WHAT A DIFFERENCE HALF AN HOUR OF CLEARING THINGS UP CAN DO

 I have probably mentioned that my husband and I are crafts artists.  One of the reasons we bought this house is that there is a family room off of the kitchen through a large squared off arch. I could cook dinner while working in our “studio” and we could (back then) turn the kitchen TV around to watch it from the studio.  Of course like every other room in a house it becomes a mess and needs organizing – again.

Early last year I had been working on clearing it up – and then Covid-19 hit.  I stopped working on the room.  I ended up bringing my sewing machine into the kitchen to sew our masks – and of course the patterns and fabric for it were dropped on top of paper cutter on one end of a storage dresser near the entrance to the room.  It had already had my various embroidered and sewn items from when I lived with my parents tossed onto my worktable – along with projects in progress.  

When the room is maintained it serves its purpose well.  We can easily get to supplies, tools, books, magazines and storage. But when it is not maintained – well, you know that how it is.  

We were doing okay with the room basically usable and then this past Thanksgiving was approaching.  I wanted – no, needed to have Thanksgiving in the dinner as normal. In addition to wanting to make it as normal (and as nice) as possible, we need our kitchen table clear to be able carve the turkey, put things we will need for dinner and so on.  But when last May we had ordered food delivered we had no place in our small house to store the canned, bottled, jarred and packages of food in the quantity we had purchased it. Our dining room table was covered over with towels and the canned, bottled and jarred items were put on the table.  Food in packages was put into very large plastic containers on the floor and smaller ones on the table. There was no way we could have Thanksgiving dinner in the dining room as it was – but where to move it all – especially the items on the table?  

Of course, they could go on my work table in the studio - if was cleared off of course.  So I did a quick job of clearing items off of work table – some, such as husband's sewing machine, were pushed onto his worktable, others stacked on the chair I use at the table and items put on the floor.  My work table chair area backs to a wall with with some storage, so there was not a lot of room there.

This all worked okay for Thanksgiving… - for Christmas husband's weaving items including loom were added to what was stored in the studio - and Christmas…  and New Year's, but it has become a giant mess in the studio.  When doing some household sewing I had to lean over a good deal of the mess to get out a different color of thread – and managed to drop the holder on which all (well, mostly) the started spools are stored onto the floor – behind the mess.  Luckily I could read a spool of light gray and since it was a work item I was making, that was close enough to the light blue I needed.  

But this cannot go on.  It is one thing not to be able to use my work table, but not to be able reach and find the items I need is not alright.  But like everyone else I look and sigh and think  - oh my!

A couple of weeks ago I went to work on a laundry basket in our studio. It held various toys and other items husband's niece used to play with when she would come here one day a week for us to watch for her mom.  This is back when she was maybe 4 plus or minus – she is 19 now, she will not be playing these items again.  I went through the basket and sorted it out.  I threw out items which were, well, actually garbage even though she played with them - no, we did not give her garbage, but children, well they find items to play with which are not toys – for example, the first time she came for us to watch her it was just after my husband's birthday.  He had received a HUGE birthday card.  She loved it and carried and carried it around the house and drew on it – garbage – out it went. Some items are things we want to keep – such as toy train set of my husband's which she had appropriated, some stuffed bears and such.  They were put upstairs in “the teddys” room to find a permanent home.  The other items, mostly stuffed toys are not something we want and are not garbage.  They have been set aside so that when the corona virus is under control they can be donated as they are in excellent condition.  The laundry basket was washed and dried and put in the basement as a spare, well, laundry basket.  

This week I went to work on one corner of the room.  This corner has a bookcase with our needlework and sewing books, some related magazines, and the bottom shelf holds the cookbooks I kept after a purge of cookbooks about a decade ago (and no new ones added since),  It also has loose shelves – wire ones that husband uses to dry woven items on after he finishes them and wooden boards we use as shelves at craft shows.  Also stored on the floor here are a few plastic bags with framed cut paper pictures that my husband made and exhibits – though no exhibits in a few years.  There is room for all of this in this area while still allowing access to the book shelves.  But of course, until the area was cleared out of unrelated items which had been dropped there – the books shelves have not been easily accessible in years – the books and magazines which had been pulled out had been stacked on a Ellison cutting machine – so, of course the Ellison was not that easy to use as it could not be accessed.  Once the book shelf area was cleared out – the books and magazines were put away where they belonged.  The paper cutter mentioned before had also been moved to this pile (on the opposite end of the same dresser) to put our studio Christmas tree. It was put back where it belongs.  

In doing this I found a package of paper towels near my work table.  A mystery solved.  In January husband saw me replacing a used up roll of paper towels and asked how many more rolls we had (remember he thinks we use about 10 times more of everything we use) and I told him that we had at least 2 more rolls in both size sheets we have.  To me this means “we have plenty” to him this means “we are about to run out of paper towels any minute now”.  I reminded him that we had also bought a new package of paper towels, but of course could not find it when he asked where it was. So we bought a new package of paper towels – not the brand we like as it was out of stock – when we went out to pick up prescriptions.  As I cleared these items out of the studio I found the package of paper towels I knew we had bought under some of the mess and of course showed it to husband to show that I was right.  Both packages of paper towels are now in the basement in the area where we keep replacement paper goods.  

I plan on continuing working on getting the area around my work table cleared out so even if I cannot actually work there for now due it being a food storage area, I can at least get to and use the various supplies stored next to it in the corner of the room and under it without any problems.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

It is amazing how moving something for temporary storage can cause problems that seem huge.  In less than half an hour  of work last night, I now can access my bookshelves and books, can use our Ellison machine and our paper cutter, and made a big dent in the clearing away of items temporarily stored  and blocking access to supplies and tools.   A HALF AN HOUR!  That was all it took.  Can't wait to see what the next half an hour of clearing away stuff manages to organize and clean up.