Monday, December 1, 2008

Some Sort of Order

Who am I kidding??! lol I don’t do organisation (read tidy) very well at all. I seem to collect things, and then I need to find a home for them. In a small house with limited storage space, this is a hard task. Especially with a limited budget to create new storage. So we try and clean up and give away the stuff we no longer have a use for. This past weekend we did just that. It was mainly because the kids wanted to put the Christmas tree up so they needed to clean out their toy boxes and their desks. It also meant I had to do some of my own cleaning. I had a bookcase with my collection of cooking magazines in, and it had also become a dumping ground for anything as you walked past it. Anyone who has seen my collection knows I have wayyyy too many. I had been a subscriber to about 3 for the past 4 years or so and also bought another two when they had something I liked the look of. I randomly cleaned them out and passed them on. I stored all my ripped out pages of recipes in plastic bags and put it back in the shelf (can you see the problem here??). So this weekend I looked at the covers - if they tempted me to look inside I did, otherwise, out to the Good Sammy’s. I also recycled that big bag of torn out recipes. To complement the magazines I also have a 55L tub full of cookbooks (and then some more), so I really didn’t need to keep the magazines. Not to mention access to the internet and the millions of recipes there. Now that the bookcase holding the magazines was empty I could give it a new job. And that just happened to be sewing related.

BEFORE:

My cupboard in the lounge (aka the sewing area) before cleaning.

I have stored my Ottobre magazines in plastic zip bags (so I don’t lose the pattern inserts) and then in a draw. Except I finally got to the stage that I now have too many to fit in the draw, well and for the draw to still go back where it belongs lol. A trip to Bunnings was in order. I wanted some magazine holders to put the mags in. I was then going to put the patterns into sheet protectors and into a lever arch file - much easier to organise. Bunnings doesn’t sell anything close to usable as a magazine holder. I didn’t want flimsy cardboard ones, and plastic ones are just expensive (I needed at least 4). So my darling hubby kindly offers to make me some. “Course I can do that darl” he says. Up to the MDF section we go. Two sheets of MDF cost us less than one plastic holder would have. Back home and within a few hours (and a couple of beers), I am the proud owner of 4 sturdy, lovely magazine holders.

So by bed time I had all the Ottobre mags sorted into their rightful place, the pattern inserts in folders and a longing to have more time and energy to sew many more things from their pages.

I finished up a few more Christmas presents too - nice smelly bath salts and bath milk. These are for my Grandma and my Aunty. I am now onto sewing shorts up for my DS to go the spider t-shirt.

Cheers!