The Great Craft Migration

Organization isn’t about perfection. It’s about efficiency. Reducing stress and clutter, saving time and money, and improving your overall quality of life.
— Christina Scalise

For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.
— Benjamin Franklin

Organizing is something you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.
— A. A. Milne

I am pleased to report that at long last the great craft migration is done!

Many months ago I put my dream of a dedicated craft room on hold. To be clear, I haven’t given up on it, but I’m realistic enough to realize that it’s going to be a couple of years or more until it can be made possible. Instead, I came up with a plan to consolidate my craft supplies in one place.

The bulk of them were in a big closet in the hallway:

It didn’t matter how often I reorganized it, it was still hard to find things in it. I also had craft supplies stashed in various other parts of the house, but this was the main stash. And you can see how I pretty much had to unload the closet to get at stuff.

We have a good-sized guest room, which was formerly the daughter’s bedroom, so it has a massive closet. The problem was, the closet was full of clothes and assorted crap. Many man hours (and loads to the thrift store) later, I had the closet cleaned out.

I had been hoping to organize as I went, but that was pretty time consuming and I wanted it done yesterday. But I’m still able to put my hands on whatever I’m looking for without too much trouble.

The bookcase beside the bed holds my sewing notions and laces/trims on the top shelf, unfinished regular sewing projects and sewing notions on the next shelf down, cross stitch on the shelf under that, and kids craft supplies on the shelf under that. The laundry hamper in front has yarn for a couple of crochet projects.

The left side of the closet holds a dresser full of Christmas craft supplies and miscellaneous crafts, in the middle we have bins of fabric with my quilting stuff in the top bin, and on the right are bins of yarn – the turquoise bin on top holds my pattern books. The top shelf holds my bins of appliqué and beading supplies, and on the right is a bin of sewing patterns.

Not shown is my sewing machine and sewing box (which are still in the hall closet), nor the two bins of unfinished knitting/sewing projects under the bed. All I have left is to get myself one of those fold-up crafting tables and I’ll be in business.

Although . . . looking at the picture of the closet I think my next project should be refinishing that dresser.

What do you think?

This ‘N That

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
— Mark Twain

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
— Mark Twain

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
— Mark Twain

So . . . I didn’t do a post last week because the weather was crappy (sucking my energy dry) and I really didn’t have much to say. Besides, it was my birthday and I can slack off if I want to. LOL

It sucks having a birthday so soon after the holidays – it either gets downplayed or skipped over altogether. I’ve never understood why most people just about bankrupt themselves over Christmas, then downplay the lowly birthday. Wouldn’t it make more sense to spread the joy throughout the year? Or maybe that’s just me. Birthdays have always been a big deal to me, whether it’s mine or someone else’s.

Anyway, it was a nice birthday. There was no cake, but I got presents to open from my best bud in Montana, and a really nice dinner from one of my favorite restaurants. AND I got a video of the grandbaby singing Happy Birthday on Facebook. I spent my day working in my office (and by working I mean cleaning and organizing), and I finished my Amazon afghan – the afghan I started when we first got Amazon Prime, thinking I’d be spending more time in front of the television.

One of the features of the Weather Network is that it’ll tell you how many hours of sun you can expect. Like, today for instance we’re supposed to get 0 hours of sun. We had a few days like that last week, warmer but darker, and the days that were sunny were stupendously cold. Saturday was sunny, and it was so cold my car almost didn’t start.

The hubby and I got our boosters last weekend, and then I heard on the radio that they’re taking appointments for a fourth shot. I think I’ll pass. I’ve had two shots of Pfizer, and one of Moderna, and that’s good enough for me. Unless these forth shots have something new in them that will help protect against the variants, then I’m done. The daughter had her booster the same day, and was sick as a dog for several days (she had a bad reaction to her previous shots as well.).

