We have now gone over the main categories for making your craft area work for you in a positive and fun way. We've talked out the biggest pain points I heard from stampers, and today we are going to talk about the items that you have put in boxes.

Let's dive into gifting, or as I like to call it… responsible gifting.

Story Time With Meg

When I had my first house, my mother gave me these blue and white speckled canisters that were trendy during the blue flower thick plate decor phase of the 80s. I grew up with them practically my entire childhood. Then when I moved out, she got new canisters. I don't think it had anything to do with me moving out, just the timing.

When Matt and I bought our first house, I went with a lot of navy decor throughout the house. And she shows up with these canisters. I was shocked she still had them, as it had been almost a decade since she traded them out.

I was grateful for them, and we used them for several years. Then one day I was out shopping and I found some that I loved! We didn't need four canisters, as is the norm with canister sets (dang sets! Notice how we keep talking about sets?)

We needed two, one for sugar and one for flour. That's all I wanted and I found two that I loved. So I bought them.

I carefully packaged up the blue and white ones to give back to her. The next time my mother visited, before I could even tell her I had replaced canisters, she noticed the new ones in the kitchen. You could tell that her feelings were very hurt.

But you see, I had lived with these canisters longer than she had. I had them growing up AND for years in my first house. She replaced them when she was tired of them, but there was that expectation that I should keep them forever rather than her being okay with me making my own choices for my home, because she gifted them to me.

Gifting With No Strings Attached

Picking out gifts can be very hard. Trying to find the right gift is work and requires effort, unless the recipient tells you exactly what they want and from where. The ‘where' ties into crafting, as we talked about the “bargain buying from well intended friends and family” before.

Now that you've gone through your craft area and you have these boxes, you may feel compelled to gift these items to someone. You may have friends that would be delighted to get them from you.

But here's where the word responsible fits into this….

Wait, there's another story first….

I was at a conference many years ago and there was a speaker I was talking with at the bar one night. We were talking about print media, and he asked me, “Do you know what the word ‘brochure' translates into in English?” Now in my head, I'm thinking, uh… I thought that was English. Then I'm trying to figure out what language it would be, I said the word out loud, and all I could come up with was French.

Say it out loud… it sounds kinda French right?

And I told him I had no idea.

He said it translates into, “Here, you throw this away.”

When we hand out things, we need to be prepared for the person to throw the items away AND to be GOOD with them getting rid of the items however they choose.

When we gift with strings, there is guilt, there is frustration, and often times, there is resentment on both sides.

I was resentful that my mother couldn't even see that I was excited about my purchase, with my money, for my home. And she was resentful that I would give back something she gifted to me. There's no telling how it would have gone if I had gifted them to someone else or donated them. Let's just say, it wouldn't have been good.

This is not a story to bash on my mom, there were real feelings on both sides of this. But it sticks out clearly in my mind, and as I told Matt I was writing about the canisters, he said, “Oh boy.” That was two houses ago and probably 17 years and we both remember that visit.

So if you choose to gift your boxes of stamping supplies, please gift them responsibly! I don't want to get emails from people saying that someone who read this dumped 18 boxes of stuff on their front porch and now they are stuck with keeping it all.

Make sure that whomever you are gifting the items wants them, that she clearly knows the amount of supplies you are wanting to put at her door AND that she is free to do whatever she wants with whatever she wants to keep and whatever she doesn't want to keep.

Don't hand them a brochure! In other words, don't give and create a problem for them. Don't decide that they need to spend time going through boxes of stuff they really don't want or don't want that much of.

Gifting is beautiful!

I belong to a give-where-you-live Facebook group. It's awesome! We get rid of so much stuff this way and we get so much back in return from the group – and it's fun!!! It feels good to give, I'm a big fan!

Another fun things to give is… stick with me here…

You know our creative hearts? And you know that patterned paper we talked about turning into gift wrap? I make up little gift bags to give my neighbors for them to put gifts in! They love it!!! And I love that they love it. They know I only make the one size, the smallest size. And in November, they let me know how many they want for the holidays. And in January, they let me know if they want any for birthdays.

I have so much fun making these, because I love to make things. In return, I normally score a couple nice bottles of wine that I didn't ask for but will joyfully accept! It's a fun circle of giving.

BUT, I don't show up at their door and say, “Here, take this.” One of my neighbors doesn't like these little bags, it's not her style or taste. I'm perfectly okay with that too. My feelings aren't hurt one bit!

You can also gift your handmade cards. We love to make cards, right? So it makes sense that often that we have more cards in our stash than we people and occasions to mail them out.

