Tidying Up

Since early this year, I've been on a cleaning binge. Of course, I'm not sure you can call it a binge if it's most of the time. I really like to clean, de-clutter, and organize. In a two bedroom apartment, I tend to quickly run out of places to organize; however, one area that tends to get avoided is the craft area, because I am such a hoarder when it comes to things that might one day be useful for a project. I've recently been trying to remedy that, and I have been evaluating and reorganizing how I store supplies and tossing useless bits and pieces that I've kept out of habit.

Between the sewing machine, ironing board, and craft desk, my crafting space takes up about 3/4 of the second bedroom, with the other quarter being the computer desk. When I'm working on multiple projects at one time, I tend to run out of room to put them and still have space to work. I tried to remedy that by hanging these little wall baskets for corralling small projects in progress:

(The mice have since been completed.)

(These fabrics have been sitting out for a year now, so I'm not sure they qualify 

as a project anymore and probably should just be put back in the stash.)

I also made some paper baskets to corral little pieces:

(The cranes have since been added to the crane mobile.)

One area I struggle with is getting rid of items I've made. Frequently I can't put my finger on why I don't want to part with a meaningless item. In some cases, just having made it seems to gives it sentimental value it wouldn't otherwise have. I don't want to want it, but yet I'm not ready to let it go. That, however, is not always the case. Some projects get tossed easily and, if it's worth the effort, I often have no problem taking apart projects for parts. For the rest, I've resigned myself to waiting until I'm ready to part with them.