Guest Tip: Manage Your Manuals

This great tip for organizing manuals for crafting equipment (or loose patterns) comes to us from Elise Bond of Betani's Bureau, who creates many different hand-crafted items ranging from luxurious bath mitts to beaded barettes for sale in her shop.

If you do a lot of crafting, chances are you've accumulated a lot of user manuals, instructions, warranty information cards and the like. Important stuff that you really ought to keep, but don't need to use very much. You want to keep them together and in good condition, though. Here is the best way I've found for this:

The two things you'll need are a three-ring binder and a package of top-insert sheet protectors. If your manuals are on the larger or heavier side, you might consider reinforcements for the ring holes.

Then, just slip a manual into a protector, put it in the binder, lather, rinse, and repeat! This is especially useful for equipment that comes with more than one booklet. You can keep everything for one item in the same protector.

Then, when your sewing machine needs some troubleshooting, or you need a new attachment for your Dremel Tool, you just flip through and can easily locate everything you need without digging through your desk, bookshelf, or filing cabinet!

This is also useful for loose patterns you've collected. I have two binders. One for my craft equipment, and one for household appliances. There are lots of other ways to organize, but the beauty of this method is in the simplicity. Now, the hardest part will be hunting down all your manuals in the first place. ;)