Craft room overhaul

A great location for discussions about all things organizational. From supplies to creations - how do you keep your crafts organized?
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jfugina
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by jfugina »

Here are the last few before pics. This is the sewing side of the room.
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The cabinet is about half full of fabric, and half full of other bulky stuff that I don't use that often, but don't want to pitch. There are cabinets above the sewing table that most contain slides and film negatives. The CD rack below the cabinets contain the UMs, and those are going to move. The plastic drawers below have most of the WMs, clear stamps, and foam mounted ones. But I want to use those drawers for sewing supplies.
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Stamps and threads... it just doesn't go together. I'm going to fix this.
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Here we're nearly back to the door (see the stairs going up in the background?). The grey cabinets are all of my beading supplies. Those will stay exactly where they are. I love my DIY ribbon ladder. But I'm thinking of finding an alternate location and building a WM stamp display in that space. The stuff directly below that is piled on a TV stand. The basket has my sewing stuff, but other junk gets piled on, and I have to dig for the sewing stuff. So, sewing stuff in the WM drawers, and then that becomes my cricut station.
Julie Fugina
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nchoney
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by nchoney »

sounds like you're working through that plan in your head.... and maybe starting with your sewing area first, will help you dig into the other areas... :-)
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pamcook
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by pamcook »

You can do this Julie! Your plans certainly sound like they'll help you find more time be more creative. (re-reading this, I'm not sure it make sense but hopefully you know what I mean! :lol: )
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Monica
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by Monica »

Baby steps, Julie, and you'll get there. I know first hand what a pain in the rear it can be to dive into this kind of reorg, but it's worth it in the end!
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by Debbie J »

Can't wait to see the new and revised edition.
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Keitha
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by Keitha »

Just catching up with this thread. I'm sure you'll love your newly reorganized space when you get it done.

I'm doing my studio in bits and pieces. I wish I could do it all at once, but know that doesn't work for me. Last week I saw an organizer specifically for washi so brought it home, then realized as soon as I got it filled that I wouldn't like it - so back it went. But that exercise made me consider another solution for the washi and other embellishments that I store by type: enamel dots, flare, chipboard frames. Realized that I have some drawers immediately behind me that have become a catchall for stuff that doesn't need to be there so that's the next step: clear out the drawers and repurpose them for some embellishment storage. Maybe this weekend.
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jfugina
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by jfugina »

I'm kind of committed to finishing this overhaul by the end of this weekend, because we told Nicole that if she wanted to have friends over, then she'd need to help us get the basement cleaned up. That doesn't mean she has to help with my craft room, but considering that I moved a crap ton of my stuff out into the proposed "party space", I don't want to be the reason she can't have company over. :lol:

She (and her father) have a lot of other work to do before the basement is ready for other people to visit, but my intention is to be moved back in before they get their stuff done, which may very well mean getting as far as I can, and then moving back in with a bunch of stuff on the floor. But anything accomplished this weekend will be an improvement. :D
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jfugina
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by jfugina »

Progress update: My first round of storage stuff came from Amazon yesterday, and I spent several hours re-arranging. I got the rotation started by relocating all of my sewing stuff. I'm not entirely happy with it, and may need to try something different. But for now, it is what it is.

That activity vacated the cart that is now a die cutting station. That may get some tweaking too, but for now, I'm happy enough with it. It also resulted in my entire WM collection going to a pile on the floor. I regret not getting a photo of that.

At that point, I started on the big job: the letter organizer to stamping station. I vacated everything that was in there (and realized that lots of it is finally going to get PURGED), and started assembling the plastic document boxes I got to use as drawers for the stamps. Unfortunately, the document boxes are too tall, and the height needs to be altered before I can use them as drawers. I knew that was going to be necessary, but I didn't realize that I'd have to cut into the tab area that holds the boxes together. Oops. So that's going to take a bit more work than I was planning, now that everything needs to be taped. But that's OK. I assembled the lids to the boxes, and was able to get the WMs sorted into "drawers", and they only consume 12 of the 24 drawers. I was worried that they wouldn't fit. Eventually, my UMs are going to make their way into drawers, I think, but I found a CD storage rack that will work just fine for holding the cases until I decide to migrate them to the drawers. The happy thing is that I'll have room to migrate my inks and embossing powders into those drawers as well, so that will be handy. I wasn't sure if that was going to work out.

