Sewing Room Organization: The Plan 2008

So where have I been and why have I not been posting? Well last week - last Saturday to be exact, I decided to start organizing my sewing/craft room. Well it was a mess. No, really. In fact a friend of mine, who had not even seen it had a great description of it. He said most estate sales he has been to, if there was a women who was crafty or sewed, the "sewing room" looked like the aftermath of a mudslide made of fabric, yarn and other crafty tools and supplies. Well that about covered it! I laughed because he has never even been to my house!

I DID take a 'before' picture but I won't post it until I get the 'after' pictures. I almost don't want to at all! But I am SURE that there are a lot of ladies that have the same problem- and I want to inspire you to clean up too! So I decided to post my plan here for now.

Phase 1: Remove the 'pile' of fabric into our bedroom. Go through the closet and consolidate all craft and art supplies. Sort and conquer is my basic plan here. Unfortunately my room, though I call it my Sewing Room, is used for traditional art, card making, jewelry making,spinning and MANY other crafts! So I need to be able to organize lots of different things and be able to access them when I need them. to make it even more challenging- there are tools I use for many things, like my glue guns and dremel tool.

Sort fabric into cardboard file boxes.
Move all sewing books to hall bookcase. (no real sorting yet- just sewing books together, etc)

Phase 2: Go through my patterns and get rid of some! I have way too many. LOL! Make sure the ones I want to keep are in my database and in my book I use for looking at them when planning what I want to make.

Phase 3: Go through the fabric boxes, cut swatches for my swatch book

Phase 4: Go through the bookcase and organize the books and patterns. Make sure the "free flyer" projects I pick up all over the place are in the binder for that, so I can actually find them!

That's it! Currently I am about 75% through Phase 1, which is the phase that will take the longest. I will be posting pictures and describing my organization system in more detail.