Friday, January 30, 2009

Creative Space

Or A Room of One's Own or Creating Space in the House Because There is Just Too Much Crap All Over the Place could be appropriate titles. Usually it's the man banished to the garage for his football, bar, sports related memoribilia but at my house it's me because I am the only girl and apparently I have the most crap, that is found all over the house. The last few months I've been cleaning out the garage. We've taken truckload after truckload of trash to the dump. It's still not anywhere near done but I do have a usable space for sewing if it ever warms up. I didn't take before pictures because it was bad and all you would have seen was piles and stacks and piles and stacks of JUNK! We discovered that we had moved quite a few boxes several times and never opened them, just kept moving them from state to state, residence to residence. Imagine our surprise when three of them were filled with trash. Stuff that got tossed in at the last minute and forgotten. Felt good to let those boxes go. Once I made a path I was able to move some furniture around. This is the view from the front of the garage, an old entertainment center holding binders of magazines, craft books, empty scrapbook albums, who has time to scrapbook? And the cabinet underneath holds magazines, Martha Stewart Living, ME Home Companion, Fall and Christmas issues of Country Living that I can't let go of just yet, along with various craft magazines that are still kind of precious to me. The armoire there to the right is one my niece left here and used to be in the middle son's room. He broke the mirror and we need to replace it but right now it holds fabric for various sewing projects.


This is a little farther right, a stereo cabinet holding a tv, a bookcase of paperbacks, another entertainment center hold photo boxes of WIP, a bin with sewing patterns, a basket of DMC sorted in flossaway bags, my Amish rocking chair made by an Amish farmer in Indiana, bought when I was pregnant with my oldest son. It's 21 years old and it's in the garage because when Polly was a puppy she ate it and we have to decide if we can sand it and it restain it where the wood is bent or if we should leave well enough alone.


And this is a fold out table where right now I cut out fabric until I get the money to buy a sewing table and cutting table from JoAnn's it'll work just fine for my sewing machine too. The table in front with all the books piled up on it is an air hockey table we scored for a song at a thrift shop but no one plays with it but for some reason we can't let it go, maybe because it's holding all the junk.



My friend Pam gave me a rug for this area for Christmas I'm looking forward to putting it out here when I get a little more junk from the other side of the garage organized or cleaned out which I haven't shown you because this is humiliating enough BUT it looks so much better now, I'm kind of proud of the space I've made. A few issues I didn't consider, there are no plugs/outlets on this side of the garage so I will need a few extension cords, maybe a surge protector, the light isn't bad especially in the afternoon and I honestly don't see me working out here at night. It's a good space unless it's like now, it's freezing cold or in July and August when it's as hot as the surface of the sun but the better part of the year I think it'll be a good place to escape to when I want to do some sewing and not fight over the tv or have the sewing machine set up in the living room as it is now and I haven't touched it in weeks. I can just pop a DVD in and work away. I still need a stereo for out here. My iPod is so old they don't make docking stations for it any more, should have bought one a long time ago but I'll be happy with a Boombox or small 3 CD player.

4 comments:

Nancy M said...

Don't sell yourself short! You did a huge amount of work and cleaning and sorting is all hard work! It looks great and I'm sure you feel a sense of pride when you see it everyday, instead of all the boxes and mess that used to be there!

Brigitte said...

You made yourself a very nice room. You can be very proud after all the decluttering and cleaning. It's looking really good now.

Missy Ann said...

Congrats on your own space! :)

P.S. You're going to need a light table...

Anonymous said...

Great job!!! I have been doing the same thing here. Very liberating. My problem is the spouse and 6 kids clutter faster than I can throw away. They are professionals. Keep going. It looks wonderful.