Craft Room Purge

I've been wanting to get ahold of my craft room for several weeks now. After the flurry of Christmas crafting and sewing I wasn't a very good little organizer and I left the area a bit disheveled. Below is a picture of what it looked like. The two book shelves were from our previous house and they fit perfectly behind the door in this small room. When we moved in, this room had pink shag carpet, pink (broken) mini blinds and mottled paneling. We ripped out the carpet and blinds, installed natural roman shades and last year I finally painted over the paneling. Much, much better.



My sewing table consists of an old file cabinet that I spray painted topped with an old dining table leaf that we found in our barn. I painted it too, of course.





Over the years I've collected rectangular baskets and containers. I've been using all of these containers for several years now and I was up for paring down my inventory.








One of my favorite Christmas gifts this year was from my daughter. She ordered this apron for me with my company's name on it. It has nice, roomy pockets in the front that I can load up with supplies when I am helping my clients organize and stage their homes.






One of my favorite organizing tools actually belonged to my Grandmother. After her first stroke she gave me her collection of DMC floss because she knew her many years of doing needlework had come to an end. I could cry right now just thinking about her. She went home to glory quite a few years ago, but her crafting legacy lives on.

In this fishing tackle box, she stored almost every color DMC made at the time. She wrapped each color around a special tag and labeled it with the DMC number.

Sometimes I just like to open the case and look at all of the beautiful colors.

I've been using this thread for nearly every project I've worked on for the past 10 years.

Now, back to the purge. I spent around 4 hours on this project. At the end of the 4 hours I had - 2 bags of trash

- 1 bag of recycling

- 1 bag for the thrift store

- 1 bag for the craft cabinet at school

- and 1 bag of stamping supplies I'm saving for a future craft supply swap party.
- 2 extra boxes for other storage projects

Here's the finished product. The two large blue bins, top left, hold all of my quilting fabrics for baby quilts and leftover upholstery fabrics from previous projects. The clear bins, top right, hold felt, chunky stamps, beading supplies, sewing supplies, and yarn.

All of the supplies on the left book shelf are stamping and scrap booking supplies. I have other stamps in a fun storage area. Supplies on the right are sewing supplies. The bottom right shelf holds gift wrapping supplies and two boxes of small items for future gifting. Please forgive the mess between the two shelves. It is a 20 year old cardboard wrapping paper storage container. I tried to cover it with contact paper which was a very unsuccessful and tearful project. I'm looking for a better solution. I'll keep you posted.

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