The history of the EZ2Organize Buddy Bags

Easy 3 ways.

“How do I store things so they are easy to use at home, easy to take to a crop, class, or event, and FINALLY …easy to put away when I get home?”

These were the questions I asked myself each time I was working on organizing my supplies.  I wanted home organization that was also portable organization for the all the little things that didn’t fit in my ScrapRack.

It was this quest that led to the design and development of the EZ2Organize product line and specifically the Buddy Bag collection.

If you’re unfamiliar with our Buddy Bags, they’re a series of 10 bags (and counting!) made of clear vinyl.
They meet my goals of visible, accessible, portable – and “one-hand-grabable.”   (Is grabable a word? My spell checker says no, but I’m going with it anyway.) When I’m crafting, I want to be able to pull things out and put them away, with just 1 hand whenever possible.

Vinyl bags are not new or novel, but we’ve added one simple component to them to really make them unique and functional – each Buddy Bag has a very lightweight plastic tray/liner. This tray is flexible enough to cram into your crop tote, but strong enough to give Buddy Bags their shape and create stability.

The bags are clear, the trays are clear – you can easily see all the goodies you have stored in your buddy bag.
Each Buddy Bag has a ribbon pull or strap. This makes them easy to pull off a shelf, or out of your tote.

Easy to use at home – pull it off the shelf and open it on your workspace.

Easy to take to an event – pull it off the shelf and drop it into your tote.

Easy to put away – slide it back into the empty space on your shelf.

How did the buddies get their names?

The initial idea was to name each Buddy Bag after its use – ink pads, markers, glitter glues, etc.  We ran into trouble immediately because most of the Buddies are multi-purpose.  We’d be calling them things like – The glitter glue, re-inker, polymer clay, shaker, shape filler bag.

Hmmm… what should we do?  I’m a little bit of handbag junkie, handbags seem to always have girls names.  I remember reading a Kate Spade interview where she mentioned that she named her bags after her friends.  Girls names it was, but who?  My personal friends didn’t seem appropriate.

I don’t quite remember how we came up with using names from our Get Organized Challenge group, but that was what we decided on. If you’re part of the group you know it’s a very active group. (If you’re not, please feel free to join us.)  Questions are asked and answered all day, every day.  There were/are some gals in the group that seemed to always be helping others, answering questions, sharing photos, and providing quality information.  Quite honestly, without ladies like these, we would never be able keep up with the activity.  So Monica, Edna, Debra, Shelly, Teresa, & Gail were named as the first Buddies.

The second round of names were also people that are helpful not only to customers, but to me personally.   Karen, Sue, Deanna – this was the core team at the office.

**This week, the Irene Buddy Bag is on special.  Irene was named after my sister.  She’s always been a huge supporter of The ScrapRack and Totally-Tiffany, and she’s one of our most versatile Buddies.  Click here to grab the special pricing before 7/2/17**

NEWS FLASH:  Coming in August we’ll have 4 new bags – with a mix of names; Brandy, she’s the gal who makes sure your orders get shipped as fast as possible; Dawn, she’s been a big supporter and also made the suggestion for the bag that bears her name; Terri and Barbara, two anchor GOC gals that are always helping others.  These are true inspirations for your new Buddy Bags.

Thanks for stopping by to read a little about the history of our EZ2Organize product line.  Please feel free to use the comment box below to ask question or leave comments.  I love to hear from you.