A Place For Everything

...though not everything is always in its place...!

I'm so delighted with my latest piece of studio furniture! My hubby made a paper organizer for me! No longer is my paper in a box in the floor to be tripped over. I no longer have to fear my preschooler will use my paper storage box for a platform and trample my papers to death. Nor do I fear my dog's toenails piercing the papers walking over them when I've left my box open.

Not only is it an organizer's delight, it also doubles as another work surface, and I surely can't get enough of those!!

See that carved elephant puppet on the table? I love him but cannot for the life of me figure out where to hang him. My ceilings are all angles and I don't have a nice corner for him to hang in. He looks out of place hanging anywhere else. I'm determined to find a spot for him.

Now my papers are literally at the tips of my fingers and I can see what I have. *squeals with delight*

AND...the top opens up for even more storage of smaller sheets of scrap paper! Oh bliss! I'm so fortunate to have a husband who is crafty.

The Dysfunctional Art Closet

If you're an artist, you have one of these. Unless you are Martha Stewart, in which case you'd better skip on to another blog and leave me to my pathetic self.

I am a very organized person, to the point of self-proclaimed obsessive-compulsive disorder. I drive my family crazy organizing everything. A while back I posted pictures of my studio. A lot of you told me I was far more organized than you, which left me puffed up and full of myself. Until tonight when I opened the doors to my art closet.

It all started with a trip to Michaels. I came home with some ribbon which was on sale, so I stocked up. The trouble with stocking up is where do you put it all? You know you'll use it (at some point--maybe 12 years from now, but you WILL use it), it's on sale, and if you don't buy it you'll surely find a need next week for what you didn't purchase today.

I have my ribbon organized by color in the little white containers on the top shelf. My drawers are nearly full, so it took me almost an hour to figure out the best possible arrangement in each drawer to accommodate all the spools. In the end, a few spools got kicked out but I got them all in. (Until the next trip to Michaels!)

While placing the white containers back into the closet, I thought about how difficult it was to get them in and out, so I rearranged the top shelf which took another hour. I moved all the fabric containers to the far ends and stacked them to the ceiling. That cleared an area in the middle and I can now get to my ribbon without pulling stuff down on my head and pinching my fingers in the drawers. Yippee! And look! I even have room for one more container!

This closet is still a work in progress. Some of you will think this closet looks very organized compared to yours, and maybe so, but that's just the top shelf. The bottom is a mess! We've been here just over a year and there are still some unpacked boxes in there.


You can't open the doors too fast or the mat cutter will attack you. Pulling anything from the floor results in an avalanche of pillows. I have no place to store my scrapbooks, so they're all in crates in the closet floor. And then there's the circus tent, which I fall over on a regular basis.

Why, oh why, did I ever buy that thing?! Because it was on sale, and you never know when your child may need a circus tent!

Next in the series of dysfunctional storage will be my side attic. Stay tuned for the exciting narration of that space!

Will I ever...

...have a clean studio?? Martha Stewart needs to come to my house. She can tackle my closets while she's at it. But that's another blog posting. A very lllllooonnnnggg posting. Here is Martha's studio. Do you think she uses it?! photos from MarthaStewart.comIt seems I do nothing but clean my studio. It never lasts for more than a day before I've messed it all up again with my projects. Papers everywhere, missing my bonefolder, glue stuck to the table, containers meant to keep things together open with their contents strewn across the table...

My studio is long and narrow with short walls like Martha's in the first picture, but not as wide. I have a table I used as an island in my former house, but when I tried it in my new house I kept falling over it. I get injured enough as it is without setting up obstacles for myself.

I've blogged about my studio before and posted photos. Some of you said my studio looked neat and organized but that was just for the photos! Ha ha ha! It never stays that way. If I were to photograph it right now you'd see!
I love all the drawers. They're shallow, just the size for small art supplies. The paper organizers are nice also, but I would need about 35 of them for all my paper!
Just look at all her little glitter jars all lined up so you can see what color they are. I have my glitter and embossing powders in a small stationary organizer with drawers. I am forever opening the wrong drawer and picking up every jar in it to find what I'm looking for. And the sad thing is I even have the names of the colors written on the caps. Obviously that doesn't help me much.

