Stash Reorg

 

It only took a month, but I have finally finished reorganizing my stash. And not just my stash, but the piles of fabric I had lying on the extra table, stacked on the recliner and thrown all over the place.

I ended up getting some shelf dividers from Amazon and that helps keep some of the stacks separate, and keeps them from falling into each other. This should help me keep it nice and tidy. I even used some to create more space on the top of the bookcase. I had had lots of large pieces of fabric - many planned for backings of future quilts, and now ALL those have been ironed and folded and are neatly arranged on the top of the bookcase. I'll need a step stool to reach them, but that's no problem.

Moreover, all the worktables are clear and I can get to work without the added visual stress of the fabric clutter all over the room. To be sure, I have several quilts in mind after revisiting all those fabrics, and I can't wait to get started.

And there's a new tutorial I want to write, and an old one I want to update and a pattern I should write. 

And I want to add a row to the bottom of the Little Blocks quilt because it looks too square and I got the Peonies quilt back from the long arm quilter and I have to add the binding and finish it.

Gosh, I sure am glad I am retired!

Before & After

It's hard to put your fabric away when you don't have any place to put it. My bookshelf is stuffed, as you can see.

It was pretty clear the only thing to do was to move the little scrap bins. But where? Both of these bookshelves were stuffed too.

But when I looked more closely at this one, I realized the shelves were full of old music CD's.

So I cleared the bookshelf and everything on it, and piled the CD's in a big bin.

Then I dusted and washed the bookshelf, adjusted the shelves...

and moved the little bins over.

All the mugs that had stored things like pens, tools, notepads and other stuff were dusty, so I put them all in the dishwasher and ran it. This is the stuff that was in the cups and on the shelves.

Then I consolidated all my extra business cards and notebooks, and arranged things on the bottom shelf. Those things were mostly on the bottom shelf before I cleaned it off.

After the dishwasher had finished its cycle (btw, the best piece of cleaning advice I ever saw is this: If it fits, put it in the dishwasher) I put all the pins, pushpins, measuring tapes, lint cleaners, pencils, pens, tools and other doodads back in their places. It all looked great, until I looked over at the other bookshelf.

Sigh.

So OF COURSE I had to clean and reorganize that one too.

This looks So Much Better, and now I have another shelf in the stash for fabric, so instead of sewing, which I am not interested in doing right now anyway, I can finish putting away the fabric that's all over hell.