On a Roll Week 1: Ribbon Organizer

It's still Monday, so I'm not late yet, right?  I'm generally running about 12 hours behind in my life right now.  Anyway, I said I'd have a post today, and I'm coming in just under the wire!

Like I explained here, each week this month I'm going to highlight something that comes on a roll.  The first "on a roll" item that came to my mind was.....

RIBBON!!!!!

I haven't been a huge ribbon collector, but I have enough that I needed to find a simple way to organize it. I'm not big on repackaging items just for pretty, so I went looking for something simple, functional and cheap.  I also have one more base criteria for any storage solution: it can't make dusting more complicated than it already is, because I have a hard enough time keeping up with cleaning. I don't need more things to dust!

I found this solution on Pinterest and decided it would be a great solution for me:

Example from Halsey at Spunky Junky,
http://spunkyjunky.blogspot.com/2011/01/tutorial-tuesday-5-dollar-ribbon.html

It caught my eye because I already had that type of basket in my pantry baskets.  I added a few pieces of dowel, and voila, ribbon storage. Total cost: About $1 for the dowel.

Plenty of room to grow and add more dowels.

I also tend to collect ribbons from packaging and other sources that don't come on a roll. My solution to make them work in my organizer? A tube from a waxed paper package. That allows me to spin it on the dowel as needed. You could cut the tube and use it for each roll, but I decided to keep it simple and just unroll the ribbon I need at the time.

Added appeal for me:  This size (16" long x 13" wide x 7" deep) fit perfectly into an Expedit cube.  I bought mine a few years ago at WalMart, and I believe there's a deeper version (same size) out there, too.  If you can't find that exact basket, look for another brand or a small laundry basket with holes.

Like I said, I'm not repackaging ribbons that come in other forms, like wrapped around a card, just to make them work in my basket. But if I end up with remnants or the end of the package, I'll tuck them onto one of these rolls.

I used 5/8 inch dowel, and it fits snug into the holes in my size Sterilite bin. If you wanted your dowels to spin, you'd need something a bit smaller.

I plan to do another basket for gift wrap ribbons when I tackle that giftwrap project this summer.

Now I need to go USE some of that pretty, neatly organized ribbon! Later this week I'll post a couple of examples.