Saturday, November 12, 2011

Weekend Organization

Did I ever mention I was tired of being a disorganized idiot? Pretty sure I have. I like to dabble in several crafts: knitting, spinning, scrap booking, rubber stamping, beading, crosstitch ... there's probably more. At this point I'm only knitting and spinning because those are the things I can get to in my craft room.

Welcome to the closet. Scary, huh? Yeah that stuff is being held in there ... barely. And yes, I've had things fall on me before.


Today I was determined to clean it up once and for all. I've tried unsuccessfully several times in the past. One of the main reasons I am determined to do this is so that I can use the closet more and get stuff that is not constantly in use off the floor and other surfaces of the room ... lets take a little tour around the room, shall we?


Under my crafting desk ... would you like to sit here? I don't. Currently I don't use it, I just pile more stuff on it.


This is next to my computer desk. My swift and ball winder and niddy noddy reside here. They are not used all the time and really don't need to be out. Oh and this is the yarn that I can't find homes for and a scarf project in that tote bag.


Here's the chair in the other corner ... somewhere under there. Now up to this point you may be thinking, two desks and a chair, must be a big room. Nope, its 9x9 feet. I've just utilized every inch of wall space available.

I'd like to take a moment to mention that I'm lucky that the rest of my house does not look like this. You see, we live with three cats. Cats who like to destroy things that are not theirs. One in particular who loves to tear up yarn, sniffs it out actually. So there is NEVER, EVER yarn (or any other crafting item or anything I don't want chewed) in any other room than this one.


Buried under all that mess is a bookcase. The original idea was for shelves to separate different crafting items and have everything organized ... HA!


This is typically where I get to in the closet when I lose momentum to continue trying to clean it and I turn around and see the room ...


and then I throw everything back in the closet and say the heck with it.

Not this time. I took a short break and gave myself a pep talk and another 45 minutes to 1 hr later I had this:


Still, the closet is small, but I organized all like items together. For the most part they were together, except for recently used items or recent purchases which where on a shelf or on top of something. I threw out some trash. Moved some stuff that could be stored in the basement down there (yarn dyes) and made sure to put everything I use more frequently within easy reach of the door.

Another reason I wanted to do this was I was starting to worry things were going to get ruined. I was mostly concerned about my spindles getting broken if I threw something on top of them accidentally. Another reason was that I ordered a spinning wheel and was thinking, where the heck am I going to put this?!?! Don't forget the mention above ... can't go in another room in the house if I don't want three furry felines to think its their new scratching post.

Oh did I mention thinking things might get ruined or broken?


My poor aloe plant took a tumble when I was pulling some stuff out of the closet. Luckily it was in a plastic pot inside the ceramic one, so its fine. I did like that pot though.

There were a lot of magazines in the closet too. I pulled them all out and will go through them periodically and recycle some that I know I will never use the patterns in. They weigh a ton and take up so much room. How do you handle your magazines?

4 comments:

Sue said...

I sit and let them ferment for a while. I scan and save anything of interest to my computer. Halloween and Christmas related mags I keep....especially cross stitch. After I have finished with the mags I pass them on to the high school where The Missus works. The cooking ones go to the Education Support Unit; the crafty ones go to the Home Ec. department.

Chrissy said...

With my magazines I go through them every 6 months or so and rip out any articles that interest me and might get used in the future. I also pull out any patterns that I might actually one day like to create. Then I recycle what is left over and put each article or pattern in a plastic sleeve and file it in big lever arch files according to category eg socks or cardigans. That way I can find them again if I need to!

Minding My Own Stitches said...

My magazines sit in piles and are generally ignored. But about this time of year I usually take the time to look through the Christmas Craft-zines. As much to reminisce about things my Mom and I did for Christmases past as to plan for the coming Christmas.

Schokti said...

My magazines either go into a binder with those giant page protectors that can hold a magazine each or into a magazine holder.