But seriously, look at all that wasted space in the sharps drawer! All those scissors could fit in one compartment and the others could be filled with something else. It is exactly that kind of thinking that has gotten me disorganized. I can't find anything for all the *things* in the drawer.
I've always wanted to keep my ribbon in a little box for easy dispensing, but the trouble is I have too many spools, they're all different sizes and wouldn't fit neatly into the same box. I do have cute little jars like these pictured but I have nowhere to display them because every flat surface is cluttered with something already.

It is beginning to sound like I need to downsize and reduce. I have accomplished that in much of the rest of my house. However, I refuse to budge when it comes to art supplies. I am a packrat and a hoarder, I admit it. You never know when a project might call for an old candy wrapper, a shamrock green bamboo twig, or a torn page out of an Agatha Christie mystery. These are just a few of my treasures stashed away. If I could just remember where I put them...

In the time I have spent drooling over Martha's organized space I could have cleaned out my art cabinet. Sigh. I just need some inspiration. Maybe these photos will help me aspire to be more organized. Or more likely, I'll continue to drool over them until I get cross eyed and sleepy. Then I'll just go to bed, dream about having Martha over and my studio will still be a mess in the morning.

Laundry Day

Brace yourselves for an exciting topic! Today is laundry day! This is not my laundry room. I wish it were. Look at all that space. And the cabinets. And the counter tops. You could even iron in there. *Sigh*.

It seems I always get injured on laundry day. I usually end up slamming my wrist, knuckles, or elbow on the agitator of the washer struggling with tangled clothes. Don't they have washers now with collapsing agitators? If so, I need one of those. I've tried front loading washers before, but I don't like bending over and end up sitting in the floor to do laundry.
This is not my laundry room either. Look at all that space she has! Surely though, if this was my laundry room, I'd fall over that chair or smash my elbow through the window.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful to even have a laundry room. Sitting around a laundromat all day isn't much fun. I used to have to do laundry in the garage in our other house. My washer was on one side and the dryer on the other, with the motorcycle restoration project in the middle. I'd leave a trail of laundry across the garage on my way to the dryer...underwear draped over the handlebars, silk shirt dropped on a greasy gear...you get the picture.

I had to step down to get into the garage/laundry room. You see where this is going, don't you? Carrying a large basket of laundry, can't see where I'm going, steps involved...on my butt I landed with the basket sailing across the garage. The dog thought I was trying to kill him by means of suffocation in a mountain of laundry. I couldn't have aimed better if I tried. Poor dog, draped in dirty clothes (a dog's dream!) peeking timidly out at me. "What did you do that for Mom? Am I bad? And why are you on the floor?"

It's nice to have a room designated for laundry, and not in a cold garage. However, I blame my injuries on a tight space. Would it have been too much trouble for the builder to have extended the room by just a few feet, allowing me to be able to turn around in the room?!This is my laundry room. I ran out of cabinet space, so I bought some plastic crates for storing beach towels and doggie items. I have to climb on top of the washer to get to them. Convenient, isn't it?

I like having a utility tub, but I use it mainly for storing the dog food container. Sometimes I back into it or trip over the legs.

Usually I have a ginormous dog kennel in the laundry room, you know, the wolf size one. A little overkill for our greyhound mix, but we had no idea how big he was going to be and overestimated. Oh well, if we ever get a lab or golden retriever we'll be set. Anyhow, I often hurt myself carrying the kennel out into the hall so I can get to the washer. The poor walls are so beat up from me ramming into them. And moving the kennel isn't an option. The only room big enough to put it in is the living room, and I don't prefer it in there! (It doesn't match my decor!)

For all my complaining, I guess I have it good after all. If I could just be more careful and not hurt myself so much! But if the wish fairy is granting extraneous wishes this season, perhaps she could magically give me a few more feet of laundry space...please? And a fancy new washer, klutz-proof, preferably!