Today is Day 3 of my attempt to dig out my studio. I’m still working on purging long forgotten craft supplies from my prime work area.
After getting rid of most of the things in the first cupboard, I decided to make that my main painting/textile design cupboard. I moved the textile paint and ink I was keeping into that cupboard along with my paintstiks, rubbing plates and stencils, and brushes. I still have way too many brushes! I guess I will eventually need to declutter those as well. At least I took out all the oil painting brushes. I still have five empty drawers waiting to be filled from other areas of my studio.
Moving things out of cupboard #2 gave me a nice, empty space to temporarily move some fabric that has been living on my studio floor for much too long. It isn’t organized in any meaningful way yet, but I really just want to clear out my walkway first. This year I need to get on the ball and use this stuff!
Yesterday afternoon I started tackling cupboard #3. I went back and forth on deciding if I should keep my dyeing supplies. In the end, I decided I’m not quite through with them, so I reorganized them into easier-to-reach storage drawers and bins at the bottom of the cupboard. The black and white fabrics right above the dyeing supplies are dyeable cottons and silks.
Next I moved some more storage drawers into cupboard #3. This gives me twelve drawers to organize useable scraps of Kona cotton. Since I don’t have a long history of actually piecing quilts, I haven’t bothered keeping scraps in the past, but I can see the benefit of having them now. I decided to try sorting them by value, and maybe that will make it easier to use them. I think I will cut up a gray scale and tape one value to the front of each of the drawers. I’ll end up with two extra drawers, maybe for prints or small pieced units. Right now I have some miscellaneous Kona cottons on the top shelf. Those need to eventually be organized into my bookcase of Konas, but I just needed a place to put them for now.
As a side note, I have to say, I love these plastic storage drawer units. They fit perfectly into my cupboards without any wasted space. The individual drawers make it so easy to organize items by kind, and the drawers can be easily removed so I can carry my supplies to my work area. It helps that twelve of the sixteen drawer units are identical (and the other four match each other). That makes it easy for me to change my mind and shuffle the order of the drawers so it makes logical sense to me without having to move each individual item within the drawer. If you ever have to organize, I definitely recommend trying to make things interchangeable.
I feel good about what I’ve gotten done so far. Maybe I’ve done this purge process all backwards, though, because so far I’ve only worked on things that are usually behind closed doors. It doesn’t look like I’ve done much of anything in my studio yet! I hope I will have an hour or two to focus on my work table today, or at least some area that will show the world I’ve made progress!