I have a studio outside of the house and a studio which is the whole house. The master bedroom is dedicated to the storage of my home use supplies and a small workspace. In the dining room is a big beautiful dining table that is covered with a blanket and a couple of plastic tablecloths. This is the place where I do the painting, mixed media, dot mandalas, ATCs and any other creative endeavors I decide to try. It’s also the room that stores most of the stuff for those creations.
Forget having the family or friends over for dinner.
The card making happens in the master bedroom on that small workspace. It’s a dining table that holds the sewing machine, the pin cushions, the thread box, the in-process monster dolls on one half leaving the other half for a work space where I create the cards.
This entire space is exasperating because I just cannot seem to get it in any kind of organized manner. I have bookcases filled with boxes and plastic bins and loose items in no order. Another book case is filled with everything I need to make the jewelry items. But the paper bead supplies are on another bookcase used to store class materials along with some of the materials for the gel plate class and the dot mandala class. I have tried to organize what I need to take with me by keeping it all in large plastic bins. Of course, when I make the dot mandalas or choose to create some painted papers at home, I must dig into those bins then remember to put it all back.
That seems to be my biggest problem, remembering to put things back. Thus, the loose items in no order.
The outside studio space is 9.5 miles away. A thirteen-minute drive with no traffic on a 30-mph road. It may as well be 100 miles away and take me 2 hours to get there. I’m not one for traveling and every time I think about going there (usually when I’m working on something at home and I realize a very necessary tool is there) I just stop working on that particular project and start something else or I turn on the tv and do nothing. Painful. My goal is to work in the outside studio at least 2 or 3 times a week. Luckily, I can bring my dog with me, so I don’t have to pay for daycare or leave her home alone. But then that is another source of getting nothing done. I can’t just leave her to her own devices. When we are home, she has a doggie door and can take herself into the back yard to do her business. At the studio, I have to stop what I’m doing and take her out on a leash. And…. she always wants to play. She will grab her toy and bump it into my thigh then stare at me with those big brown eyes begging me to play. How can I resist that?
My dream is to have a home with the studio in the back yard. I keep thinking a place with an attached mother-in-law apartment would be perfect. A place with a combination kitchen living room which would be the workspace/class room. The bedroom would be for a beautifully organized storage area. And if it had a second bedrooms, that would be the sewing area filled with fabric and stuffing and ribbon and buttons oh my!
So gradually, (as money permits) I am bringing in drawers and more bins to get things organized. I’m labeling and putting like things together. It’s getting better but I have a long way to go.
How do you stay organized?