Aaah yes, the little room where all of the magic (and messes) happen, so to speak.
Okay, Let's start at the beginning. If you've been reading my blog a long time, you might remember that the smallest room in our cozy cottage was my little workroom. It is a teeny tiny bedroom sandwiched in the hallway between the other two bedrooms and the bathroom, and its petite size is perfect for my workspace.
I was looking through old blog posts, and I was shocked to realize that I have never shared my home workroom renovations with you.
I moved into my sweet little cottage on the corner back in December of 2014. (Can you even believe it has been a little over six years?! I can't.) I shared a peek into it in early 2015, and you can see a picture to refresh your memory (and mine) here.
And later, I shared some small details here.
Then I tried repurposing the heaviest piece of shelving in America to hold crafting supplies here. (Oh my. What exactly was I thinking? I planned on painting it, but, in perfect 20/20 hindsight vision....the 80's furniture just needs to stay in the 80's....)
None of it was really coming together quite the way I had envisioned it in my mind's eye, but it was working.
Kinda.
We (my handy-mad-carpentry-skillz daughter and I) renovated my workroom in 2017, and somehow I never shared anything about it here.
Weird.
(Let's go with the "better late than never" mindset here.)
So, as I said, it was 2017. (Remember 2017? When life was lived with lots of hugs and no masks?)
Anyway.
Twenty seventeen. My daughter is very handy with wood and construction, and for my Mother's Day gift, (along with a new nail gun) she wanted to refresh my workroom.
Yay!
We designed some built in shelves and a desk to do beneath them, and then we got busy...We (My daughter) built shelves (I was the go-fer helper) above the desk and I moved the little vintage white dresser to hold more crafty supplies.
She had a very old, very heavy thrifted desk that had been passed around between family members that she had an idea for in my workroom, and we planned the whole makeover around that. She took the top off of the desk, and we repurposed the two banks of drawers to use as the base for my new desk area...
Oh, so much better for working in!
Except for the fact that I am a messy creative type.
The room functioned well, but my messiness creativity stayed pretty out of control until...well, until the pandemic hit. I am not sure if has been all of this time spent at home, day after day, after day, after month, or what, but the messiness began to wear on me something awful.
I decided to do something about it.
I got a bag for trash and a box for donations. It was hard at first, but the more I purged, the more I began to see just how much stuff I had that I had not used in at least a decade and a half.
Seriously.
I got in touch with my inner Marie Kondo (I didn't know I even had it in me!) and after a few purging sessions with myself I found I had more to donate than to keep. (It turned out that all of this stuff wasn't "bringing me joy" as Marie would say, as much as it was very nearly turning me into a craft hoarder. (You know what they say; it turns out that shopping for craft supplies, and crafting are two different hobbies....)
Desperate for a system of order, I purchased white photo boxes from Michaels Crafts (Only $2 each with the sale price...) and picked them up curbside. (I actually love this service that has come out of the pandemic. Just pop open the hatchback on my car, wave thank you, and get back home...)
As much as I liked the little vintage dresser I had in the room, the long narrow drawers were just a magnet for messiness. I searched online, and found a cubby style shelving unit that would hold items, yet keep them visible for me. Also, it would hold the photo boxes oh, so neatly.
I then filled the boxes with the themed paper craft supplies and already made banner inventory I had purged through, and I stood and admired my handiwork for a solid forty five minutes.
I am thrilled to share with you that I have now kept my workroom clean and organized for going on three months now.
(Trust me, this is huge for me.)
Has the past year and the pandemic changed your homekeeping style any? Have you paired things down, like me? Started cooking differently? Baking more? I'd love to know!
***
Please follow me on instagram for a head's up on when a new blog post is up!
