Den and Craft Room

I'm sorry -- but ... WHOEVER SAID CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS? Harumph. I think it was Benjamin Franklin, but if it wasn't... I can promise you they didn't have a full time job and a family to care for.

Dear heavens. I recently began "organizing" my Den/Craft Room.

Okay -- I recently began "excavating" through my Den/Craft Room.

This room had become a catch-all room for junk, clutter, paper, craft stuff, sewing stuff, craft tools, fabric, more craft stuff, and did I mention... junk???

Somehow, we managed to take a good-sized room and load it up with trash, trash, trash. The before pictures are so embarrassing, but I promise... they are coming -- just as soon as I finish the entire project. Maybe next week?

Aaaanyway... I used to have a fastidious cleaning bone in me ... until I had a baby, at which time, life became a mad dash, literally. And to maintain some semblance of order in my home, the den became our storage/dump-all room, and the door remained, virtually, constantly closed. Hermetically sealed. LOCKED UP.

So after three years of keeping the door closed, my husband and I finally had EEEE-NUFF.

Time has always been the reason why I haven't tackled this room. I work full time, and then I run around like crazy for family things, church, random functions, and other scheduled "things" ... so, cleaning the main portion of my home became more important than cleaning this one room. I kept praying and begging God to change the whole crazy daylight savings time thing, and ... you know... actually ADD hours to the 24 he's already given us. But as that option didn't seem feasible, we just kept closing the door to the room.

And one day... I was handed a wonderful blessing of time to my busy schedule. My company changed their work hours, and I began a new schedule in January -- what they call mandatory "8-9's and one 8" ... meaning ... we no longer have flex start-times, but rather ... work 9 hours for 8 days, 8 hours on 1 day, and I get every other Friday OFF. A FREE DAY! Well, sort of free.

The funny thing is... many at my company "suspect" that they changed to this new schedule to "weed out" moms that have difficult schedules with the kid's daycare and school, and abuse flex time. Sort-of going back to the "good-ol'-boy" way of doing business. That's not my case, as my husband has an incredible schedule that allows him to be home early in the afternoons. The funnier thing is... WHO CARES!? This works out great for me, and I'm sure they weren't planning on that! I get the last laugh. Bwahahahahaha! Ehem.

Can I get an Amen!?!

Sometimes, when you pray for extra time in your busy life ... God answers in a big "ka-ching" kind of way!

So I've been working on this room for two Fridays (so far). I spent most of the first day wading through the den/craft/dump room. I toted out 4 30-gallon bags of trash... old wrapping stuff, broken boxes, broken tools, broken STUFF, old half-started crafts that didn't give me "immediate gratification" and couldn't be recycled or re-purposed, dried out bottles of glue and paint ... you get the idea. Then I sorted through stuff and put them in "like" groupings in large paper shopping bags and lined them along the wall. I boxed up my old books (Christian fiction and non-fiction) for our church library. Finally, I waded through the desk, made a "shred" pile, and got rid of what we don't need or use any longer.

It was a satisfying kind of day.

This past Friday, I went through my bookshelves, sorted all the "stuff" in them, and began to reorganize everything in new containers, re-purposed containers, and totally brought order to the room. Can I just say ... that took FIVE HOURS!! And 4 MORE trash bags of junk I just didn't want to hold onto anymore. A total of EIGHT trash bags -- how embarassing is THAT?!?

And yet... it was another exhausting, but satisfying day.

I think some of you may be wondering why I threw stuff away? Why don't I just sell stuff at yard sales, or give it away, etc?? Because I DON'T HAVE THE TIME. And in order to a) keep my sanity; b) spend time with my family; c) get the stuff out of the house... it is just best that I place stuff in black bags, tie them off and tote them out before I have a chance to think twice about them. I mean -- the way I figure is... it's been sitting in this room for three years. If I haven't used it or missed it in three years, chances are... I never will.

FINALLY ... the last thing I have to do is pretty-up the room. I want to make window treatments and a curtain for the sewing table, maybe a cushion for my chair, and hang stuff on the walls.

Then... when the room is finally clean, organized, and complete... I'll post before and after pictures. Don't kid yourself... it isn't one of those Better Home & Garden or Southern Living makeovers... it's simply a functional, clean and organized room ... and for the most part, with the exception of a couple drawer-bins, I only used what I already had on hand to organize it.

So far, its only taken me 3-1/2 days. I think I'll only need 1 more day, maybe 1-1/2 more days.

I thought it would take me a year. Literally.

Life is sweet.

And the door remains open once again!

Many, MANY thanks to the constant, and quiet encouragement from my friend Laura over at Organizing Junkie. Each month, she hosts a Monthly Roundup ... she selects one thing to focus all your organizing energies on -- which is truly smart, as it can become terribly overwhelming if you try to organize everything! Now, it is important to keep in mind that she posted the Craft/Sewing room organizing roundup back in OCTOBER of 2008. I committed to doing it, but did not have any free time. Until now. Yay!

This month (Feb '09), she's rounding up your unorganized recipes... Mine are looking great so far, and I have a system that works for me ... but I do hope you join in on organizing your recipes! It's liberating to see organization come out of chaos!