Cleaning the Craft Room

Whew! The holidays completely flew past. I love Christmas and everything that goes along with celebrating such a wonderful holiday. But I must admit, it tires me out... and this year for some reason it did more than others. I think its because I was probably less organized and had more projects and things going on. This year, I am going to make a goal to get everything done by December 1st: tree up, house decorated, shopping done, Christmas cards addressed and ready to mail, projects completed, etc, etc. I hope I can do it!

I do love January. I may be in the minority with that, but I really, really LOVE January. I love to have my house back to a more simple decor, I love to get to the dust that's been collecting in and around the Christmas decorations, I love to organize closets and drawers and rooms that desperately need it. Its a great month to "catch up" for me, and I take full advantage. This particular January, we have our first grand baby due, so when that happens, everything else will be at a stand-still, but that's as it should be! 

So, when I took all of my Christmas decorations down, I piled them down in the basement, just to get them out of the way. This is what my basement looked like on Saturday morning. 

I spent a few hours boxing and putting away so that we're all ready for next year. I might add that another project I have slated is to go through the boxes of Christmas stuff that I haven't opened up for the past few years and take it to D.I. I only use about 25% of the Christmas decorations that I have, so its time to get rid of things.

I don't really have an "after" photo of my basement, because that would be boring. The photo you see above would pretty much be just a photo of our carpet, now that the things are packed away.

One of the unfortunate casualties of November and December is my craft room. I start with it all organized, and I end up tossing things in there and shutting the door. This, my friends, is what my craft room looked like this past week. Not a pretty sight, and not something I'm particularly proud of.

I'm just keeping it real. As you can see, there are piles of things on every surface, and not much floor space left, either. After about 3 hours of rolling my sleeves up and getting to work, I now have it looking like this:

Why do I put that off for so long, thinking that it will be days and days of work? I still have some more things to go through and organize, but at least its a usable room. It feels so nice to go in there and to be able to find whatever I need, and then to be able to actually put it away afterwards. Where the little brown table is in the center, we are thinking about putting some sort of a cutting table/island. I think it will start where the chair is on the left, and then go across to where the table is, sort of like a peninsula. It will be great for larger fabric cutting.

And that is what I've been up to this weekend! I need about 20 more Saturdays to get the rest of the house done, but at least its a start!