Week 2: Finding Memories

My camera charger is still lost in the craft room, so I am inflicting another low quality image on the internet.  At least it is only one this week.

I started filling the drawers of my clean storage units, starting with my filing crate from high school.   Most of the stuff in this crate could be recycled, including a bunch of free instruction sheets from craft stores and magazine fold out patterns which I will frankly never use.  The real treat was the file folder of pictures from my high school band trip to Disney World, old school IDs, and random family photos.  The shoe box in the photo is for collecting these memories for storage somewhere other than my craft room (the top shelf in my closet, though it is getting full).  Many of my Disney pics made there way to the trash.  Looking back the pictures of the pretty topiary at Disney World mean very little in comparison with the photographs with identifiable people in them.  I wish I could say that I threw all these out but I kept the prettiest flowers, sunsets, and waterfalls for cutting up and using in craft projects. More admittedly were kept then I will probably ever use.

Because I didn't feel like the one filing crate transfer was quite enough for the week I searched the room for some things to quickly move and found multiple boxes of memorabilia from overseas trips I took in college.  I got caught up in reading the post cards I sent home, and spent an inordinate amount of time reading a journal from my first experience traveling overseas.  It was another band trip the summer before my freshman year at college.  We were in England during one of their hottest summers on record.  I had to laugh at some of the things I wrote.  Apparently Scotland's cold drizzly climate was absolute heaven after London's heat.  I freaked out over finding spiders in a lake side hostel (I have lived in enough spider filled apartments since then to find the idea I once freaked out over such a thing absolutely ridiculous), and waxed poetic about the romantic English landscapes (followed by a disclaimer that there was nothing to do on the long bus rides but wax poetic about the view).  I am sure I will find other bits and pieces from various trips, but I managed to move three more shoe boxes full out of the room.  Unfortunately  the room still doesn't look like I did anything, and at this rate I am going to run out of places to move things to.  I need to be a little more hard core about throwing things out, but it was too fun to go through all the memories I found.

Week 1: Cleaning Begins

This is my craft room:

(Sorry the picture quality is poor. I took it with my old flip phone.  My camera is dead and the charger is in my craft room...somewhere.)  It actually looked worse yesterday.  

I have made it my goal to work on this room a little but every week so it can reach it's potential as something other than a storage dump.  This blog is an attempt to publicly shame myself into keeping to that goal.  I will post every Thursday with my weeks accomplishments.

This week I gathered all my fabric together, organized it, and made a place for it in my craft closet.

You see that second shelf from the top that has nice containers instead of random junk?  That is my fabric.  I don't have a before picture, but it looks a lot nicer than it did as random piles tumbling over in the corners of the room (I wasn't kidding when I said it looked worse yesterday).

I also cleaned my plastic storage containers.  This is them in my living room:

A bit about these.  My parents are retired, and in their retired state have begun cleaning out their basement.  These were all full of junk (mostly my own from high school).  I got them for free as long as I took them as is (junk and all).  The right hand one was in two pieces.  The left one's drawers were removed and it's frame was taken apart.  Being from a basement they were dusty and had dead bugs, and dead bug parts, in the drawers. This grossed me out a bit, and a damp cloth really wasn't doing the job well enough.  So, after re-assembling the storage units, and emptying the drawers (yes in that order), I took them apart again.  The black frames went into the shower to get hosed down.  The drawers were vacuumed out and put through the quick rinse cycle in the dishwasher.  I feel much better about putting stuff in them now that the bug parts are gone.

And that was my first week on Project: Craft Room.  Hopefully I can keep the momentum going.