Challenge #2 - Craft Supplies

Well, I made a decision. After pondering what I truly LOVE, I have determined that while I enjoy sewing quilts and blankets and other flat projects, but I don't enjoy sewing clothing, costumes, or other items that have more than 2 dimensions. If I have time to sew, I want to spend it sewing things I enjoy. I would rather buy or borrow a Halloween costume than spend my rare spare time sewing one.

Knowing this, it's time to purge again! This time, I can sort through my sewing & craft supplies and pass on anything that doesn't fit with my LOVE.

Step 1 - The Gathering
Due to space issues, I have been storing my craft & sewing supplies in various locations throughout the house. First step is to gather them.

I found 8 file boxes of fabric & other supplies in the garage, several plastic bins in the front hall closet (on my sewing desk), and the kids' art & craft bins from their toy rotation. Also pictured here are two empty diaper boxes I brought to collect donations, as well as some garbage bags to collect garbage and some fabric donations. After I took this picture, I remembered one more file box of yarn as well as a bag of poly-fiberfill.

Step 2 - Sorting
I went through the fabric boxes pretty quickly, pulling out the fabric I knew I wasn't going to use. A lot of it was given to me, and is not my style anyway. A good portion was fabric meant for apparel, and would not be good for blankets or quilts.

The hardest thing for me to finally decide to get rid of was a box of fleece. I ended up calling my mom for support and our thought process went something like this:
-What could fleece be used for? What kind of project might I do someday that would use the fleece?
-I could use it to make soft fleece hats, or maybe puppets, but those are more 3D projects, which I have already determined I don't enjoy.
-I could use it to make soft blankets, but since it's mostly leftovers from previous projects, there aren't large pieces... it would have to be a pretty creative patchwork project, which I'd rather not deal with.
-I might be able to piece a cute baby blanket with it, but the colors I have are not really baby colors, and frankly, the colors are not my favorites anyway... they are just the colors I needed for the particular project I used them for.
-If I decide someday that I want to make a pieced fleece blanket, I will probably go out and buy more fleece in the colors that I want/need, so keeping this particular box of fleece will not help me.
-And besides, I have WAY too many projects on my list to be creating more projects just to get some use out of the fleece.
-It's time to pass the fleece on to someone who might have a need for it, or more time than I to do something with it.

After sorting through various other craft bins I ended up with a box of give aways that included ribbon scraps I didn't even like, a scrapbook calendar that I never touched (and I would prefer to scrapbook digitally), as well as a box of patterns for costumes & other things that I don't anticipate ever having the time or desire to sew.

And, of course, I ended up with a pile of garbage. I didn't empty this garbage before I started, so not all of this is from my purge, but a lot of it is. Also, in this picture you can get a glimpse of the freshly labeled craft bins on the shelves of my sewing table.

Step 3 - Organizing What's Left
I ended up keeping 4 boxes of supplies that went back to the garage. The best part of this though, was that every box followed the 80% rule, so I didn't have to tape any of them shut!

One box of "home decor" fabrics that I actually liked, and might use to make throw pillows or something (flat projects!).
One box of yarn & knitting looms.
One box of batting (remember, I like quilting)
One box of "miscellaneous" which includes fabric for some projects that I just can't get rid of, like extra material to make more matching Christmas stockings in case we have more children.

Missing from this picture are the kids' arts & crafts bins. As I was sorting through my supplies, I gave some of the unneeded items to the kids, so they can do fun projects with them.

I also reorganized the remaining craft supplies and relabeled the plastic bins they are in. On my sewing desk are two bins labeled "velcro" and "glue." The glue bin includes tacky craft glue, school glue, and my hot glue gun. Also on the desk is a bin with extra paint supplies for when the kids' art bin runs out.

Under the desk two of the stripy boxes contain quilting fabric, and the third contains patterns. There are also 5 plastic bins labeled: Sewing machine hardware, surger thread, sewing machine thread, snaps buttons zippers hooks, and ribbons and trim.

