If you’ve got a hobby, you’ve probably got hobby clutter that goes along with it. Do any of the following sound familiar:

  • Piles of unread books
  • Baskets of yarn
  • Cabinets full of specialized power tools
  • Piles of fabric
  • Car magazines and Blue Book editions strewn about
  • Headphones, pedometer, and running magazines in a clump
  • Notes and scraps of paper with inspirations and ideas

Yeah, I thought so. Hobbies come with a price, and that price is often a big pile of stuff.  It’s not the hobby that’s the problem, it’s the issue of storing all the accouterments that go along. These items need to be readily accessible to you on a daily basis, but out of your way. If you’ve got a problem with hobby clutter, consider trying some of the following ideas.

Try a zone defense. Keeping everything confined to one specific area can be a big help to you. First, when you need something, you know where to look, and that keeps projects moving along. It also keeps the clutter to just one area of your home, so your hobby doesn’t take over your home.  This doesn’t work for all hobbies, but it’s easier than you might imagine.

Customize some utilitarian storage. You can always look beyond standard storage solutions to find items that fit your needs and your home.  I constantly bring up using dressers as storage units, because that’s something that’s worked for me. But what about using toolboxes for your crafting? Or tackle boxes for jewelry making? Can old 24-pack beer boxes store your collection of electronics? (With the bottle separators in those boxes, they really are fantastic for smaller items.) By getting your items into a container, you have a place to stash everything when it needs to be out of sight.

Keep your secrets behind closed doors. If you’ve got the space, devote a room to your hobby, like a media room or a sewing room, or well, the garage. If that’s not a possibility, how about a closet? A shelf in a closet? An armoire in a closet? You get the idea. When you corral your hobby clutter behind closed doors, you give yourself room to breathe and get a bit messy. After all, your hobby should be fun, not an exercise in anal retentiveness.

Keep a drawer. Steal a drawer from the kitchen, from a dresser, from a nightstand, or anywhere you can find. I love drawers because they limit the amount of stuff you can keep tossing in them, and they keep your stash in one place. Even if you toss everything into a drawer in complete chaos, you’re still relatively organized and the clutter is out of sight. Done!

Try hobbies on wheels. Rolling carts can be pretty awesome. If part of your storage issue is that you work on your hobby in multiple places, consider investing in storage that moves with you. Kitchen carts can be cool and functional in just about any room, and colorful kids’ toy storage can also add a fun element to your goodie stash. Some storage carts are made specifically for scrapbookers, but there’s no reason why they can’t be adapted to other needs.

Have a place for everything. The final rule on hobby clutter is that everything needs to have a place to go when you’re not working on it. Whether it stays there on a regular basis or not is beside the point. Anything that has a home can be cleaned up. Anything without a home is always going to be clutter. You may need to clean out other areas to make room, or invest in new storage items might work for you. Either way, take an afternoon to find a way to put every piece of hobby paraphernalia away. Then, don’t fill up that spot with something else. The old adage of “a place for everything and everything in its place” is 100 percent true, and it’s your ultimate weapon against hobby clutter.

So what works for you? And what hobbies are best and worst for building up stuff? Head into the comments to leave your ideas.

If you enjoyed this, please take a second to pass it on:
  • Mixx
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • E-mail this story to a friend!