Matt's grandmother loved getting a stack of cards for her birthday, I would give her a hefty stash of cards and envelopes with the stamps already on them. She didn't get out of her house much, but had a million kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, and friends. She raved over that as a gift, and when the next Christmas rolled around, she asked if I would be okay with doing it again. I had cards, and knowing that she wanted them and used them, it warmed my heart!

Donating

Gifting can also be in the form of donations. There are some schools and pre-schools that will joyfully take crafting supplies. Also some card making ministries at churches love getting these supplies. Your neighborhood may have a crafting group/area. And lastly, local donation centers as well.

Make sure when donating to others, that there is a clear conversation that they are allowed do whatever they choose with the items.

When you donate or gift, bless and release these items.

Let me share this thought with you, when you do this, you are gifting and donating your supplies, not transferring your guilt.

I often here something like this,… I gave her all those supplies and she threw them away. If I would have known that, I would have done ______ instead.

Rather, be thinking, I am giving her a gift of supplies for her to choose what she would like to do with them. Just as I was allowed to do what I wanted with the supplies I own, she is now the owner and it's 100% her choice.

Bless and release!

You can also donate your handmade cards. My favorite place to do this is at assisted living centers. Think of places where people live, but they aren't able to just go shopping for whatever they want. There is a place near and dear to my heart that a sweet friend of mine lived in. I became friends with the activities coordinator and held classes there.

We talked about the cards and how there were non-crafty people that would love to have cards. So each month when I went to teach a class, I took a stack of cards that were left there. Residents could come choose a card whenever they needed one.

Selling

Selling craft supplies is great, as they can pay for new craft supplies. There are many ways to sell them. I will share my favorites and my not favorites. Know that these are my opinions, you may have different ideas, and that's great too!

My Favorites:

I sell Mystery Boxes. I take a lot of great quality supplies that I am done with and I sell them here on my blog. You have to have an audience to do that with. that loves your style and tastes, and are willing to take a chance.

For most stampers, this isn't feasible. But I'm sharing it all with you and that's my favorite way.

Second, I recommend selling through Facebook Marketplace. You can sell things individually or in a large batch. Set all the items out on a table and take several pictures. If selling to a stranger, I ALWAYS recommend meeting the buyer at the local police station. Safety first. Our police station even has parking spaces for this very thing.

Next, Facebook Groups. There are many Facebook Groups that allow you to sell your stamps and supplies. Do some searches on FB, I don't have any to specifically recommend, but there are a lot. Each group will have it's own rules for you to follow.

Garage sales are great! Just make sure you advertise that you have card making supplies and give examples (stamps/dies/punches, etc).

Or a craft sale with other crafters. While I haven't lived in a neighborhood that had a dedicated crafting group, a good friend of mine does. There are several crafting groups where she lives and each year they do a sale where you can set up a table with the items you want to sell. You price them just as you would a garage sale, you keep the money. She was allowed to invite me to share her table, and that was awesome!

eBay is another great place to sell these items. With eBay, you have to take really good pictures. Way better pictures than you use on Facebook. You need to write good descriptions and price the items to sell.

BIG, HUGE, NOTE:

Remember when I said it's okay to sell/gift/donate sets that you have removed items from? If you are outright selling them as an individual selling item, you must share this information. You must state that the case shows there is a happy birthday sentiment that is not included in the set. If something is not how it's described, buyers can get their money back and you are out of luck.

When I sell items on eBay that are missing a something, I disclose all of that in the listing, and then message the buyer before I ship it to make sure they know that one whatever is missing and not included. If they don't reply and acknowledge that, I will cancel the order.

You can usually make way more money selling on eBay and individually on Facebook, it just takes a lot more time.

Craigslist is still a thing, so I want to put that out there. It's my least favorite, but that's just a personal choice. If I were to sell on Craigslist, I would still meet the buyer at the police station.

***Completely off target, but still relevant: In this blog post, I talk about counterfeit craft supplies. A BIG thing that's happening on a lot of these selling sites is people selling counterfeit craft supplies but marketing them as the real deal. They will often say that the original case or packaging is missing, or they will make really convincing inserts. Always check the seller ratings before you purchase. And if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

A friend of mine thought she hit the total jackpot on another stamp company's products. She bought three boxes worth of stamps and dies for $100. ALL of them were counterfeit. Not a single thing was legit. But she paid the seller directly, there was nothing she could do. That was her quarterly crafting budget, just gone. The quality of items were terrible. I tried to help her make them work, because I love her, but they were awful. She didn't feel right reselling them, and she didn't feel right reselling them even with disclosing the information that they were fake, and she didn't feel right donating them where they would be sold and someone else would buy junk thinking they scored a jackpot.

I just don't want that to happen to you!

