unusual happenings: new furniture and organization

The Scavenger Hunt is taking a break this week because Ashley's grandma passed away last week.  You can read more about that here.  It's up and running again now, and I'll have new photos next week.

Some of you know that Jake and I decided to spend some of our tax refund money on new living room furniture earlier this month.

Jake has always wanted leather furniture, and I haven't because I think that most of it is ridiculously over sized, pretty ugly, and not very comfortable.  I still stand by those opinions, but I am also happy with this set.  There's an exception to every rule, right?  I probably shouldn't say this because I'm sure that most people can't tell the difference, especially in a photo, but it's bonded leather.  If you do like the look of leather but want something more affordable, it's a great option.

The new furniture inspired me to do some not insignificant organization around the house.

I got these little tables at IKEA years ago.  You can see that they aren't the same color (see the blue one above?).  It hasn't been a problem and still isn't really, but they're both in need of a new finish, so I may sand them down and spray paint them this summer.  For now, I got them dusted and reorganized.

As I mentioned last week, the new furniture inspired me to hang some pictures.  Yep, we've lived here almost a year and still haven't finished that.  In addition to the ducks in the bathroom, we got Jake's med school diploma framed and hung up, I hung up some little prints in my computer desk area, and I added these frames to the dining room.

The two pictures on the left are from an Alaskan cruise.  The collage on the right is from my one of my cousin's bachelorette party and wedding.  Some of you may remember my apprehension about hanging this.  I still don't feel great about it, but I hung it much better than we hung the graduation frame, so hopefully it isn't going anywhere.

I know that I'm not alone with the issue of keeping my craft storage spaces and work areas neat, mostly because aside from my computer desk, they are the areas of the house that I use the most.  I have done a pretty good job keeping up with the systems that I establish, but the problem is that things keep changing.  I've slowly added a lot of non-bead craft supplies to my stash and work areas this year without much thought to the organization.  It was time for an overhaul.

This is more or less the same, just better organized now.  I consolidated some emptier cubbies to make room for the card supplies in the bottom and misc. supplies on the top.  I also put all of my bulk Oriental Trading button collections in the plastic container that's on top of the bookshelf.  I pull those out when I'm doing craft show projects like button magnets and need a whole bunch at once and am not worried about grabbing specific colors from my sorted bins.

One reason that we love our house is the closet space.  I moved all of my big boxes with ULine supplies into the closet.

My light box and sewing machine areas haven't changed much, but again, I got them all cleaned up and organized.  I had lots of buttons pulled for different projects and misc. new supplies sitting out that I got sorted and put away.  I haven't shown any pictures of these in a while so I thought that people would enjoy seeing them.

I am slowly developing an effective system for storing new cards until I'm ready to sort and price (and/or photograph) them.  This is still a work in progress, but I'm getting there.  I'm also still figuring out how to sort paper scraps and misc. project bits that I don't want to discard but won't use any time soon (i.e. a few Valentine's Day components that I didn't use this year).  I've just been piling all of my larger pieces on top of this storage area and letting the small pieces clutter up my work table.  Michael's had large scrapbook bins on sale, and I picked up a couple of them.

That has already made a huge difference.  For now, I'm using up a lot of my smaller project bits and will save the out of season cards for next year or for mixed sets.  I'm sorting the other pieces into small clear envelopes that will easily fit in any of my plastic storage bins.

It is a lot of work to reorganize.  It's definitely a lot less fun than creating, but it's so worth it.  I love being able to find what I need when I need it.  I also love having an efficient system so when I'm ready to take pictures and price and sort items for shows, the process goes relatively smoothly.

Have you done any organizing lately?  If not, start thinking about your next project!

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