Craft Room Clean Up

Do you want to see what happens when a packrat with 20 years of craft stuff never makes the time to set up her craft room? I warn you, it isn't pretty.

View from door. Laundry room and bathroom to the right.

I am lucky to have a craft room. In the almost two years we have lived in this house, I have never managed to get all of my craft stuff into it. Sad to say, there are still at least another 10 boxes of stuff in the garage. This is the second set up of my craft space. Originally I was sharing this room with Cat's office space, but about 8 months ago we rearranged the family room next door to house the office so that I could take the entire room. We moved furniture around... and then stopped.

The room quickly became a disaster. The worst room in our house, by far. Honestly, posting pictures of how this room looked feels about like posting a picture of my underwear. It is embarrassing how cluttered it became. The family needs to climb over boxes to make it to the bathroom (off to the right in this picture). There is usually a pile of dirty laundry or a couple of baskets in the forefront, too, since the laundry room is off of this room. However, I am a clutterbug and a packrat and I became blind to all of this mess. I usually didn't think about it until the rare times a person outside the family had to come downstairs. I know. This is how hoarders start.

View from the bathroom.

In addition to the piles of STUFF, there was the problem of lots of stuff and no organization. If you look at the pictures there are lots of cabinets and storage areas. They look nice don't they? Unfortunately, 80% of them are empty - everything is on the floor or a table surface instead.  The lack of organization meant I could never find something, such as zipper or hem tape, when I needed it. I would purchase some must have items for a project and then they would get lost in the chaos. So I would go out and buy more. In other words, this mess was costing me money.


Today it finally became too much for me. I have spent the past 5 hours working on organizing the room. The pictures may not seem like there is a huge difference, but believer me there is. HUGE. The three foot tall and 8 foot long mound of fabric that was previously on the floor has been put away. Craft supplies have been organized and put away.

I have labels on the drawers. LABELS. This is big, I tell you.

Look! There is floor!

 I am so pleased with the progress. Yes, it is still messy. I concentrated on organizing today and still have more to go. Cleaning will come tomorrow if all goes as planned.

Labels! And they correspond to what is in the container! Imagine!

 I also won't need to get basic craft supplies for quite some time. Turns out I have about 40 bajillion zippers and enough elastic to encircle the earth three times. And I still have those boxes in the garage to bring in and organize. But now I have space to do it!

So, yay! Progress! Really, the pictures don't do it justice. I am very pleased with how it is shaping up. I can't wait to work in the space once I am done.