— Evan Esar
Dust is a protective coating for fine furniture.
—Mario Buatta
You know what would make house cleaning more fun? A maid.
—Phyllis Diller
Last week was pretty grey and dismal. And anyone who knows me at all knows I don’t do well in grey and dismal. There was a lot of napping, a lot of reading, a lot of head aches.
By about Wednesday I decided I was tired of not getting anything done, so I decided to clean out the craft closet. This was not a task to be undertaken lightly, it’s a huge closet, but I figured I had the entire day so why not do something constructive with it?
I keep saying I’d like to work more on crafts in the evening while watching T.V., but I’d open the door to the closet and stuff would fall on me. Plus I’d have to unload half the closet before I could find what I was looking for (if I found it at all). So yeah, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Naturally, I had most of the stuff pulled out of there before it didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.
I really wish I’d taken a before picture of the closet, but then again maybe it’s just as well. The picture above is only about half the stuff I had in there. I actually had to sort through it and get everything organized before I could get the rest of the stuff out.
To my chagrin, I found an astonishing number of unfinished projects in there. There was a rug I’d started hooking way back in the 70s or 80s, a really nice long skirt I cut out but never got around to sewing, and stitchery projects in various states of doneness. There were also a few canvass bags with knitting/crocheting projects that never got finished – a baby afghan I was crocheting from odds and ends, a navy blue cardigan that will be gorgeous if I ever finish knitting it, a long vest I’d started knitting from my own pattern, an afghan I started when we first got Amazon Prime, and two bags with projects that I don’t remember starting.
Time for a little organization.
While what I truly need to be organized is a brand new room dedicated to crafting, it’ll be a couple of years before we can afford that. So in the mean time, I put my yarn stash into five medium sized, clear plastic bins (so I could see what’s in there) and stacked them upstairs in a corner of the guest room (because there’s no room in the massive upstairs closet).
It made better sense for the yarn to go upstairs because one, it’ll be easier to access in the bins, and two, when I work on a knitting/crocheting project I usually designate one of my many bags for that purpose. So all that stuff doesn't really need to clutter up the closet.
My material stash is in one massive bin in the bottom of the closet, and the rest of the closet is filled with sewing accessories and stitchery supplies. One medium sized bin holds the bags of unfinished knitting/crocheting projects which is easy enough to get to that I no longer have an excuse for not finishing them.
But I’m still not happy. Yes I can open the closet and nothing falls out, and I can definitely find stuff easier, but I still think I can do better. For one thing, I cannot for the life of me understand how I could get all that yarn out of there – originally spread between one massive bin and several bags – and still have trouble fitting everything back in there.
The sewing stuff and stitchery stuff needs to have better separation, and I have two bins of unfinished projects that includes a half-hooked rug and the glue gun I was looking for months ago (and finally replaced). Maybe things that are not strictly sewing or stitchery need to go upstairs with my other craft stuff.
I think I need another rainy day.
No comments:
Post a Comment