Wednesday, October 7, 2009

an unveiling

So I've been undertaking a bunch of projects around the apartment lately, sprucing up the place, making it look nicer and function better. It's some sort of metaphor for the rest of my life. Or something like that.

I finished the 7 year old upholstery project, I've done some minor organization, I've made a commitment to keeping things cleaner. I've done a lot of purging.

One big project that I've been wanting to tackle for awhile was making my sewing area less of a mess.




This was the before. You can see my issues. Those blue bins are great--tough and stackable and they were free. But, they were big and cumbersome and not terribly attractive. I was bad about putting things away and even purging, because it was such a hassle to get into them. Trust me that not even having them on a shelf helped. I tried that for awhile.

I've also been expanding my fabric collection a lot lately and was tapped out of space--hence the cardboard boxes and bags stuffed with stuff.

Living in a small apartment really made all this worse too, it's not like I have a separate sewing room. This is right in front of my front door. It's my living/dining/crafting/reading room, with a view into the kitchen.

So it became a big thing for me to undertake a project to not only organize the stuff more efficiently, but also make it more attractive.

I got Heather roped into helping me and we spent several hours on the project one day--assessing the situation, spending a bunch of money at IKEA and then assembling and organizing. My dad came over this weekend and helped me hang some wall shelves and get the whole thing finished.

I'm totally in love with the result.




Look at the big expanse of empty flat surfaces!

Ignore the messy kitchen in the background--I've got to work on keeping those counters cleared. My apartment is, well, not minimally decorated. It's busy. It's cozy and charming and I like it. But it gets overwhelming sometimes and this re-do helped immensely to calm down this little corner of my world.

Plus, it's nice and functional. The red drawer unit holds smaller cross-stitch and embroidery supplies and smaller sewing supplies and notions. The orange bins hold the larger cuts of fabric. So far, I've been good about putting everything back where it goes too. Who knew? Judging by the saucepan on the bar, I've still got to practice. I don't know why that got put there. I'm better with my sewing equipment, I promise.




The smaller white bins on the wall hold ribbons and other notions. The medium bins hold smaller cuts of fabrics and the big white bins on top of the bookcase hold bigger cross-stitch supplies and some fabrics dedicated to a couple of specific quilting projects.

I haven't had a chance to sit down and sew since the shelves got finished, though I hope to finish up my giant piped tote bag this evening. There's a teaser for you!

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