Hi, my name is marie, and I have a problem with having too much crap.  Today I’m specifically pointing out my craft crap.  I have several different hobbies, none of which I’m about to give up, and the stuff around them has simply overwhelmed my craft room.  I’ve cleaned this room several times, and aside from being the craft room it’s also the dump-everything-when-we’re-having-guests room, which means it gets a double dose of crap.

Here we go, pictures of my craft crap

Craft room before, from door.  Here’s where crap gets piled on entry.

my rather unusable desk is under there somewhere.

The shelves were a great idea. unfortunately the top leans out 3″ further than the bottom, because they need to be attached to the wall behind, which was impossible against that wall made of brick and old cement plaster with no studs.  They’re scary to stand in front of.  beyond that is an armoire full of fabric.

my husband’s work area. that’s actually a very nice glass drafting desk under all that crap…

The closet. It hasn’t been closed in years. bins and piles of fabric spill out from it. These are the piles of fabric in addition to all those in the cedar armoire.

As you can see, I think this room might qualify for an episode of Hoarders.  If I were on an old episode of Clean House, Niecy Nash would pull me aside and ask what I was thinking, and to put on my big girl pants and just get rid of some of it.  OK, probably get rid of most of it.

The room is just unusable.  And it won’t stay clean, and it’s just badly set up.  My husband does his pyrography work in the dining room, he’s not comfortable in the room where the desk is.  Which means the dining room is constantly filled with woodburning stuff.  And when I need to sew something, I do it in the dining room since there’s a free table.  Needless to say, the dining room is nearly impossible to keep clean because of all the craft stuff that’s there.

Tackling a room this bad, I find it’s good to make a plan, and to break down that plan into steps.  Because otherwise I’m just going to get overwhelmed and quit.  My husband and I went in and discussed the room, laid out what the problems were that we could conquer (teetering shelves, bad desk position for my husband, exploding closet) and the ones we wouldn’t touch (the linoleum floor color could best be described as early barf and I’d love to replace it with bamboo, and the book shelves which actually work quite nicely where they are).

We measured items, determined where to move the furniture to reorganize the room, and made a step-by-step plan as to what had to be done in what order to get this working.  Removing all the content from the room in order to move all the furniture is NOT an option.  there is no place else to temporarily house these items.  We’ll approach it like one of those slider puzzles, move a couple items more than once in order to get it into the final position.

There’s 12 steps in this plan, and each one can be separated out in its own day if necessary, instead of having to get this all done in a weekend.  And throughout each step is the implied “throw crap out” and “sweep/vacuum/dust”.  No use at all trying to cram it all back in.  How much will I part with?  Not sure.  Fingers crossed it’s minimum of a 50 gallon trash bag’s worth.

Wish me luck, I’m going to need it.  After pictures to follow.