Someday, people will begin to realize that the media
distorts a healthy perspective of what it means to be “organized,” almost as
badly as they distort what it means to be “healthy.” There are entire industries around
organization, who, in their attempt to turn a profit, convince you that you are
NOT organized unless you buy their system, use their tools, and read their
books and watch their shows.
When you don’t, for whatever reason, you may feel depressed. That you are supposed to have things just so,
photo spread ready, so that the infamous Martha Stewart looks upon your
attempts and pronounces it a “Good Thing.”
(If she still does that any more.)
I had to come to my own little nirvana that says that it is
NOT important if your boxes are all of the same manufacture and style, it is
NOT important if they are labeled in Chancery Italic font, it DOES NOT matter
if they are not the same color . . .
What matters is that you can find things, and that things have
a place to go.
Let me reiterate that: The only way to declare you are
organized is if you (and you are the one that matters) can find things when you
need them.
When I cleaned up my craft space, I waited until I had given
a LOT of thought about what was and wasn’t working for me in my “system” of
finding things. I had fabric in
bins. I had papers detailing what fabric
was in each bin. I had bins of yarn. I had .
. . stuff everywhere.
So, after some thought, I realized how *I* thought of my fabric. There were these few, simple categories:
- Fabric leftovers from costumes I had made
- Fabric that I knew exactly how I wanted to use
in a future costume
- Linings and filler fabrics
- Fabric that I wanted to keep, but I wasn’t
exactly sure how to use
- Fabrics that I could part with
The first four types went into bins, each paired with a bin
that fit the amount of fabric on hand.
(It did not matter that the color or style of bin make a theme, that is
what labels are for!) The last bit was
turned into an excuse to meet up with friends, let them pick through what they
wanted while we visited, and then the rest went to Goodwill.
The bins were unceremoniously moved to the unconditioned
part of the attic, after being padded with silica gel packets. I know some of you are crying out at that
one, seeing as how I live in a region battered by two straight weeks of 100+
degree heat; but, you know, if the fabric suffers then it wouldn’t hold up on
stage. It was more important to be able
to USE my sewing room to sew than to use if for storage. So there.
This theme continued.
I sort by how I think of things.
Little boxes hold groups of like items.
Open baskets hold ribbons, vaguely organized by color.
Cabinets hold loose things that could spill out and over if
not contained by doors. (Top shelf, patterns I made. Mid shelf, patterns I
bought. Bottom shelf, elastic on the
left, bin of random in bags in the middle, Velcro on the right.)
Close up of the random bags, where each baggie holds
trimmings that will be used in future projects.
There are bags of short bits of elastic, ribbon, cord, etc., all
slightly sorted by light or dark color.
Having lived with this for a few weeks, it is working for
me. By that, I mean I spend a LOT more
time sewing because a) I don’t have to fret about the piles surrounding me, b)
I can find what I need to work on any given project, and c) I have learned a
very important lesson about being organized:
You don’t need fancy, color-coordinated “systems” to be
organized. You only need two
things: 1) permission to put things
together the way you and only you think about them, 2) containers of any
variety that group them.
Now, let’s sew something pretty, ok?
