Day one

We said good bye to our living room couch the other day. It wasn't really a couch... it was 3 wooden pallets with pillows on top.

It was OK when we first moved in,, just to get something to sit on on was never meant to stay very long, never mind 3 years.

It is now finally out on the balcony, where it works just fine as seating for the 3 days of summer we have up here in the PNW.

We have not gotten around to getting a new couch. With the pandemic we are not really going anywhere other than grocery stores and other absolutely necessary places. So thrift store shopping is out until we get vaccinated.

This leaves me with a rather large space in the living room for now. I have decided to move my desk back over under the windows. The light there is absolutely marvelous and I can't even remember why I was thinking that's where the couch should go. 🤨

Either way, my rather extensive crafting stash is in dire need of sorting and I showed you the sad state of my desk yesterday. Needless to say, work needs to be done before any more furniture can move.

So starting today, little by little, I will sort and organise my stuff ever day. Get better storage solutions etc. As going out and buying new stuff is not an option right now, most will be sourced from around the house for now.

Starting next month I will be adding a few dollar store baskets etc, but until then, I will resort to what I have on hand.

I kicked things off today by taking all 5 drawers out of my craft storage chest of drawers. It used to house most of my fabric stash, until my stash outgrew it lol. I have a new system for my fabric stash. I have it sorted by colour into dollar store buckets. But the chest of drawers still held part of it. Mostly my flannel stash. So two of the drawers were partially full with fabric, others held a few bits and bons of fibre tools and small things I kept for no fathomable reason what so ever....

I started to look through it all and found things I didn't know I had. It's like Christmas!

But.

Since I completely forgot I had the item.... do I really need it?

This is where the evaluation began. If I thought I had use for it, but hadn't used it because I couldn't find it, it was sorted in one pile. If I had double, it was sorted in a to donate pile, and if it was broken, it was trashed.

Then I cleaned out the drawers.

Before I could sort things back into the drawers, I needed a system for keeping it organised and seeing where things went at a glance.

Since I can't run out and buy stuff, I looked around at what I had. Well. I have tons of fabric and I have tons of paper. I went with the paper and folded small boxes. These are perfect to keep small collections of like things together.

I stuck them in the top drawer and started filling them up. The beauty is that I can make more as I need them, or make them any size they need to be. I can also make collapsible ones for flat things like sewing needles etc.

A few scissors are still MIA and I need a second drawer for my drop spindles most likely, but here it is so far.

So I went along, going through all the drawers. The fabric went sorted by colour into my buckets in my closet. Tools and other things got sorted back into the drawers, but in a more orderly fashion.

Right now I have one drawer filled with fibre tools (knitting needles, crochet hooks, fabric chalk etc) filled up. My embossing machine (which I forgot I had) and paper punches/stamps are in a second one and I have 3 more left to fill up with other treasures.

I think I will dedicate one solely to my watercolours/inks.

I know, it doesn't look like much. It's not pintrest cute, or instagram worthy, but it works. It is simple enough to make upkeep easy and if a paper box needs replacing, it is fast and cheaply done. Do I want something more adorable? Sure, but right now, my number 1 priority is getting things organised. Once everything is "off the floor" , as it were, and in a proper place, I can take my time and make it cute.

And you better believe I will!

Little steps will get me there in the end.

Tomorrow I will sort my paper stash. Wish me luck! 🤞🍀

I will post more photos tomorrow when I have natural light again. Photos indoors with the lights on never turn out nice with my camera. Sorry.

I had some super cute paper to make boxes. They didn't make it in the first drawer though.

I should have taken photos as I went along. I will tomorrow, I promise! ❤

Till then,

Xo,

B. 🐝