Still At It

 

Progress reports... I've turned the heel of the second Christmas sock and am about halfway finished with the foot portion.  Cross fingers, at this rate is will be possible to finish it before the end of June.  In Craft Room Organization News, I'm still working on it, bit by bit.  The comic book boards arrived right after my last post (with lightning speed, may I say) and I wound fabric onto some and put them on a shelf, just to inspire myself.  Winding fabric is something I can do during the evening, while the Emperor and I put on a movie, so I'm doing that little by little.  Meanwhile, I used up all of my shelf paper and had to go out and find more before covering a few more boxes to corral spinning fiber.  I've got the fiber almost entirely organized now!

There's a wall in this room that is somewhat of an alcove, with shelves above it -- I think it is original to the house.  When we first moved in, I put some of my craft supplies in those shelves, as I unloaded moving boxes, and stacked other boxes underneath them.  As I find better places to put things, I'm starting to clear those shelves and am thinking of other ways to use the space.  The alcove might be ideal for fabric totes.  I can install a rod on the bottom end of the shelves and put up curtains, to hide the totes or whatever else I decide to put in there.

When we still lived Further West, one of my friends gave me a stack of used, inexpensive but very pretty curtains that she no longer needed. I tucked them away, thinking both that I might one day need something like this, and "oh Lord where the heck am I going to put these??" Well, now I know; the craft room has some thin valances, but otherwise the windows are bare. I can use my friend's old curtains.

Note that I only show you photos of specific parts of the craft room right now.  You're getting just the organized spots.  As for the rest of the chaos, well, you can use your imagination.

Another thing that I think I have figured out is storage for some tote bags.  I have a million tote bags, most of them collected at professional conferences, but a few that I use for school or for weekend trips.  I usually hang one or two of them on the back of the door on the knob.  Now I'm thinking that I could get an inexpensive rack with hooks, allow the Emperor to install it on the wall, and hang the bags there.  The rest of the tote bags are easily stowed elsewhere.  And yes, I do use them all, every so often, and more than once have been glad that I kept them all.

Trolling through Pinterest has given me some great ideas.  That said, once you've seen a hundred perfectly organized, spic-and-span color coordinated craft rooms, you've seen them all.  I can tell you that there is no color scheme to my room, even among my shelf-papered boxes.  My soft-sided storage cubes, all purchased at the Dollar Store over the years, are turquoise and chartreuse, but that's as close as it's going to come.  The point is to have a space to work on projects, and I think you can spend too much time and money and thought trying to coordinate the decor.  I'll enjoy my space whether it's coordinted or not, so I'll spend my energy in making it functional rather than in painting my shelves and cabinets in matching colors.

My friends laugh at me because my kitchen is mostly color-coordinated, but I did that without really trying.  Whenever I bought anything, I simply chose to buy blue things (preferrably cobalt blue).  If a needed object didn't come in blue, then I chose white, or yellow, or finally red.  So what I have is a "Swedish" themed kitchen that could also pass for "British," and I didn't go out of my way to do it.

Now it's back to the organizing grind for this chick.

Later: I found some "Commando" hooks for the tote bags, and will attach them right to the wall behind the door.  A few more of them might find their way onto a surface or two before I'm finished with the room, since I don't have a space large enough to hang my peg board.  Unless... why don't I hang the peg board behind the door, and put hooks on it for the tote bags?  That's something to think further about, because the Emperor will want to hang it on studs.