Spring(ish) Cleaning

  Last summer I re-decorated my sewing room and started the process of finally unpacking all of my crafting supplies.  I got a nice little start on the room, but then was side-tracked by my ankle reconstruction surgery in September, then the holidays, then it was winter and I didn't feel like working on the room... you get the idea.  Basically, I was being lazy.  Yesterday as I was sitting at work and counting the minutes to the weekend, I made myself a little "to-do" list for the weekend.  Basic things like, "pay bills" and "grocery trip"... but then I inserted a little note to myself - "work on sewing room?"

Today I woke up with a hankering to clean house.  Not a break-out-the-Windex-and-vacuum-cleaner kind of mood; more like an "I need to get organized" frenzy.  Naturally, this OCD-ish disposition lent itself perfectly to the cleaning of the sewing room, so off I went!  I cleaned out the closet first - this was a monumental task - couldn't even walk into it before I started, and it measures 8x7!!!  I had five of those little Sterilite (?) plastic carts, each with 3 drawers, and ALL of them full of crafting stuff.  The carts were all in the closet, along with 3 tote boxes for wrapping paper, a big tote full of gift bags and tissue paper, and some various boxes and crates with fabric, papers, bath products, etc...  just a pile 'o' junk, really.

The contents of the carts ended up in this lovely built-in-drawer system inside of the monster walk-in-closet.  When we first bought this house, I was so excited to have these drawers because I thought I would use them all the time for all of my crafting odds and ends...  WRONG.   The drawers sat lonely and empty, just waiting for me to get my head together and get organized!  I managed to fit nearly everything from the 15 drawers into just 10 drawers of this built-in unit, with plenty of room to spare.  The now-empty rolling drawers are going to be re-purposed into toy storage for my nieces, so I'm glad to see that they won't be going to waste!  I've used these drawers for quite a while now... I had them at our last house, both in the sewing/craft room and also inside of the kitchen pantry.  I would very much like to use them in a pantry-type closet again, but unfortunately I don't have anywhere on the main floor of my home to house the carts.  *sigh*

Anyway, enough rambling... here's some pics!

I know it doesn't really look like a lot... but keep in mind that I hadn't done much of anything with this room since last summer.  Over the winter, I generally would pack up the sewing machine, fabrics, threads, etc... and head downstairs to my dining room table to work on stuff; partly because it was a bit cooler in the sewing room, and partly because the room was an absolute disaster from basically just opening the door, tossing in a bag (or roll of wrapping paper, or box of papers) and slamming the door again to keep the cats out!!   It's a vicious cycle...  pack-rats like me should be required to clean their houses top to bottom monthly!!! :-)

The moral of today's story?

I hope that my ramblings of organization will inspire you to start your spring cleaning "just* a little bit earlier this year!!

Happy Renovating (and Cleaning!)