Home Makeover: Craftastic Edition

Well, it took most of the weekend, but I have nearly fulfilled my organizational goals. I spent over 9 hours on Saturday and more on Sunday and Monday locked up in "the witch's tower", watching the entirety of True Blood Season One, and forcing myself to clean up the giant mess I'd let get way out of control. I'm happy to say, it is finally functional again! I have some pictures of the transformation, but first, a disclaimer - there are things in my craft room that will defy explanation. I can only say that a big part of my crafting is party planning, be that a holiday party, bachelorette, Halloween - there are remnants of each including a very bawdy "ring toss" game that the nuns are watching over. Not to draw too much attention to it, but don't judge me when you "find waldo." You have been warned. :)

So, to start off, I have to acknowledge the disaster that I had let this room become. Remember, this was all clean at Halloween...but when it came time to pack away the Halloween decor, I got busy...it made it up the stairs, but not back to storage. Thanksgiving, craft fairs, Christmas, a funeral, and several other events later, the carnage had stacked up and you couldn't even see the floor any longer! For example,

Before:


And after a little TLC:


A couple of neat notes here, that TV weighs about 200 lbs, and I thought hubby might die dragging it up the stairs. But the rectangular base it is sitting on is a lazy susan I found at the goodwill for $5, it was SUCH a deal! Now I can turn it to any angle depending on what I am doing or where I am working in the room, without any effort at all. The coffee table holding both is very sturdy, but again was about $10 at Goodwill. Score. The wire stand to the left of the TV was on clearance at Marshalls for $20, I got it thinking I'd use it for a craft fair of some sort but recently discovered it's the perfect size for DVDs.

Here's the other side of the room -
Before:



After:


This was really just a matter of taking the time to sort things back into where they are supposed to go. My key is having a home for everything - a clear plastic box with a lid, clearly labeled via my P-Touch:



The other end of the room was just as bad, and basically covered with giant boxes.

Before:


After:


I was actually hoping to get a couple more bookshelves to match the ones I already had lining both walls, but Target only had them in black and dark brown. Instead I picked up two of these square units in a similar color, which still worked pretty well:



These now hold all of my serving pieces and cake plates, as well as cake decorating equipment, cake pans, and other dessert tools.

I do have one big project left up there before I can say I've entirely re-organized:



These boxes are all of the receipts, product manuals, and other records that I need to sort into their proper files or shred. But now I actually have room to spread out and dig through all of that at my leisure. It had gotten totally out of control, to the point I had to struggle not to kill myself when reaching for the light switch:



But now look at all this luxurious work space -



Ahhh, crafting becomes fun again! And look, you can see my file cabinets, so I'll be able to sort out that mess above soon enough. To the left of the files is my sewing desk, also finally uncovered. And to the left of that is my new work bench, look Dad, I finally got that up too! My saw is sitting underneath it waiting for its first project :)



It feels pretty good to have gotten all of this sorted out, now let's hope I can keep it that way for a while :) I have a craft gathering coming up this weekend, and I'm excited to be able to access all my toys and get back to making pretty things!