When you start pricing them, drawer units of any kind are expensive. They are often narrow and the drawers aren’t deep. You can often find second hand filing cabinets being given away for free or for very little money but unless you have files to hang, they’re just a big deep drawer space, that is, unless you know how to organise deep drawers.
I recently made over my designated craft and office space and had a 2 drawer filing cabinet. I decided to remove the hanging files as I don’t receive much paperwork that needs filing anymore. Most of it is sent electronically and I file online. I didn’t want to go and spend the money on a new set of drawers so decided to make the most of this filing cabinet.
We were going for a grey colour scheme in my office/craft space so my husband gave the front of the filing cabinet drawers and cabinet itself a quick spray with grey spray paint.
As you can see, filing cabinet drawers are a little weird in their design. The front of the drawer is quite high but the sides aren’t. If you were to fill those drawers with loose items, they’d most likely get caught as the drawer closes and opens. The best thing to do is create compartments to fill the vertical space within the drawer.
Take the measurements of the drawer, that is, the width across, the length from front to back and the depth of the actual drawer from the bottom to just under the the lip of the front of the filing cabinet. Look for suitably sized containers with lids at your local dollar store to fill the space. You might find two long but not so deep containers or 4 smaller ones. Remember to take your drawer measurements with you and experiment with different sized containers.
I filled my large containers with fabric and I had enough space on top of those containers to store my button and beads containers. The drawer slides open and shut easily without losing any of the contents.
For the top drawer of the filing cabinet I wanted to keep all of the different crafting bits and pieces I use. Things like embroidery cotton, scissors, glues and tapes, sewing notions like interfacing, quilting rulers. A little bit of everything. I usually have a good stock of used boxes I keep for the children’s crafts and for general repurposing so I played around with the configuration of the boxes and trimmed the tops so they were all the same height.
I picked up a roll of pretty wrapping paper and wrapped all the boxes which doesn’t take very long at all.
It was just a matter of playing around with what fit best in each box. (It’s still a work in progress and as I use the materials in each box, I’ll find what works best.) Everything is in it’s spot and easily within reach. I know if I’m wanting to embroider, the embroidery threads and needles are all in one box, same as the lace trims, etc etc.
I had 3 smaller plastic containers destined for another job but they fit in the front area of the drawer to hold things I need to put my hands on fast and easily. Things like the glue, sticky tape, glue gun, drawing pins, tape measures, unpicker, pins, glasses etc. There are 2 containers on the right that are on top of each other. I just lift the top container off to get the contents in the box underneath.
To look at my ordinary filing cabinet you wouldn’t think that I have nearly my entire craft supplies in easy to see compartments within those two drawers.
I also have deep drawers in my kitchen and I used baby formula tins to keep baking and cooking supplies in plus two tiers of large plastic containers for my basic flour, sugar and icing sugar. The second drawer keeps all the boxes of breakfast cereal, kid’s plates and other tall containers.
Think of the humble filing cabinet as a purposeful storage option before you decide to get rid of it. Think of the ‘vertical’ space and how best to make the most of it. Reuse cereal and other small boxes to organise your different craft supplies plus other containers you might already have in your home.
