Welcome to my stop on the Spring Clean Your Studio blog hop, hosted by Cheryl of Muppin.com! I feel like this blog hop is part motivation to clean/organize and part voyeurism since we get a peek into so many beautiful sewing rooms 😊
I am a member of team sews-at-the-kitchen-table, which means I don't have one of those beautiful rooms to share. What I do have is sewing stuff stashed here and there all around the house, so the last few years I've been trying to get more organized. I'm hoping that by the time I can have a real sewing room I'll have all the systems in place so the mess never gets out of hand. A girl can dream, right??
Last year for the Spring Clean Your Studio blog hop, I dealt with my fabric storage. I'm so happy to report that I have maintained the new, organized drawers for the whole year! Then, in November, I sorted my scraps by colour and I have them all in shoeboxes. It's not Pinterest worthy, but it works. Both of those projects have made it so much easier to find what I need for new projects. I also find it easier to put stuff away, though that doesn't always happen as quickly as it should. It's a work in progress.
There are still plenty of other pockets of stuff that need to be dealt with, so for today I tackled the stuff in the kitchen. This cupboard is next to the table. It's great to be able to keep current projects close to where I sew, but the mess was a bit much.
And, since the cupboard was such a mess, I often just stuck stuff on top of it rather than wedging it into the mess. Remember, this is right in our kitchen, so the mess isn't exactly hidden away. Some of the stuff on the counter isn't sewing related, but once it's a messy horizontal surface, everyone finds it's just easier to keep adding stuff to the pile.
I have realized that 'divide and conquer' is a key organization tactic. Having a large open space to stash stuff just invites mess. There's a reason all those home organization posts are full of bins and baskets! I bought three pretty bins for current projects. Two of them are holding my Spring Meadow quilts at the moment, the smaller one has the applique version and the larger one has the embroidery version. I really like being able to pull out the bin and have everything I need for the quilt.
The third bin has an assortment of projects that I haven't worked on in a while, but that I hope to get back to soon.
That was the end of my bin buying, though. While I admire shelves that are full of perfectly coordinated bins, the truth is I can't be bothered to spend that much on organization. I'd rather just use what I already have. That's why my thread is in cookie containers - one for Aurifil and another for an assortment of old threads and the Gutermann that I use for garment sewing. There's another cookie container holding fabric for a quilt-to-be. Eating the cookies to make the containers available for storage was a sacrifice the whole family was willing to make!
Then there are the cardboard boxes that have fabric for future projects and another box that has zip top bags of leftover binding pieces, orphan blocks, different elastics, my quilt labels, etc. With the bags all corralled in one box, at least they're much neater than when they were loose.
This is what the inside of the cupboard looks like now. It still wouldn't win any awards for beauty, but it's a lot more functional than it was.
Now the challenge will be to keep it looking like this! I make no guarantees, but I'm going to try!
There are still plenty of categories of stuff that I don't know how/where to organize. The two biggest and most challenging are garment fabric and garment pattern pieces. I have more work to do, for sure, but it's better than it was before 😊
Cheryl has gathered a bevy of others to share their studio clean ups. If you're in need of motivation or inspiration, or you just want to peek into your sewing friends' studios, hop around to visit them all.
- March 29 - Raylee Bielenberg - http://sunflowerstitcheries.com
- March 30 - Jen Frost - https://faithandfabricdesign.com
- March 31 - Tara Gebhardt - https://quiltspluslove.com/quilt-stories
- April 1 - Becca Fenstermaker - http://prettypiney.com/blog
- April 2 - Leanne Parsons - http://www.devotedquilter.com
- April 3 - Rebecca Lidstrom - http://Www.studiorquilts.com/blog
- April 4 - Amy Bradley - http://purplepineapplestudios.com
- April 5 - Sue Griffiths - https://www.duckcreekmountainquilting.com
- April 6 - Kate Starcher - http://katiemaequilts.com/blog
- April 7 - Tammy Silvers - https://tamarinis.typepad.com/
- April 8 - Jessica Caldwell - http://Www.desertbloomquilting.com
- April 9 - Monika Fritschi Henry - https://www.pennyspoolquilts.com/blogs/news
- April 10 - Sara D Flynn - https://www.offbeatquilts.com/blog
- April 11 - Bobbie Gentili - http://geekybobbin.com
- April 12 - Cheryl Sleboda - http://blog.Muppin.com
Coming from many many years of sewing at a table or in the corner of our bedroom on a desk I also used for marking and prepping lessons for school, I can appreciate this post! Now I am so grateful and tickled with a real space to sew, and I'm taking my time getting it all pretty, that and waiting for IKEA to restock and pandemic restrictions to lessen.... I like those bins you got for your current projects, and the top of the cupboard all cleaned up now is refreshing, right?
ReplyDeleteCongrats on your progress. The decision to turn the spare room into a sewing room was the best decision ever. But now I need to get it organized. ha ha ha ha
ReplyDeleteI understand how challenging it is to store things in a small space. Though I've always had a large room - for more than 20 years, I created in a big, bare rafters/concrete block basement that was frigid in the winter - it's always important to be organized because us quilter-sewists will always fill up whatever space we're allowed. I think you've done an admirable job with the small area you work in. And sacrificing cookies was the right thing to do.
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