In honor of the New Year I thought it might be time to revisit a favorite topic of digital scrapbookers, organization.

Did you know we have over300 responses to the question, "how do you organize your scrapbooking supplies"? And while some of this can be chalked up to personality differences, I think the real issue is that it's a nearly impossible task. I know this from my personal experience of trying to organize my own supplies. It's so frustrating and time consuming that I've finally given it up. I'd rather spend my time making stuff than constantly be thinking about and moving my digital stash around.

What has helped me to give up my own organization system is the fact that I was able to build DigitalScrapbook.com to be a much better organization and storage method than what I could come up with on my own. I used to organize my stash of templates and graphics on my computer (all the stuff I use for designing). But it quickly became clear that this was a difficult task and my own results weren't that great. It was so much easier to just search for whatever I needed on DigitalScrapbook.com that I eventually stopped my own system altogether. To repeat myself, I don't store any templates or files for designing on my own computer. I just search DigitalScrapbook.com for what I need when I need it.

Whether I'm working on designing something new, or decorating a layout, I basically just rely on DigitalScrapbook.com at this point. The ability to search for whatever I need, and actually find it, saves me so much time. Plus I don't have to spend any time organizing it in the first place. Our hardworking upload helpers have made sure that everything you need is uploaded individually and ready to be searched for wherever you need it.

When I'm working, I search for what I want, download it, use it and then delete it. I'm not only saving time with this method, but also hard drive space. My iPad has basically zero storage so this is a very important factor when I'm looking at digital scrapbooking supplies. And if you've ever had a hard drive go bad, you know the pain of that (we've had lots of sad posts in the forums about this as well). At DigitalScrapbook.com we worry about backing everything up so you don't have to.

(You can watch my scrapbooking process in one of my many Watch Me Digi Scrap videos.
They include me looking and downloading on DigitalScrapbook.com.)

It may seem conceited for me to be here telling you that DigitalScrapbook.com is great, since I did create it. But I think the truth is a little more subtle than that. DigitalScrapbook.com wasn't conceived as a money making business, but created by me to indulge my great passion for digital scrapbooking. Everything you see here was designed to make the hobby better and easier for me, and then it became clear that it was helpful to other people as well. But the reality I think is that since DigitalScrapbook.com is basically a part of me, I use it in a way that may not be apparent to others. So I wanted to share a little about my own creative process here and hope to inspire you to spend a little less time organizing and a little more time creating. If you haven't tried our unlimited download subscription yet, please give it a try. I think you will find that it can free up both your creative time and your hard drive.

Video Transcript:

Hi there! This is Marisa, and today I have a new Watch Me Digi Scrap video for you. In this video I am using the Fresh collaboration which is available at DigitalScrapbook.com. It's from a couple years ago, but the colors are really lovely and I thought they would go well with the photos of my newborn that are available this week.

So I am just scrolling through the papers online and downloading the ones that I want.
Sometimes I just like to browse that way, rather than downloading the whole bundle first. And now I'm also taking a look at the pocket cards that were included, and I'm downloading those. So I'll actually put those in first before I do my papers, just so I know what holes I want to fill with these nice cards.

And once I have those sorted, I will start adding the papers in the background. Once I have my papers settled in the background, I will start adding in the elements on top and
I will browse for those on DigitalScrapbook.com as well. There are lots of great filters in the sidebars, so you can easily browse through a particular bundle like this, and you can filter for papers, or for elements, or by color, or you know whatever you're searching for.

So I often find it easier to search online than just browsing randomly through a large bundle like this on my computer. So that's what I am doing here.

Thanks so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed it please give me a thumbs up and if you'd like to see more please subscribe to my YouTube channel. Have a great day!