Digi Scrap Organizing: The Project Folder

Discussing organization methods is a favorite for Digi Scrappers. How to handle that enormous hoard? There are so many ways to address this issue, especially since it's very personal and dependent on your scrapping methods. So today I'm going to give a little tour of one aspect of my organization/work flow system. This does not cover my whole system, nor do I think it will work exactly as I've set it up for anyone else. However, I do believe that something in my system could inspire yours.

In my mind everything digi falls into three categories:

1. Things Downloaded
2. Things Made
3. Working

I rarely use my "Things Downloaded" folder because I just don't download that much stuff and rely primarily on my "Things Made" folder. In the "Things Made" folder I store all the templates I've made so that I can easily find them to use in a new project. The organization in this folder is still somewhat in flux, I'm not totally happy with it, so I won't tell you about it today. Instead, I'm going to focus on my "Working" folder, which I recently reorganized to an extreme work-flow boost and happy inside feelings.

The "Working" folder is where I keep projects I'm working on (kits, layouts, assets); basically everything. This means that it's a very overwhelming place. I used to organize by year, with all the projects from one year in one place. However, once I started redoing things to upload to the site, my brain just about exploded. I simply could not keep track of what was finished, what was in in progress and what was "almost" finished (ie finished, but not uploaded to the site yet). There was about a month when I was a crazy person trying to keep track of about 50 unfinished kits.

At this same time I was also reading some business books, since we're trying to run a business and I have a degree in Physics (not, it turns out, super helpful for anything). One of these books mentioned the Kanban system, created by Toyota for their factories. You can Google it if you want more details, but basically, as I understand it, the idea is that you have a couple bins (ex: parts, assembly, and packing in a manufacturing system) and each bin can only have a certain number of slots. When it's full, you have to stop until there's room to move it into the next bin. This method keeps you from over-extending yourself and getting too far ahead and causing problems.

In my case, because of all the reworking, I was hopelessly over-extended. However, the system still worked wonderfully to help me weed out what I was doing.

I have 3 main folders again (the zip files folder is just finished zip files waiting to be uploaded).

1. Upload Ready
2. In Progress
3. Archive

Once I finish a project from the "In Progress" folder, I move it to the "Upload Ready" folder where it waits until I add it the site. Once that is finished I move it to the "Archive" folder and then it's "out of sight, out of mind." Here's a peak into my "In Progress" folder so you can get an idea of what's going on:

All those projects are ones that I'm working on. I've actually cleared out a significant amount, and I'm starting to look forward to the day when I can have a proper bin system, with only a few active projects.

If you have any questions, please ask, as I'll probably be working on some more organizing posts in the future.

Special Note: Sometimes I hear about people flattening layouts when they are done to save space. Every time I hear this my heart stops beating and I feel sick. I personally think this is a terrible idea. I often revisit old layouts for numerous reasons, and if for some reason I can only find the .JPG I'm always really frustrated. Buy an external hard drive, delete some of your stash, but flattening and deleting things you've made is a poor space saving solution. Honor the things you've made by allowing them to grow in the future. Sorry for the strongly worded caution. I know at the beginning I said everyone could have their own way, and you should of course do whatever works best for you. But think hard about deleting and flattening. I've regretted it every time I've done it.