Organizing and Storing a Stamp Collection That Doesn't Take Over the World

I love using stamps for cards, tags and scrapbooking--but I don't have a huge collection. When watching some of my favorite craft room tours, I've seen some incredible stamp collections and there are crafters who love to display their hundreds of mounted stamps.

I'm not one of them.

My stamp storage has been pretty haphazardous!

I love a cute stamp, I will probably at some point do a stamp of the month club, but for now I don't want to have to provide the necessary real estate for 50 million stamps. I have some cute mounted stamps that are versatile and practical, but the unmounted stamps are so much easier to store. So, for the small collection I have, here's how I've reorganized things so that I don't 1--duplicate a purchase and 2--spend hours looking for one particular sentiment or image!This is part of my year-long effort to make the most of my stash, and that definitely involves being organized!

Visit my crafty reorganization here.
Visit my Stash Dash 2015 tips here.

To those crafters who display shelves and shelves of gorgeous mounted stamps, I say you go girl! I just don't have the space, and really not that many mounted stamps. I'm still quite comfortable keeping my tiny mounted stamp collection in what I call "the stamp trunk." It's a cute trunk box with a handle, and inside are a couple of small boxes with my mounted stamps, and one pencil box which contains my favorite mounted sentiments. I know exactly what's in there, and where it is, and that's what's important.

My stamp trunk is always handy.

My unmounted stamps required a little more thought. I had a big ole trapper keeper notebook, and decided it was perfect to organize my small collection of unmounted stamps. Some were just loose and not identified, so I stamped them out and added their labels to each one--the small ones fit into the clear plastic pages that are meant for baseball cards or coupons. Some cling stamps had not even been opened! And so they slipped right onto the rings of the binder. Other stamps from my fun Unity collection, Itty Bitties, were nice and packaged and labeled, and I just slipped those into the regular page protectors. Stamp organizing done! Sometimes, it's good not to have too much when you don't really need it!

Of course, group similar sentiments together.

Eat, Write, Dream, Stitch, Stamp