I had hoped to start the new year with a clean, organized office, but thanks to Staples screwing up the order for my mesh file cart (don’t get me started, I’m still mad at them) it didn’t happen. Although to be fair, even with the cart it wouldn’t have happened. I’m still working on my office.

But before I started the office though, I tackled the closets again. The linen closet was a mess, but thanks to a couple of small plastic bins you can actually find stuff in there now. The craft closet wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as well organized as I would have liked. So I spent a day putting it to rights.

One of the things I’m trying to get away from in the new year is the amount of time I spend on mindless games. Which is one of the reasons I pulled out my Amazon afghan and got it finished. I started to back slide into gaming last week, but then I remembered my mother-in-law has a birthday coming up. She’s in a nursing home, and what better gift than a blanket to keep her warm? It just so happened I had a dark peach colored, and a contrasting cream colored yarn in my stash.

Now we’ll see how fast I can crochet. Her birthday is Groundhog Day.

The Pitfalls of A Rainy Day

Housework is what a woman does that nobody notices unless she hasn’t done it.
— 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.

Monitory Monday

monitory ~ letter containing a warning

Well, there’s still not much going on around here. Kitchen’s still not totally finished – we got a call from the company that delivers for the cupboard people and they’re going to drop something off this week. Could be the trim for above the cupboards, could be the replacement door for the cupboard beside the stove. Who knows?

I’ve been plugging away at getting the bins emptied and out of the office, and I even managed to unbury the couch and dining room table. My kitchen is about as organized as I can make it, which is pretty darned organized if I do say so myself.

One of the things I’m rather proud of … We have this small, free standing wet bar in the dining room that I’ve been using as a plant stand. It has a handy drawer up top and two shelves down below. The top one has slots in the top to hang wine glasses from, and below a wooden X divided the space, presumably to hold wine bottles.

The X wasn’t attached to anything inside, so I took the back off the stand and pulled the X out. My plastic bin full of flower pots fits perfectly in the bottom space, and the shelf above holds my bird seed and peanuts for my feathered friends, as well as a plastic container for the summer stuff that was in the drawer – sidewalk chalk, bubble stuff, sun tan lotions. The drawer now holds dining room stuff – hot plates, napkin rings, place mats.

So much organization!

Seeing as we’re not putting the carpet back down in the dining room, the hubby decided we needed to protect the floor from the table and chair legs. So I got little felt disks that self-stuck to the bottom of the legs. However, we still can’t really sit at the table because on one side we have the ever growing pile of donations, on the other (on the floor) is the old microwave that needs a new home, and behind it (against the wall) are the two rolled up carpets, the two previous (wrong) orders of trim, and the big mystery panel.

I can, however, use my office again. The pink wing chair that was taking up way too much space in my office has replaced the stack of bins in the hubby’s office. It’s still a little messy, but I can work at my desk and even sit in my reading chair if I want.

Now that I’m pretty much done with the kitchen I have some free time on my hands and I’ve been using it to work on an afghan. I’ve had the urge for a while now and finally gave in. But rather than dig through the craft closet to get to my yarn stash, I bought some fresh yarn at Walmart. Of course they didn’t have as much as I needed, but it was enough to get me started and I ended up ordering the rest that I needed online.

I was originally going to get at least one other colour to do a pin stripe every few rows, but this yarn, being variegated, makes its own stripes and I rather like it the way it is.

Guess I’ll just have to figure out something else to do with the purple yarn I added to my order.

Mimetic Monday

mimetic ~ imitative; of, like or pertaining to mimicry

Happy first day of March!

That’s it. That’s all I got. The above picture is one I took last year of the sun rising at the lakeshore – I haven’t even been doing anything picture worthy lately.

Now that the renovation is pretty much over, there’s not a lot of excitement around here. We’re out of the lockdown – I think we’re in orange now – but we’re still not getting out much. We went to Home Depot last weekend and picked up the two missing door pulls for the cupboard above the microwave . . . which, because of the microwave plug inside of it, is pretty useless.

