There’s a Floor in My Craft Room!

Whew—I’m beat. I spent the last three days cleaning and reorganizing my craft room. It’s the most energy I’ve expended since before I got sick!

Now, I know that people love “before” and “after” pictures, but I have to tell you: I am SO embarrassed by the (previous) state of my craft room that I decided not to take “before” pics. Let me sum it up in words: I literally could not see the floor or any flat surface. Everything was covered with piles of projects, craft supplies. scraps, paper, brushes, pens, and bags and bags of stuff I had bought and never put up (I would literally open the door, throw the stuff in, and close the door before I had to look at the room).

Clearly, what I had was a mess of a storage room, rather than a creative place to work. One reason I’m so embarrassed about this is because I’m so blessed to have this room all to myself, and to have more craft supplies than I’ll probably ever be able to use in my lifetime. All of that was being wasted and unused because this room was such a mess.

So, with very little money and a whole lot of work, I tackled the mess and, once I got rolling, just kept going until it was done (mostly—I still have some shelves that need to be reorganized and straightened up).

One of the problems I have with organizing is that I need to be able to see my stuff; not only does visibility help with creativity, but I don’t forget that I have things until they go bad (paints, for example) or until I go buy duplicates (tools and pens! most people can’t find one; I’m inundated with them!).

Here’s the view of my craft room from the entry door:

In the foreground is my 4’x4’ worktable that my sweetie built me. It sits in the center of the room. I LOVE it, but it can hold A LOT of junk if I’m not vigilant about cleaning up after myself. One of my favorite storage ideas is on the back wall. We had put pegboard up, so I got some long hooks that stuck straight out, laid little shelves over them, then put all my little stuff (beads, shells, glass gobs, buttons, charms, etc.) into canning jars and set them on the shelves. I love that I can see all that stuff now that it’s not stuck in drawers.

Moving clockwise, here’s the shelving unit that holds acrylic paints, brushes, foam stamps, and, on the bottom two shelves, all my fabric dyeing supplies:

Continuing to the right, there’s a worktable against the wall (also built by my sweetie) with shelves above it:

I bought that bar and the yellow cups that hang from it in the kitchen section at IKEA; the whole thing cost about $12. I also got the magnetic bar and magnetized metal canisters at IKEA (to the right of the clock). I already had the small white shelf units on the wall, but I cleaned those up. I bought the clear plastic “shoeboxes” on the shelf above the worktable at Home Depot for $.99 each. I need to do a little more work on straightening up the pegboard to the right.

Here’s a pic of the room looking back toward the door:

That over-the-door white shelving system has been wonderful for holding all kinds of things were I can see them.

Here’s another new addition (or a combination of old and new):

I needed something for all my paper—scrapbooking paper, painted paper towels, paper I use to make journals, cardstock, etc. This little unit is perfect for that. Those bottom storage units are from IKEA. The frames were very cheap but sturdy, and the metal baskets were $3 each. The plastic drawers were a little more. We bought two units and my sweetie cut boards to go on top to create a flat surface. I already had the top plastic units; before, they sat on the floor, so we just moved them up. If you can’t go out, go up, right?

For some people, the “clean” version of my craft room is probably what they would consider a mess, but I am THRILLED that there’s nothing on the floor (except under the table and the workbench, which is just added storage space, IMHO), that everything has a place, and that I have two work surfaces that are clean and ready for projects.

Now, I know some of you are probably wondering, “where’s the sewing machine and all the fabric???” Fortunately (?), I have a whole OTHER room for my quilting interests. I’ll show pictures of that tomorrow even though (fair warning!) it’s not very clean :-)