Have you ever walked into your space and just turned around and walked out?
That has been me the last couple of weeks, only I couldn't walk out, because I still needed to work. I don't know about you, but I struggle to accomplish much when I feel overwhelmed in my space. I also struggle at good organization. I'm on a mission to fix that, and to keep myself motivated, I'm sharing with you!
Don't expect pretty, bright, colorful pictures from me as the process moves along. I share my space with our laundry room in our basement. There are no windows, and no where to put a window in, so I have nick named it "The Dungeon." It may be dark, but it's a big room and I am blessed to have a separate space to work in. My problem is my lack of organizational skills and, believe it or not, space. Or maybe the space issue is because of my lack of organizational skills.... Feel free to share your ideas as I go along, because I am currently fitting fabric storage, shipping products, inventory and sewing space within the laundry room. This is going to be a slow process, because I think I want to see how each change works before moving on to the next, plus I'm waiting for our second child to move to their new apartment so I can store some stuff in their room. Shhhhhh......
Inventory.
Part of the problem with this is having so many shoebox sized boxes to move and get to. In the blue storage container are the Studio 180 Design rulers I sell.
Fabric. Quilts. Envelopes. Batting. Project boxes. Etc.
My current set up leaves so much to be desired. The drawers on the right are full of knit fabrics for clothing. I either need to get sewing or sell some of this, because the suitcases are also full of knits. Ugh. The drawers to the left of that are quilting cottons. Then project boxes on top of envelope and box storage, and then more drawers of "stuff." Behind all of that (you can see the bins to the left and the sunflower table cloth sits over the two totes of rolled up quilts) are my quilts and bins of batting, class supplies, etc.
First step was to organize the patterns. I bought Bankers Boxes and moved all of the patterns into these three boxes. I left the rulers in the blue bin and then moved boxes that were sitting on my cutting table, and the large envelopes into this area as well. I'm still not super thrilled with this, because it's still hard to get at everything, but at least I'm not taking out twelve shoe boxes to get to one pattern.
This doesn't look like much, but I did go through and clean out my bins of quilting cottons. When I switched my patterns to the Bankers Boxes I emptied out a lot of the shoe box containers. Now they hold separated colors, a few kits and a few years, yes years, of BOM from my LQS. Yikes. PS. Did you notice the TWO laundry baskets of socks in the first shot? If you ever hear anyone in my family complain that they don't have any socks, you can show them that picture. Ha! Down to one basket with just a few socks missing their partners.
The next step will be to label the colors (yes I only kept enough of each color to maybe fill one shoe box), move the quilts upstairs to the soon to be empty room, move the drawers back against the wall (can't wait for the extra floor space) and go through those knits. They are driving me batty. I'm going to ignore the mess behind me and take it one slow step at a time.
If you have organizational tips feel free to leave them in the comments!
Happy Stitching!
Jen
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