Very, *very* early spring cleaning? ;o)

This afternoon, I decided it was high time to give the craft room a major overhaul-- not so much moving around large pieces of furniture, but clearing away accumulated "stuff" and maybe coming up with some new storage solutions. A few other rooms in the house could also use a good "deep cleaning", but the craft room is the worst of the bunch (at least as far as clutter goes), and it's also more fun to go through art and craft supplies than it is to scrub toilets (Anyone know a good way to remove extremely stubborn rust stains?), wash out the inside of the refrigerator, and clean dusty baseboards. ;o) (Anything to postpone the more serious cleaning!)

I even took a few photos to document the pre-cleaning horrors. We'll see if I'm brave enough to post before and after shots. ;o)

So far, I don't think you can see a whole lot of difference. There are a couple of large boxes out of the room, now, but to be completely honest, they've just been moved into another room! (I'll have to deal with them later. . .)

Part of the problem is that there's just so much clutter-- so many little bitty things that have no real "place". If something has a place, it's just a matter of putting it there. It takes a little time, maybe, but it's not too bad. Just pick it up, identify it, and put it away. But with things that have no real specified "home", you have to stop and think. Is it something worth keeping? (If it has no obvious use, that can take some time to figure out.) Where would it most logically go? Do you need to rearrange things to make it fit? Moving just one item off the table can potentially lead to a "sub-task" that takes ten or fifteen minutes. I'm trying to organize things while I clean, and I find myself constantly being sidetracked.

I've barely touched the clay table, which is a huge mess. I'm down to a clear area of less than six square inches, I think. Everything else is covered with mixes of clay, containers of stuff (glitter, flocking, tools), and WIPs (works-in-progress, for those unfamiliar with the abbreviation). However, at least I've sorted through the majority of the loose beads and "bits and bobs" of cured clay. Every little bit helps!

I hope this will teach me not to let things get into this bad a state of disorder again-- but I doubt it will have any lasting effect! (g)