Bead Stash Organized!

Earlier this month I ordered a Best Craft Organizer Cabinet for my beads. It came this past Thursday (May 21) and I put it together that evening in about an hour. Assembly was straight forward and I did not need any help. The boxes that the cabinets came in are fairly heavy (almost 30 pounds) and are a little bulky. I actually unpacked them in the front hall and then carried the different parts down. I got the double cabinet, which stands a little less than 4 feet tall.

Starting Saturday morning I began organizing my bead stash. This consisted primarily of pawing through the plastic boxes and pulling out all beads of the same type. I started with the seed beads, organizing from largest to smallest, then the bugle beads and the pressed glass. Once I had the pile of bead bags I sorted them into color groups and then ordered them from lightest to darkest. This ordering was facilitated by the Beadcats numbering system. They have a numbering system that, once you learn it, tells you the type of bead, the color, the glass type (opaque, transparent, etc.) and the finish (iridescent, matte, luster, etc.). The really neat thing about their numbering system is that you can match bead colors and finishes across all of their different bead types. Great when you're doing projects with different kinds of beads. The sorting process was hindered a little by my cat Jasmine, who likes to steal bags of beads (and who can blame her).


I didn't quite manage to fit all of my beads into the cabinet. I still have 9 plastic boxes but that is much better than the 27 boxes that I started with. Seven of those boxes hold loose beads, which I wasn't planning on putting in the cabinet anyway. The other 2 boxes hold my tiny tear drops.

I am still cataloging my stash, another task made easier by the Beadcats stock numbering system, and my Fujitsu Stylistic (you can read my review of my stylistic here). The only challenge I have is that I bought some size 14 beads before they had instituted their system, so I'm going to have to make up my own numbers for those. Fortunately, the system makes that pretty straight forward.