Life took me away from cleaning for a bit in order to prepare for the first in-person sales from our craft business. After a few days of rest and recuperation, I dove back into the craft room cleanup project. And I’m happy to say that it’s as done as it’s going to get for a while, and I’m ok with that.
If you haven’t seen the before pics, take a look.
Is it perfect? heck no. Is it “done”? no, not really but everything on my project list is complete. There are 2 bins of Works In Progress to sort through and cull a bit further, and 2 bins of smaller fabric bundles to put away. The sorted craft stuff could certainly be sorted a bit further. But, I’m sure if I need to find something I can.
4 large bags of garbage went out. 4 bins of fabric were donated to Period Productions, the renaissance festival group we have worked with for nearly 14 years. What they can’t use, they can donate elsewhere. 1 bin of random crap is set aside to get put away wherever else in the house it belongs because it’s certainly not the craft room. Loads and loads of stuff was put away into organized baskets and shelves.
One big lesson I learned: Fabric is MUCH EASIER TO STORE ON BOLTS. Holy Cow! I resisted putting the fabric on bolts before because I thought the bolts took up too much room, and would waste what little space I had. I was so wrong. Now that I’ve done it I know I would totally give up that space in order to actually be able to find my fabric and find it in an unrumpled condition. I wish I had a before picture of the inside of the armoire. The wool tended to look more like large mounds when it was folded. Not anymore! I went to my local fabric store and they gladly gave me their empty bolts. I’ll have to go back again a few more times and raid their stash in order to complete putting the rest of the fabric away.
Here’s an after picture of the inside of the cedar armoire, where all the natural (wool, silk, linen, leather, fur) fabrics are stored.
Here is the completed closet, without the massive piles of fabric in front of it! The shelf in the closet is a simple metal one I got at walmart. It allows me to utilize the closet space more effectively, and at $39.99 it was much cheaper than buying a shelf system. I store my bottomweights and polyesters in the closet. The top of the closet is where I squeeze all my foam and pillow forms.
One of the nicer dramatic changes in the room is the book shelf. Some cheap magazine bins wrangled my collections of Threads, Spin-Off, and Handwoven. Once the junk was cleared out, I had a half of a shelf left to make it the shipping center for the craft business, where I put all the broken down boxes I emptied, to reuse for shipping.
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A few more changes coming here, like swapping out the trunk for something with drawers. That big wonderful basket from The Basket Man is for our SCA feast gear, which we bring to events. It could probably use a new home too, I just have to find one.
My husband’s studio area. He finally has a home for his woodburning outside of the dining room!
My Studio Area. I finally have room to work! The shelves look cluttered, but many of the decorative boxes are actually empty. More organizing will move items into the empty boxes.
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I used command strip hooks to make much better usage of my wall space. This is a huge improvement, these items were formerly a huge pain to store. Because this wall doesn’t support nails very well, the command strips are a wonderful way to attach items to the wall.
Decorative jars like these apothecary jars I’ve collected over the years are great places to store small items like the collection of vintage buttons from my grandmother.
I used to cross stitch a lot. The designs I did were very complex designs by Teresa Wentzler, and I would hop between a few pieces in order not to get bored. I wanted the pieces to stay relatively dust-free, but while I love the 18” rods in the Stitcher’s Delight Frame System some of them were sewn to made it difficult to find a box they would fit in. I used a leftover 4″ PVC pipe piece and caps to create a storage container for these works in progress. Someday I’ll completely these…I hope.
My ashford 24” table loom is awkward to store, it’s too big for on top of my armoire (though the 32” rigid heddle fits just fine). I found a nice place to slide it right under my desktop, between the desk and the armoire. Use every nook and cranny if you have to!
My dog Izzy is very happy to have “her” futon mattress back, and happily situated in a corner where she can be with me when I work or hide from thunderstorms. It blocks the closet door, but it’s just a big mattress and it’s easily moveable should I need to get to the fabric.
My imperfect but moderately clean craft room has taken me a whole month to complete. Some days I did nothing, some days I did a bit here and there, others I spent hours of hard work. I’m glad I wrote this series of posts, it has kept me on track with cleaning because I felt the need to give updates and close it out.
In the end, I’ve gained back an entire room I didn’t have before. I keep going in there and sitting at my desk, planning projects or just looking around and realizing how comfortable it feels to be in there. Our business has a home now, even if it is only a room in our house.
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