Step 4 - Putting it All Back
I can't just leave everything out in the school room, or we'd never get any school done. :) So, it's time to move the rest. This is where I put everything as I finished with it, then I put things away after I took the pictures. :)

All these boxes are empty! I love keeping file boxes because I love the uniformity of shelves full of them. So, I moved these to the garage for when I need them again.

Here's the final donations. One large black bag of fabric, one smaller white bag full of fleece, one box of random craft supplies, and one box of patterns. I let my mother go through the box of patterns before donating it, and she took a few from the box, but also added a few of her own. These donations are still sitting in my garage, but they'll be out of the house soon!

And of course, the garbage. This bag went straight to the garbage can in the garage, and of course, I put a new bag in the basket. :)

The four boxes of supplies I'm keeping went back on the shelves in the garage, and the bins that were left on my sewing desk went back into the hall closet. I'll share pictures of those locations in later posts. :)

The School/Craft Room: A Work in Progress

As I have mentioned before, our house has four bedrooms. One girls bedroom, one boys bedroom, the master bedroom, and the school/craft room. We usually refer to it as the school room, because that's what it started out as... a place to keep school supplies & "do school." But things evolve and change and we are pretty flexible. Since we moved into our house, we have been slowly adding and removing things from this room. It now houses my office desk, sewing table, a good portion of the school supplies, most of our books, as well as puzzles, games & art supplies.

So, here it is... the school room:

The entrance to our school room. You can see that it is situated next to the boys' bedroom. My white office/teacher's desk and chair are along the first wall.

Another view of my desk area. The white things stuck on the wall are white board posters that work like a giant white board... in theory. I'm not particularly happy with these and will be finding something else in the future... it's just not high on the priority list at the moment.

The green pocket chart holds cards that show our school routine, though we haven't used it in a while. We also have a flag, of course.

The printer sits in the corner, on top of my filing drawers. I have four large drawers here. One of them contains general files, one Instructions & Warranties, one financial & other important documents, and the fourth contains extra office supplies like empty binders & sheet protectors.

Under the window is the kids' school table. Since our kids are so tiny now, they are fine with a tiny table. :) On the table, and on the wall to the right of the window are several paintings that have not yet found a final home.

The column of bookshelves on the far left contain paints (on the top shelf), and kids books. The board books are on the bottom, with short picture books on the next shelf and tall picture books on the shelf above that. The next shelf contains longer chapter books good for read alouds, and the remaining shelf contains a set of old classic books from my husband's childhood, and some children's level research materials.

The center column contains more extra school supplies on the top shelf including a stack of spiral notebooks, then adult chapter books, and finally drawing books and "for fun" workbooks, with a stack of drawers  containing spare batteries because that's where they are for now. :)

The final column of shelves contains my card making supplies on the top shelf, several bins of sewing projects I'm working on on the middle shelf, and the bottom shelf contains a set of tiny drawers with random office supplies like paper clips, and several plastic paint cans containing larger office supplies like erasers, scissors & glue, pencils, pens, chalk, white board markers, etc.

Under the shelves are the kids' cubbies for personal items, and my sewing desk.

My sewing desk, and the closet.

The top shelf in the closet contains puzzles & games, the next shelf down contains plastic tubs with Legos. The art easel sits in the closet when we are not using it.

Behind the art easel there is another shelf with a few electronic educational "toys" we were gifted, and our globe.

We keep a sheet under the easel so we can spread it out to catch paint drips & such when it's pulled out.

This room has a keyed lock on the doorknob and we usually keep it locked. With so many "fun" and messy items (crayons, markers, paint, pens, etc), it's best to keep the little ones out of here unless they are supervised.

We are still working on organizing and purging a lot of things in this room. A couple months ago we packed up 10 file boxes of "stuff" from this room, and I'm planning to go through those boxes and do a big purge in the next couple weeks. Of course, I'll share what I get rid of and why. :)