Order from Chaos

Finally.  I've lived here for a full year and my room is only just now in a state which I'm comfortable showing you in pictures.

Last week I got completely fed up with the mess and disorganization of my living space.  I have too much stuff and I wanted to cut back.  So I did a complete overhaul.  The main goals were to pare down my wardrobe so it all fit on the hanging rack and in my dresser, to get the craft supplies in some semblance of order, and also to get rid of all the cardboard boxes which I still had things stored in.  They make a place look like you haven't unpacked properly.  I wanted storage which was practical but also pleasant to look at.

I bought the yarn dresser at a local antiques warehouse.  It has mis-matched drawer pulls and the finish is not perfect but I love it.  Eventual goal is to not have more yarn than will fit in this.  (I bought flowers to celebrate!  They're mixed in with my road-side sunflowers from last week.)

The shelves came from Target -- they were on sale for a very reasonable price and were just what I wanted.  The bins on the righthand side hold most of my fabric scraps (saved for quilts); they are very, very full!  Then I've got my sewing books and patterns.  The tin holds thread and that other box has notions, zippers, etc.  Obviously they didn't all fit, so I've a basket with the rest of that sort of thing, plus embroidery thread.  My little tea-set finally found a home out of a box, but as I don't use it often, the cups are doing duty as a place to store odd buttons, t-pins, hair elastics, and my porcupine quills.  (Because they look nice!)

I've still got several crates and some plastic bins with yarn and fabric and sewing notions in them.  I would like to pare down the stash so that the crates are unnecessary and probably so that I only need one or two of the bins for things like polyfil and quilt batting.

I finally hung my Ikea hanging tower thing.  I have no idea what to call it.  But it's holding dishcloth yarn, crochet cotton, wool fiber, and a few other things.  The hamper underneath has all the random balls of acrylic and other lower-quality yarns.  I'm hoping to empty that out as well within the next year.

And all the clothes fit.  The hanging rack is not exactly attractive -- I don't think I will ever have the sort of closet able to be neatly ordered by colour and type of clothing, but I don't have a closet at all at the moment and this is the best I can do.  I finally got my shoe rack hung instead of in a pile on the floor.  And I don't have overflow.  Everything I own can fit where it's supposed to be.

The postcard collection and posters from various performances finally got a place to live, also.  (Some of them are actually postcards; some are photos I took and had printed up.)  It's funny how much more homey a place feels when you hang things on the wall!  This room is a challenge because of the ceiling; I don't have a lot of wall space.  (The main problem here is that I've no place to hang a mirror.  I propped the little one up on the yarn dresser but it's not very useful there!)

So there's a little tour of my space!  I'm sure it will change again eventually but for now I'm happy with it, and I'm so happy that I got so much unnecessary junk out of my life.  Here's hoping I can make that change permanent!