One of the things I finally purged last night, was most of the boxes that my cricut cartridges came in. I kept a small handful, because they are sturdy, and have that clever little magnet thing in the flap. But most went into the recycle bin. I also took a good hard look at the pile of scrap raps and stamp raps that came out of the letter organizer, and I think those are destined for the recycle bin too, unless anyone would like to claim them? I've never looked at a single one of those past the first week the kit arrived, and I can't imagine ever wanting to reference them again.

I meant to take some in-progress pics, but forgot to take my phone downstairs with me. There was a period last night where my room truly looked like an earthquake had just happened, and that would have made for some interesting pics. Rob actually came in and checked on me around 10:30, after he noticed I wasn't in bed. He thought I might have gotten myself boxed in and needed to be dug out. :lol: But I'll get some photos before I start up again tomorrow.

No progress tonight because we'll be at the football game. Go Viking BAND! :happywave:
Julie Fugina
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nchoney
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by nchoney »

Uh oh.... you said the P word (purged).... but sometimes it's just necessary.

Sounds like you made some serious progress!! :greenbounce:
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jfugina
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by jfugina »

I did! And I made sure those Cricut boxes went straight out to the bin which was wheeled straight the curb. No changing my mind!

Another thing that found its way to the trash was a paint spinner thing. I bought it after a Club Scrap retreat (in '08), and played with it at home like maybe twice. When I unearthed it last night, the battery had leaked and that's just not something I care about enough to rescue.

Typically, once I finally make the leap and purge that first thing, it's so much easier for other stuff to follow. I'm hoping that's what I go through over the weekend.
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Keitha
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by Keitha »

Good for you Julie, sounds like a great start.

That's funny, Marianne & I were just talking about Spin Art a week or so ago. I wonder if she's got the same paint spinner thing-y that you just purged?
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nancine
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by nancine »

Keitha wrote:Good for you Julie, sounds like a great start.

That's funny, Marianne & I were just talking about Spin Art a week or so ago. I wonder if she's got the same paint spinner thing-y that you just purged?
Didn't we all buy that darned spinner thing?
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mpizzazz
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by mpizzazz »

Guess I better check the battery in the spinner! Like I was saying to Keitha this week, before just moving jars, bottles, tools, etc. it pays to check that they still work, the contents haven't gone rock hard or even totally evaporated.
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jfugina
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by jfugina »

I spent 10 hours in my craft room today, with a carafe of coffee and a will to be able to use my craft room again. When I started, both of my countertops were piled sky high, and there was a mountain of stuff outside the room, and the floor was once again covered. Here's a hint of where I started today:
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I'm not done, but I do have space to work again, and there is far less on my floor. It may not look a whole lot different than I started with, but lots of drawers were re-arranged and hopefully it winds up being more efficient. First, the shelves at the entry contain albums and books. That stuff was mostly on the floor or randomly located throughout the room. A lot of the other stuff that was displaced from those shelves got purged.
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Next, the ribbon ladder was moved in order to make room for a decorative stamp display. Below the ribbon ladder is where the circuit used to be, and it was basically the end of the usable space. But now that the circuit is moved and some other junk was cleaned up, I have double the usable counter space.
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With the stamps gone from the sewing area, I was able to move my sewing supplies to a more convenient location. The floating shelves used to have stamps, and now they mostly are just for displaying photos that make me happy. The CD racks that used to have UMs now have little bins that have notions, needles, and other small sewing things. I'm not happy with the bins though, because they don't use the space well. But I'll deal with that some other time. That ribbon drawer is the next thing that needs to be tackled. All of that loose ribbon is going to fit in that drawer, or be purged.
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And here is where the stamps all went. I bought document boxes to use as drawers, and I haven't finished putting those together yet (because they all require cutting down the height by an inch). But the stamps are sitting in the box lids, letting me know that everything will fit. I found another old CD rack to put the UMs in, and I'm happy enough with those sitting out how they are for now.
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Here is the new WM display. It's a fingernail polish rack. It doesn't hold much, but I wanted a way to have some of them out on display, and this did the trick.
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So that's about it. I have a whole bunch of stuff for the recycle bin, and a pile of containers that will likely go to goodwill. I need to organize that ribbon drawer and finish cutting and assembling the document boxes for the stamps. But at the point I stopped, I finally felt like I had room to breathe in there again. :-)
Julie Fugina
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Re: Craft room overhaul

Post by Debbie J »

That's a dramatic difference! Your hard work and time you devoted to this has paid off.
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