Tidy tea bags

One of my favorite things to use in my paintings are recycled tea bags and coffee filters.  Our kitchen is my studio, so I don't really have anywhere to store my supplies.  One of my favorite ways to store my supplies are in old cosmetic/toiletry suitcases, I have one for paints and one for my tea bags and coffee filters.   In between meals and at night I will tuck them away in our pantry, right above the pasta!  This seems to work pretty well, except my suitcase with the tea bags and coffee filters was becoming quite a little disaster.  It's easy to pack a lot of tea bags and filters into one of these suitcases!   I was getting into the habit of just pulling out everything in handfuls and then cramming it all back in.  I was finding it hard to find colors and pieces, so today while I was trying to find some brown, I decided it was time for a cleaning.




I love to keep all my tiny little pieces of painted  tea bags and coffee filters that are left over from previous paintings, because you never know when you might need them, but what to do with all of them? 



I found some little birdies I had drawn on tea bags but never used, and a little reminder that it was time for tea.

 

While looking around the house for something I could use to store all of these little pieces of paper I remembered  I had bought another little suitcase over the summer at a yard sale and when I opened it I saw the perfect little tray for all of my tidbits of paper.  I had totally forgotten about the little tray that was inside it.

  

How perfect!  I was able to seperate all the little pieces by color and even my little pieces with drawings and words have a place!


 

Isn't it amazing how something so simple can make one feel so happy?  It feels so much better to have it all organized.  Now I have one suitcase for coffee filters and one for tea bags and scraps.   Now I need to figure out what to do with all my scrapbook paper, old texts, and found papers!