Friday, May 15, 2009

Organization: Craft Room

So today’s post is on organization. I consider myself somewhere in the middle. In my brain I am very organized and I rehearse all of these different scenarios. I type lists, keep records, but when it comes down to it I am not as organized as I want to be or my brain thinks I should be.

For example, I really struggle in my office with organization. I have a lot of craft stuff for scrapbooking, cardmaking and some sewing stuff. The problem is I have no closed storage and I have no place to really spread out to make scrapbook pages, cards or a craft project. I love to look at how others have organized their spaces, but when it comes down to it I don’t have the extra resources to devote to new closed organization or a lot of new furniture. In a perfect would I would have built ins in my office and plenty of work space within those built ins. There would be closed storage and a little open storage. Everything would have a place. Obviously, it is not a perfect world.

My hubby was planning on getting me some sort of second desk so I could have a computer workspace and a place for my crafts. I would love this and be very grateful for it. It would solve one of my big problems with organizing my office; however, I still have the issue of no closed storage. The funny thing is I struggle with this in my work space at school as well. I have no closed storage there either and my closet of a classroom is not much bigger than my office at home. I affectionately refer to it as a trailer. I don’t mean to be condescending to anyone, but it really is not fit for a classroom of any kind. Ideally, I am hoping to be placed in a regular classroom next year, but with how things work out for me I am not too hopeful.

Being that I struggle with the same problem of lack of closed storage at both work and home I have been brainstorming ideas for how to solve the problem without spending a lot if any money. This is not easy, but I was thinking of making a curtain and hanging it with a tension rod over on the top of the shelf so that you couldn’t see what actually being stored in the shelf. This would be fairly in expensive because tension rods are only a few dollars and have fabric that I can use. I actually already have the curtains for my office and they match perfectly. Another thing I could use is some decorative tacks that I already own to hang the curtain. The negatives to this idea are: I would have to hold it up and would not be able to pull it back when looking for something the shelves. My other thought the curtain may make it look even messier than it does without the curtain because it will look like I am hiding something, which hey I am.

Has anyone had this problem before and if you have, did you find a solution? I am open to suggestions. Once I figure it out I will post pictures. The first picture below is of my open storage office, when I first moved into it. Notice how clean it isn't even organized then. The other photos are of rooms that I like. I wish I could give credit to these websites for their photos, but I have saved them in my inspiration room file and I don’t know where I got them. There are a lot of others that I just love, but they were saved on my other computer and I didn't have the energy to hunt of them. Maybe I will post those inspiration pics tomorrow. I apologize to anyone whose photo I am using. I am not trying to steal the credit for your creativity.



Enjoy your weekend.
Jen D.

1 comment:

heather said...

Is your husband good with a saw at all? Is there any way he could make you a couple of doors to put on to cover some of the shelves? You could find some inexpensive wood (or scraps and then paint all the shelving/doors) and that way you can taylor make them to cover where you want covered (maybe the bottom half of all the shelves or something) and leave the shelves you want open.

I'm having the same issues in my laundry room (we call it the laundry room, but really it's just a glorified closet). We have two shelves worth of storage above the washer and dryer and I'm trying to get it to look nicer. It's just random stuff up there; laundry supplies, extra craft supplies, extra pantry stuff, and some cleaning supplies. It just looks so messy all the time. And it's something that's always seen because it's just off the kitchen. First I wanted to put cabinets in there. Now we're just putting in more shelving and I'm trying to decide if I can afford some nice storage containers to simplify/unify the look of the shelves or if I should make curtains to hide it all. But then, like you said, I'd have to move the curtain/hold it up to look for things up there.
So basically I'm no help to you as I'm in sort of the same predicament!
Good luck!!