Craft Rooms Thoughts

I am lucky enough to have a spare bedroom all to myself for all of my crafting stuff - well except for any scrapbooking or card making, that's stored elsewhere.  I appreciate the fact that whenever I like I can disappear into my girl-cave, shut the door and generally not be bothered - sometimes for hours on end.

It's only a small room - 9 foot by 10 foot and it has an inbuilt wardrobe.  There is 1 small window on a short wall.  I have squeezed in a large desk, a bookcase and a LARGE set of industrial shelves (they must be 8 feet long and nearly go tot he ceiling).  This space is also where I iron ad I tend to use the ironing board as an extra bench.  I am sure I have talked about it before.

When we put in the shelves I did do a bit of a clean up.  I labelled tubs with their contents.  I got rid of some bags of fabrics and bits and pieces.  Things looked tidy for a little while.

But now it is back in a mess again!  There is basically only enough space to walk to the desk and back out again - barely enough room to swing a cat as they say.  I can't get into the wardrobe with all the items laying on the floor in front of the doors.

I was sewing a knitting needle roll yesterday - a quick simple project - and a set of drawers on the desk was getting in the way.

So now I think it is time I go thru it all properly and get rid of stuff.  There are a lot of projects and kits I have purchased over the years that are half buried and not being made up.  There are tubs and tubs of fabrics, paints, cross stitch paraphernalia, etc.

So what to do with it all?

I have done a quick count of the things I have listed on the blog - 57.  That's a lot.  To make it worse, I have even bought a few more kits/boms since making that list.  There must be 70 different things!!

I am heading towards getting rid of everything that is not already packaged up - and I mean everything!!  Perhaps try to recoup some of the money I have spent on them by having a garage sale.

Considering I have diverse interests in all things craft that's a large garage sale.

What do you guys think I should do?

Clean Up pt 2

OOHH  I can see the floor in the craft room - right up to the shelves now.

YAY!!!!  The youngest saw the romm and told me I had to keep it like that - this was whilst I was going thru the bags and bags of things that were in there.

I have 1 small bag for the thrift shop, another for a local kinder and a pile of things that I intend working on to get done.  I found an irish dancing dress I had started ages ago.  It only needs the lace appliqued on, then the side seams sewn, the sleeves set in and the lining attached.  Then it's onto ebay it goes.

Now to get off here and get cracking..

Clean up

Over the past few days/weeks I havee been going thru some of my craft magazines and seeing what's in them that still appeals to me.  There were patchwork ones, painting ones, scrapbook ones, general craft ones - around 280 of them all stored in a purpose built shelving unit by our back door.

They weren't in the way or taking up space, they just weren't being read or used.

So, yesterday I had finished going thru all of these and I took those I did not want to my local thrift store (along with 1 box of shoes and 3 bags of clothes that belonged to my youngest).

I now have around 70 magazines with projects in them that still inspire me to make them.  There's some quilts and wall hangings, some cloth dolls and some bears.  Each page is tagged (well dog eared actually) so I know which project caught my interest.

When doing this, the ones I kept were not projects I just liked, but rather ones I could see me actually making some time in the future.  The ones I just liked I ummed and ahhed over before deciding, yes I like them but not enough to make.

I sill have a whole bookcase full of magazines in my craft room to go thru and I am fairly certain there's a heap in the wardrobe too.  But they are for another time.

This is all part of my attempt to not be a hoarder, to get rid of unnecessary things, to simplify my life.

I had a friend come over on Sunday - on the table were the piles of mags waiting to go.  I asked her if she wanted to go thru them.  She has far more restraint than I do and said "No, I have a large pile myself and should probably do the same". 

I still have to go thru, ruthlessly I might add, a number of bags in front of the shelves in the craft room.  The idea of the shelves is that everything I have is on them, not on the floor in front of them.  And then there's in the wardrobe.  Now that school and kinder is back I at least have a suitable place to donate them to.  I just have to go thru it all..........

Glued to the TV and magazine clean out

No, not watching replays of the tennis - watching the news to see if our house in Bundaberg will go under with the floods.  So far it looks safe - hopefully it stays that way.

After seeing a post by Jenny of Elefantz about her new craft room I really need to go thru all of my craft magazines and dispose of those I no longer wish to keep.  I usually fold over page corners to 'tag' projects I think I want to do one day.  I think I need to go thru them all again and see if I still want to do those projects.  What with the amount on my 'Things to finish' list and on my 'Projects to start' list maybe I should just turf out every magazine that is not associated to a current/waiting project - even without going thru them.

I'm sure hubby would like that!!

Clean Out

I actually got to cleaning out the craft room properly.  It has been ages since it was started and I have yet to actually finish it.

But I did manage to empty 8 large bags of things - 5 bags of rubbish / throw out stuff;  2.5 bags of fabrics went to a friend for her craft group; another 2 bags will go to a kinder / preschool group.

I moved some drawers in next to the shelves and have started to put things in them.  I also ordered another set of drawers - hopefully they won't take too long to turn up and will arrive when hubby is not home.

Each tub I went through now has a large label on the front so I can tell what is in them.  I even went as far as itemising the things in the tub rather than just having a generic label (like odd bits and pieces).

I found lots of projects I had sort of forgotten about.  I found half of a project - not sure where the rest of it is, possibly in the wardrobe.  Also found part of a BOM I had managed to 'lose' - it is now with the rest of the coordinating BOM packs.  I have lots and lots of projects not yet started.  Things from magazines, BOM's, full kits for quilts / wall hangings / dolls.  I do believe that if I only worked on those kits / projects that I have already I just might get them all finished before I croak.  Scary thought.