Organizing craft time
With no real progress on my gardening efforts this week, I was looking for ideas for something else I could try. I headed to my closet where I keep my craft supplies and realized it had fallen into a very sad state. My dream closet had become a nightmare.
When we looked at this house, the closet was one of my favorite features. It runs the entire width of our bedroom (behind our bed) and has two windows for natural light. It’s way too big for my wardrobe (there’s a separate closet off our bathroom for my husband’s stuff), so I agreed to have it double for storage.
At one point I even had it fairly organized. Then we re-organized another room to make it a playroom and some of that stuff made it to my closet. It quickly dropped to only quasi-organized. Then it became the hiding place and staging area for Christmas presents. Hello semi-organized. Next, I decided to start decluttering the boxes of things that had found their way to my closet. Then I decided to take the lower area of the short wall to put my craft/project supplies, for easier access. Of course, I still haven’t found homes for some of the other things that were there and I’m still working on the decluttering thing. And of course, this space also functions as an actual closet where I keep my clothes/shoes and accessories.
Needless to say, organized doesn’t apply anymore.
So instead of starting a new project, I decided I should spend some time organizing to make it easier to do future projects. Going in, I had no notion that I would actually complete the project in a week. I have made so many attempts at organizing that I knew better. Getting myself motivated while I don’t have little ones underfoot wanting to “help” always proves challenging. I also suffer from paralysis by analysis. I get sucked down that Pinterest/Google rabbit hole of perfectly organized closets but can’t ever decide on which one(s) would work best for my situation.
Most methods would have me take everything out and then go through it and decide what should actually go back in. The problem with this is that everything I take out would have to go into the master bedroom where my kiddos will be able to “help” me go through it and my husband will comment on how messy our bedroom has gotten. And since I only have small windows of time to go through things the mess will sit there for way too long. I realize these are probably just procrastination excuses, but that’s the reality of my brain and existence.
Gotta Start Somewhere
I decided to start by looking at the boxes currently in the designated craft area to see what should be there and what should be moved. It took some time, but I was able to empty two boxes. One was mostly old mail and magazines that could be recycled and the other was a hodgepodge of items that hadn’t been gone through since we moved in. The latter box ended up being a combination of throwing away, donating, and moving things to their proper home (some of which I had been looking for).
Next, I did some shuffling of boxes. There were boxes in the main closet area that belong in the craft area and vice versa. While this didn’t really do anything for making things neater, it at least got things in the correct areas. Now I get the “fun” of going through those craft boxes and discarding those things I no longer need/want and sorting the things I do. Once things are sorted I can begin the challenging task of choosing an organization system.
In theory, I should be able to complete the going through and sorting in an afternoon. In reality, little Peanut is currently sick which means Bug is down a playmate so they both are looking for more mom time. Maybe if I’m really diligent I can get through them by the end of next week.
