Organizing Ribbon

I have acquired alot of ribbon over the years- whether it's to make a hair bow or add an accent on a burp cloth. I still use my trusty system I organized here. For the most part the ribbon stays confined to these bins, and although I don't use this shelf for my fabric/ribbon anymore (see what I did with it here) I have kept the ribbon bins labeled and in our hall closet. 

The only unfortunate part of storing ribbon is the inevitable scrap issue. You are NEVER going to use a whole spool of ribbon, or you just won't have enough to finish a project. Instead of taking up precious real estate in the above bins, I began putting scraps (usually a foot or less) into a ziploc bag. 

At one point I had these separated by color in 3 mason jars, but I still had a hard time actually seeing what I had. I was pleased with the scrap in a ziploc bag idea until I came across this pin on pinterest.

{source}

That girls has TONS of ribbon that she stores (not just scraps) but the idea of how to store them is WONDERFUL! And guess what? I had everything I needed on hand=FREE! I grabbed a handful of popsicle sticks (the chunky ones), some pins, and my scraps:

and then I started twisting and wrapping! If I had 2 pieces that were the same ribbon but different lengths I put the short one under the long one so it stayed wrapped.

Then it was all secured with a pin!

Gorgeous right?

and free which makes me happy! I love that at a glance I can see about how much ribbon I have (half a stick= not very much, a whole stick= a good bit, a whole stick where the ribbon is really thick=more than I thought). The blog where I found this idea did say that when she goes to use the ribbon she usually needs to iron it, but that it's a small price to pay for functionality! LOVE!