I’m still really loving all that shiny counter space. The new kitchen layout gives us more space to work with – we can both be doing stuff in the kitchen at the same time without tripping over each other, which is nice.

But the emptying of the bins and the putting stuff away is slow going. I’ve been plugging away at it but there’s just so much stuff! I really can’t figure out how it all fit in the old kitchen in the first place.

When I was filling the bins in the first place I got rid of a lot of stuff – some of it that was still usable got donated, and a lot of it just got chucked. I have two big boxes and one plastic bin of stuff destined to be donated, and yet there’s still at least half a dozen bins still stacked up in the office waiting to be dealt with.

I’ll tell you something truthfully. We may have gained in counter space, but we lost on cupboard space. The lower cabinet beside the stove, despite its tiny opening, is more usable, and a lot of the stuff that used to be in it has been disposed of. But the upper cabinets on either side of the sink, because of their wedge shape, don’t hold nearly as much. And the other upper cupboards aren’t as deep, which really makes a difference.

I’m still trying to keep things organized which means a lot of shuffling stuff around. And I really, really need some kind of a stool so I can reach those upper shelves.

My baking dishes (cake pans, cookie cutters, etc.) ended up taking up a drawer and a half, but it’s all in one place, which is nice. The glassware has been washed and put away, and is going to be moved to a different cupboard this week. One set of my good dishes is in half of the cupboard with the glass doors, but I think the other set will probably end up staying in a bin for now.

Like I say, it’s slow going but at least it’s going. And the stack of empty bins is slowly getting bigger.

Metachrosis Monday

metachrosis ~ ability of animals to change colour

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians and Happy Columbus Day to my American friends.

Despite the fact that today is the actual holiday, like most people we had our big, family dinner yesterday. And the thing I’d like to know is, if I was just a contributor and not the host, how come my fridge is stuffed with leftovers? Mostly stuffing and veggies and fruit. The pie I brought that didn’t even get cut into went into the freezer for when my sisters stop in for a visit in a couple of weeks.

I was totally a bad diabetic too - I indulged in a piece of the daughter’s pecan pie for desert. Man can that girl bake a mean pie! And they’re so pretty too! I wish I could take credit for teaching her that skill, but though I’ll make a pie from scratch I don’t put nearly as much effort into it as she does.

So how are you spending your holiday weekend?

I looked at the three days I had coming and thought it would be the perfect time to at least start moving my office across the hall. Man, I don't know what I was thinking!

Oh, come on. Did you really expect it to be as easy as that?

Day one started with a trip to the city of Peterborough, north of us. And not just there, but to the north side of the city where the Fabricland is. The idea was to pick up the stuff I needed to make the grandbaby’s bunny costume for Halloween. To make a long story short, the fake fur was way too expensive, I wasn’t happy with the textured arctic fleece I ended up with, and they didn’t have a pattern in her size. But there was a giant thrift store in the same plaza where I scored an already made tiger costume in her size. The trick will be convincing her she wants to be a tiger instead of a bunny.

Two more stops in Peterborough, four more stops before home. I started out at 9:30 a.m. and didn’t get back until after 3 p.m. It was crazy out there, both the stores and the traffic. I was fried when I got back home and I’m not ashamed to admit that all I managed to do with the office was cleaning up and refurbishing the kitty litter area, and emptying the white bookcase we want out of there (it was already half empty).

Day two was spent re-organizing closets. Yeah, I know it seems kind of counter productive, but it had to be done. I got rid of a bunch of stuff and have a bunch of stuff set aside to donate. Now my arts and crafts are nicely organized in the workroom closet with room to spare for file storage, and the big closet in the hallway has all my sewing and yarn supplies, maybe not as nicely organized, but definitely easier to get at. And as a bonus there was room in a corner of it for my mops and broom so they don’t fall on me every time I open the linen closet.

Today I get to actually start working on the Great Office Shuffle. How far I’m able to get is anyone’s guess.