This week, I received an email from Elaine, filled with questions, including a request that I write about how I organize my workroom and my various supplies. I started cracking up when I read it, because the photo at left shows the current state of my workroom. Sort of looks like a bomb went of in here at some point, doesn’t it? That’s the usual state of my work space. I’m not even remotely qualified to write about organization, right? Well, maybe—keep reading…
My workroom has been in temporary quarters for going on three years now. I’ve been busy renovating the front half of the house, where people usually wander about when they come over. So far, I’ve finished off the living room, kitchen and front bathroom, and just have a few more things to do in the dining room. It’s presentable enough that I no longer feel embarassed when people come over, although last year when some artist friends asked to see my workroom, I was horrified when they crossed the great divide and ventured into the back of the house.
The back of the house, where the three bedrooms are, is a complete disaster. The master bedroom is half bedroom, half storage area, since my workroom is in the smallest bedroom with my computer, and can’t possibly hold all my supplies, plus my fabric stash and sewing machines. The middle bedroom, where my workroom will eventually be, currently looks like this—empty, except for the renovation supplies in the middle of the floor. I’ve managed to remove the old carpet, and scrape up the tile that was underneath it, and do a little spackling. Four big things have to happen before I can finally migrate to my new space:
1. Electrical work. The ceiling fan is being held in place by prayer at the moment. I have to put in a real brace for the fan, and wiring for a wall switch that will control the lights and ceiling fan. I’ve done this in two other rooms already, and it involves crawling up into the ceiling, and possibly cutting a hole in the wall above the current wall switch to pull the new wires into the box. I’m not looking forward to this in the least.
2. Paint. This room belonged to an eight year old before I bought the house. There’s funk all over the walls from old poster tape, holes and nails, and the walls just generally look like they’re dirty. I’ve been painting other parts of the house with ultra bright designer white paint, and it really improves the quality of light in the room. Sadly, the painting can’t happen until I finish punching holes in the walls for electrical work. otherwise I would have done this by now.
3. Flooring. I hate carpet, so I’ve been systematically replacing it with other types of flooring as I go. The front of the house is all ceramic tile, but when it came to my work space, I wanted something that I couldn’t hurt with paint, or crack by dropping heavy items. I found some vinyl tile that I can live with. Having learned much from the work I’ve done on the rest of the house, I know not to tile the floor until after I’ve finished painting, unless I want little white footprints on my floor—the dog and I are both bad about walking through wet paint and tracking it everywhere, which is often followed by much cursing and scrubbing, both of which I’d like to avoid.
4. Cabinetry. I’m hoping to build my new work space with standard cabinets from the Home Depot around the corner, and some minimal custom work that I’ll do myself. My goal is to get enough cabinets in place to hold an eight foot countertop, and then fill in underneath over the course of time, as my needs evolve.
There are a few things I’ve learned from working in a disaster area for three years:
This is my current work table. Underneath all the crap, it’s a 24 x 36 inch wood counter. Not nearly enough space! Plus, it’s holding things like my scrap paper pile, the Xyron machine, and my paper trimmer. My goal in the new workroom: get a bigger counter, and find these items another place to live. The paper trimmer will go in a rollout tray beneath the counter. The paper scraps will go in trays attached to the wall. I don’t know about the Xyron yet. I also have a work light clamped to one corner of the current counter, and I’ll be replacing that with some under cabinet lights.
On the wall over my work table are these drawer units that hold an assortment of items. The rows of titling drawers at the bottom hold my stamp pads, and I like this very much—I just wish there weren’t other things stuffed in them, like glue sticks and punches. I’d like to keep the pads in front of me like this for easy access. I’m not so thrilled with the drawers above, because I have to dig through them to find things. Labelling might help, and so might not filling them so full that I can’t open them. Some of the drawers hold half my letter stamp sets, while the rest of the sets are in a drawer below the table, or in a tile box on top of my papers. I dislike this very much—I’m thinking of putting all the lettering sets in big flat file drawers right under the counter, and using some lower down to store large pieces of paper and my older artwork and blueprints.