You can also sell your finished cards and creations. There are many smaller shops that will allow you to consign your cards with them or you can find a place to rent to sell your cards. There was a small boutique here that used to sell mine on consignment. Meaning that they kept a portion of what sold. A local mom and pop flower shop here used to flat out buy my cards from me, they would call and place an order, and pay me for them. They were then free to mark up the cards to whatever they want and they kept the difference.

If you have any type of following you can sell them in bundles. I do this each year to you all here on my site. I have a LOT of cards, even after donating to the local center. I bundle them up and sell them as a fundraiser for my daughter's activities. You all love to buy them AND to support her, so it's a win/win.

You can also sell cards on sites such as eBay and Etsy should you choose to do that.

Trashing Items

Sometimes, the best, and easiest way to get rid of things is to simply throw them away. This is often the hardest thing for crafters to do, but it can also be cathartic. It's quick and it's just done.

My friend, Jill, did this with her punches. Now some of you may cry when reading this part. So let me share the story. She was moving, and she had all these supplies she wasn't using. She asked me what she should do. At this point, she was going to pack them up and take them with her.

So she was going to pay to move items she didn't want. When I suggested throwing them away, you would have thought I suggested she get rid of her favorite pet.

She truly agonized over what to do with them. She didn't know of a place to donate them and the movers were coming in a few days. And she really thought it was silly to pay to move them.

So she was sitting in her house when she heard the garbage truck coming. She made a quick decision to run the box out and drop it in her trash can. The garbage truck came, dumped her trash in their vehicle, and took off.

She said it felt amazing. It was just done. All that agonizing over items that she paid for, they were hers and hers alone. There was so much guilt that someone else may want them, that she was truly paralyzed over what to do.

Let me share this with you, if it is yours, it's okay to throw it away. It really is.

After that moment, she went nuts throwing out other supplies, it felt so good. Then she moved and set up her craft area exactly where she wanted it with only the supplies she wanted. The rest was just done and gone.

After I wrote the article on getting rid of scraps, I got so many emails, texts, and even two phone calls from stampers that did it. You can also read their comments on this blog post.

Things just being gone feels so good.

Your Time

Here's the other thing I want to say about these items that you have put in boxes. You have already spent time pulling the items, thinking about the items, and deciding they need to go.

Don't backslide. You have to know yourself well enough to know if going back through those boxes to sell them is going to cause you to pull things out of your box and put them back on your shelf. Some people will struggle with this, and others won't struggle at all.

Your time is a huge consideration in all of this. Depending on how much you have to get rid of, it could be a huge undertaking to sell. I do a combo of selling, gifting, and discarding. I probably spend more money than the average crafter as I am running a business. I have no issue parting with things because #1 – I get bored easily with supplies, #2 – I know I will get more.

And here comes the “but”…

“But Meg, I need the money so I can buy new supplies.”

I hear your heart on that completely, but please hear your head too…

You were able to buy the items you are getting rid of without selling things first to begin with. That's how you have so much stuff already.

Any Way Works

Whichever way of clearing these items works best for you is the way to go. What doesn't work is to go through this and stack up the boxes to decide later what to do. That's keeping you in the same place you were when we started.

Even if you put those boxes in an out of sight place, you know in your knower that they are still there. They are still mental fatigue and weight, because all you did was just transfer the task to another day.

Be bold, be ruthless, be smart, and if you struggle with this….

Think Of Your Happy Space

Most of us, when we think of the ideal craft space, it's not a space that's packed to the gills with stuff we won't use. We usually think of fresh and clean, an empty tabletop, empty space on a shelf.

When we moved into this house, I wanted all new cabinets and shelves. I went with upper shelves this time instead of cabinets because you can hide a lot of stuff in cabinets. There are things you can shove at the back so easily, and with shelves, not so much!

My happy space feels open, uncluttered, and free of junk.

I had to fight hard many years ago when I woke up one day and had to acknowledge that I was avoiding my craft room because I was overwhelmed by it. The amount of supplies and the guilt were almost too much. I would dream about going in there with a giant trash can, putting everything in there, and starting over.

Go read the comments in this series, you will read of others that avoid their craft spaces, ones that want to quit just because of all the stuff they aren't using, ones that are doing this and already enjoying their craft spaces again!

It's not just me that felt this way, many of you feel this way, and many of you are already smiling in your craft spaces again!

So if you feel at all the same in any part of your crafting space, picture your ideal craft space and fight for that feeling!

You've got this!

I've walked you through my best tips to deal with all of these things. If there is something I have left out, let me know.

What's planned next… that's the good stuff. That's what to do going forward. I can't wait to share that all with you! XOXO, Meg