Craft Room Re-Do

Over the past week, I've been posting items on Craigslist, so we could clean out the house a bit, and get some room. Declutter, declutter, declutter! Yesterday, 3 large items were picked up- SWEET!

This wound up clearing out an entire wall in the Craft Room/Den/Man Cave. I call it the Craft Cave. Nick just grumbles about me taking over his space. He forgets that when we bought the house, he said, "Hey, honey, we should find you a desk to go in here just for your sewing machine." This was before I said, "We could get you a desk for in here, as well, and you can make this a man cave!"

So, clearly, he offered first, and while I didn't use it for a good year, my craft desk has always had a home in there. The desk had, unfortunately, been taken over before I moved my crafts in there. The drawers had all sorts of fun stuff in them- diapers from when my niece stayed over for a few nights, our taxes from last year, junk mail, hermit crab stuff, video games, video game paraphernalia, and a lot more junk. It took me a full night to de-junk my desk.

But now, my desk is my craft zone. Because we cleared out so much stuff yesterday, I talked Nick into helping me move my craft area to the other wall. I have more space. I also may have commandeered his shelving unit for my own needs. I have a ton of space for storage now! I love, love,  love it!

It's not all done yet. I have a lot of stuff to sort and move, and stack, and what not yet.

Also in the family news this week... last weekend, the microwave cart apparently cracked. No one told me, they thought I'd get mad (I got this cart off Freecycle about 5 years ago, at least, along with a few others). It's a cute one, but oh well, right? We left it as is- the microwave was listing backwards, but it was holding. Then, during the week, we sold our 20 gallon fish tank, with fish. It was situated on another microwave cart turned fish tank stand.

Well, we hadn't had the chance to move the stands around, and last night, Gilly went to use it, and it broke completely. -sigh-

Nick shifted the stands, and we looked at the broken one, and decided- I can totally fix that with some kick butt glue! So, I have it glued right now, and setting. I'm going to add some more glue in a bit. From there, it'll store something lightweight on the top, but it has a shelf under that, and a doored section under that with 2 shelves. Plenty of awesome storage space for me!! Yeah!

My next hope? Replace my lamp. It does it's job, but that room is dark. The light fixture on the ceiling is just dark, and only holds 1 bulb, max of  75 watts, so that room is always dark. I have a lamp on my desk that is huge, and because the base is so fat, it creates shadows where it sits. It also takes up a lot of space, so I'm hoping to find a candlestick lamp for my desk. Being cheap, like I am, I'll check Goodwill before breaking down to buy one.

Maybe 2 candlestick lamps. I hate how dark the area is at night. And yellowish. The ceiling light gives off a slightly yellowish vibe, and the lampshade on my lamp does as well.

Now that I've rambled for long enough, here are some photos of the work in progress of moving my craft area.

Before:

 

  

 

 (This was after organizing it better... yeah, it's still a freakin mess, I know)

After:

 

  

  

  

  

(yeah, I know, it's messy again...)

And all this with the help of...

 

(yes, I occasionally indulge in a drink)

Also, just to show my stance on cleaning... I found this yesterday at Michaels. I fell in love, because, it is just so accurate!

 

My new slogan.

It's Time To Clean

In the days leading up to Christmas, I was on a bit of a crafting frenzy to finish things up before Christmas. Then, about 2 weeks later, I broke my tailbone. Needless to say, my craft area is a DISASTER. Capital D intended. OMG, I can't believe how disorganized it got!

I currently share my craft area with my husband. He has a TV in there, and his computer. His desk, the TV, and my desk take an entire wall up. We also share it with a large exercise machine we don't use, so it's on Craigslist right now. Then there are some more book shelves, and a bunch of JUNK.

We have two very large items on CL, though, and I am really hoping they sell fast, so we can get rid of them. If we do, I plan to try and talk him into re-organizing the layout of the room. It needs to be done better, for a chaos stand point.

Gotta get rid of the crap in there, and organize what is left a lot better. I also need to sort my books, and take a bunch into the local book swap store, because I'm almost out of credit there. Now, technically, I get full value of the book I trade in, and then I pay $.95 per book I buy, with the full value of the book being taken from the credit I have in the store. Only, last time I went in, I must have taken 15-20 books, and it was my first time. I left the store that day with 6 books, and yesterday with 4, and I don't have enough for another book right now. Bah. I have plenty to trade in, but seriously, one thing at a time.

I went in to DT today. I seriously, seriously need to stop doing that. I came out with some ideas and, of course, a handful of items. The majority of the trip was focused on cleaning supplies, and things to clean with- microfiber dishtowels, one of those dish scrubbers where you fill the handle with soap, etc. The kids are almost entirely in charge of dishes (man, I'm a meeeeean mom!), and they have this irritating habit of going through a full bottle of soap in about 2 weeks time. Way too fast. So, I showed them this, filled it, showed them how to use it, and told them to use that instead of adding soap. We'll see how that works.

-sigh-

Back to cleaning, organizing, and tossing old stuff away. I seriously have a huge problem with saving scraps. And when I say scraps, I don't mean something that will actually be large enough or long enough to make something. I mean tiny triangles of ribbon left over, or half an inch of fabric. I'm tossing all that today. Cathartic.

I took photos of my DT finds, and fully intended to post them to show you, so you could all ooh and aaah, and come up with your own ideas on what I plan to do with them. Only, the camera is all the way in the craft area, and if I go back in there, I may not find my way back out.

Wish me luck!