Cataloging my CTMH Stamps

This is one job that you really have to be motivated to start! It is a lot of work. Yesterday when I came home from work, I got the bug in me to get my stamps organized so that I would know what I have and can find them when I need them. These are my CTMH stamps. Most of them have been sitting on a shelf in the garage ,mostly untouched because I don't know what I have. I really like these little boxes by CTMH. I am finding that they really are the best thing for storage. I tried these bigger containers. You can see them, but they don't close up like the CTMH ones and they don't stack. I like to keep things neat and use less space. This system just isn't working. At first it did and then I started accumulating more and more.

My stamps are all organized by like kind. So, with each box, I went through my extra catalogs to find pictures of the stamps in that box. I cut out the pictures and attached them to 8 1/2 x 11 cardstock. When I finished I will put a label on the boxes that matches the description in the binder.

I found this cute photo album at Target. It came with magnetic pages. I took them out and replaced them with Page Protectors.I divided up the pages with Index Dividers. I followed along, pretty much, with how CTMH has them organized in their catalog. But, I put them in an order that made sense to me. I started with Sentiments, since these are the stamps that get a lot of use.Followed by the Monthly Word Puzzles. These are great stamps to have because they are loaded with pictures and sayings for each month of the year. There are other Word Puzzles, but if they fell along the lines of a specific Holliday like Christmas or Valentine's day, I put them in that catagory.Next came the Tags, Borders and Misc. This category also includes backgrounds, and stamps with calendars on them. The next set of the stamps were divided by Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. The Fall stamps include, School, Fall Leaves and Halloween.

Winter includes Snow and Christmas. Following this category, I added Valentine's Day because I have a lot of Love stamps.

The next category is Spring. It includes flowers, insects and Easter.

Next comes Summer. This category covers the beach, Fourth of July, picnic, Hawaii, Trees and Outdoors.

The next category is Family. This is kind of a general category with anything kid or people. This includes baby, kids, princesses, boy trucks and the "Bella" like stamps.

Next I added the Birthday Category.

And, lastly, is the Font category. It also includes the Alpha Solos. You will notice that there are no pictures. The reason is that I thought I was all done and then I saw the box and it is big. I will finish it later.

Here is what the binder looks like with the pages in it. Hope this post helps you. Since I went to all the trouble of getting organized, I just couldn't help but share. I have a lot more organizing to do with my other stamps and embelishments, but at least this is a start. If you have any tips for me, please pass them along.