive. I know that to be true from past experience. It was a small leap, and only an hour or two, from the dreary chest above to this:

It makes me smile when I see it, and has an added benefit: If I chance upon a button that has fallen to the floor, or been slipped into a pocket, a small gift from Mom, I know without thinking what drawer it goes in! (Black, white, and gray are in another chest. The drawers of this one weren't large enough to hold them.)