You Have To Make A Mess....

A seed was planted...and an idea sprouted!

As you know, I follow the blog of friend and fellow quilter, Elaine Theriault (crazyquilteronabike.blogspot.com). Recently, she has challenged her fellow quilters to work on cleaning up their sewing space. She's also been posting photos of the successes of fellow quilter's. And one of those photos got me to thinking about how I could make my sewing room even better. That one thought created quite the domino effect....which will likely take several days to bring to fruition.

I always subscribe to the belief that you have to make a mess in order to clean up. So...I dug in!

First, I emptied the two cabinets in my sewing room. They were a home to wrapping paper, gift bags, printer cartridges, and SO many arts & crafts things....most of which I hadn't accessed in years. My thoughts were to empty the cabinets for an alternate use.

Of course, I needed a space to put ALL that stuff! Thank you SW for allowing me to encroach upon your workout space.

Cabinets emptied and ready to be moved to a new location :)
 

I have been annoyed with this space at the bottom of the stairs for a very long time, and was planning, at some point, to purchase storage cabinets to hide what doesn't fit in our kitchen (it is a VERY small kitchen...perfect for no more that two bodies). Then, as the idea sprouted and continued to grow, I conceived of the idea of moving my sewing room cabinets to the space by the stairs. 

First, I needed to empty the wooden shelf, and move it out of the way. Everything went onto the floor nearby.

The cabinets got moved into place...Thanks for the help, dear hubby...and everything was put away OUT OF SIGHT. Eyesore gone! I even had space for some of the "big box" stock...like large bags of Craisins, chocolate chips, dried mango, etc.

Back to the sewing room. I moved my fabric storage shelf to the space at the end of the Murphy bed...after moving boxes, etc. out of that space (you can JUST make it out to the very right of the photo), and I moved my cork board into a more accessible space on the wall.

Then I looked around with a considering eye. Hmmm! I should move that large storage unit on my sewing table off of my table. But where can I put it?

I wonder if it'll fit above the Murphy bed frame???

A quick round with the measuring tape showed that, in fact, it would fit. But...that meant moving all the storage bins that were there off that space. See what I mean about making a mess!!!

Oh my goodness!!! Will I ever get things organized again??? As I was moving things around, I had to laugh. This fell out of something on one of the shifts.

LOL....There's your sign! Okay...I will get there. After moving everything (pretty much) from the space above the Murphy bed, I then emptied, moved the shelf, and reloaded it right away.

And now there's so much more space on my sewing table.

Some things will need to go back in that space, but more on that later. At this point in the day, I was feeling pretty done in....especially not feeling at my best after my jab yesterday. I decided to call it a day for today. I do have a plan for all my project bins, and for all the open space I now have under my cork board, but that will have to wait. I also have to go through ALL that arts & crafts stuff to decide what, if anything, I need to keep. Anything I do keep MUST have a home. But next steps will have to wait until tomorrow...after my numerous Zoom classes are over.

SW, who is making supper tonight, just informed me that it is ready :P

And on that note, I wish you all a very good night!

TTFN