Making the Workshop Wonderful

    It’s been a while since I’ve posted about room redecorating.  The nursery and the boys room are great.  The living room has been reshuffled to more of a peaceful rectangle than a weird semi octagon, DH found and repaired a large HD TV, so we will get to watch PBS after the big broadcasting switch next Winter.  I’m thinking about how to make the workshop work better.  It’s the grit in my oyster shell right now.
    In This January’s Major Apartment Reshuffle, DH and I crammed our three large office desks into B’s old bedroom, with three bookcases, to form the new computer/electronics/sewing/stamping/scrapbooking/storage area.  It’s jammed. And now with K’s play enclosure semi perminantly in the middle of the floor, so that I can type while she plays with toys and does NOT eat dust bunnies, I feel crowded, uninspired, and grouchy.

    Writing about dust bunnies:

    She’s our little omnivour
    Eating Dust Bunnies off the floor
    Boy has she got teeth galore
    She’s our little omnivour

DH composed it while bouncing K on his knee.  She loves it.  I seriously have to deep vacuum my bedroom.

    Back to the workshop: you either have time or money.  Right now both have prior commitments.  So, what CAN we do now?  Plan well for when  we do have both of them.
     DH has been pulling out the IKEA spec pages for the living room shelves.  If we get taller bookshelves in there, some of the storage problems from the workshop will move to another room.   Meanwhile, I realized that text books I don’t need for B and are saving for M don’t need to be on the craft bookshelf, they can hang out happily in a closet in a box, or in the plastic totes in the living room.
    While our budget is a rudementary form, I do know what I can safely spend on my hobbies.  This month I bought The Inspired and organized Scrapbooker
It has pretty pictures, pretty projects to make to help me get organized, and quizzes with essay questions to help me think through how I make scrap books (not at all lately, too busy with other things) and how my space could be organized so that it’s easier to make them at all.

I found the question in chapter two "list 5 things or people who inspire you creatively" very encouraging.  Maybe I would feel more like making things if I had pictures up of friends, as well as magazines hanging around. 

Of course, the space is also the sewing area, so I asked my dear friend in South Carolina how she organized her new sewing space, and she said that kitchen design books applied well, but this link was also good.

Designing a Sewing Center

So I tell my growly self that we are working on it.  If we have a great plan to use what we have more intelligently, if I sort through what I need, want, don’t need, feel guilty about parting with, or store rather than think about, then I’ll have space to do stuff in, feel creative in when I have a few minutes and actually make something.

K wants to practice scooting now, got to go!

One Reply to “Making the Workshop Wonderful”

  1. That's totally why I don't get crafty things done… I don't have an area set where I can leave the machine up (and fabric sorted). Any time I start a project, I have to put everything away, so… right. I never get started. Maybe this will inspire me.

    Thanks!