Another part of the wall holds these CD racks, filled with my unmounted stamps. I’m quickly running out of space, and I’m also not happy that other things have crept into this area. I’ll probably keep this system, but go up one more rack in the new workroom. I think that will keep me from using the tops of the CD racks as storage for anything I use regularly, since I won’t be able to reach up there as easily. Since I need light on the countertop, I’ll probably build a small shelf beneath both the drawer units and the CD racks. Small things can go on the shelf, and strip lights can be hidden underneath.
Next to my work table is a small filing cabinet. The top drawer holds any paper that’s 8-1/2 x 11 or smaller, some bags of ephemera, folded tissue and mylar, and probably a whole bunch of stuff I won’t remember I have until I clean it out. I like the file drawer and folders, but the back of the drawer is hard to access. I’ve been thinking a lateral file would be better for me, so I can see all the folders. Also, the bottom drawer is currently wasted space, since there’s so much junk on the floor, I can’t get to it. I’m not sure what will go in that bottom drawer in the new workroom, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.
If you can find the filing cabinet in this photo, you’ll see that the top of it is covered with junk. I clearly need a place to store wire and tape! There’s also a leaning tower of art supplies on top of it—pastels and chalks, which I use often, and clay molds, which I use much less often. These could all go into the flat file unit where I’m already planning to store my letter stamps. (Can you tell I’m trying to justify forking out the money to buy one of these? They’re ridiculously expensive!)
12 x 12 papers are stored in this wire grid thing. I stole this idea from a scrapbook message board—it’s made of a wire cube unit from Target, held together with zip ties. It’s a good idea, but I need more shelves. Next time I put one of these together, I can put the shelves closer together, and store more paper in the same space.
Underneath the paper cube is one of about a dozen wood and acrylic drawer units I have. I got these from an old House of Fabrics that was going out of business—they’re the drawers they used to display DMC embroidery floss. Right now, I have three of these in my workroom, and they hold fibers and embellishments. The rest of them are being stored in the master bedroom. My goal is to get them all cleaned out and placed underneath the counter in my new workroom, and to sort my stuff in a logical enough order to allow me to label the drawers. Also, I’ve learned from experience that anything that’s in the bottom drawer falls off my radar—stuff I use rarely has to go down there.
The closet of my current workroom holds books, books and more books, plus some large sheets of paper, and assorted boxes of ephemera. Since the closet of my new workroom will be where the sewing equipment and fabrics live, I have to find other places for all this stuff. The books will go into a shallow cabinet with doors—I want to hide them from view, and also protect them from dirt and dust until I’m ready to use the. The papers will go into flat file drawers. Ephemera will either go into the wood and acrylic drawer units, or be filed in the filing cabinet.
(If you’re wondering about all the empty hangers—I’ve lost 50 pounds in the last year. I used to have a huge wardrobe, and I mean that in every sense of the word. Since I went from a size 20 to a size 14, I had to clear out all those old clothes and buy some that fit. I now have a very small wardrobe, and lots of empty hangers. Since I may or may not go down another size before I’m done losing weight, I’m keeping my clothing purchases down to a minimum.)
The biggest disaster area of all is right by the door of my current workroom. Somewhere in this pile is lots of good stuff—blank journals, old CDs, watchmaker tins, and all sorts of alterable surfaces. Who the heck can find them in this mess? This stuff will all go into shallow cabinets with doors on them—my goal is to be able to open the doors and just grab the thing I’m looking for, without doing additional boxes to root through. We’ll see how it goes.
I’m working on the new workroom this spring and summer, and am hoping to be able to move into it before the end of the year. I’ll do another article on organization once it’s all built, but before I start working in it—that will probably be the one and only time I’ll be able to get photos of it looking neat and clean! Meanwhile, I’m still in the cramped little third bedroom. If you don’t hear from me in a few weeks, send in a search party…