No not the end of the world…. the end of our basement remodel. Now I know that there is still a bit of work to be done and things always move slower than you think like our finish carpenters estimated 3 weeks and we are going into week 5! But it’s close and life I can see returning to normal. It can’t come soon enough. We’ve moved all our personal belongings to the four bedrooms upstairs in our house. Our downstairs is a staging area for supplies and tools. We had to move to a hotel and then to my sisters for two weeks while the dust storm of the drywall work was completed, we have no lights in our upstairs rooms….. I’m actually shocked at how well we’ve been functioning (a few things have had to slide like oh…..blog posts) but for the most part we are doing just fine.

I’ve had numerous things I wanted to share recently but no time or energy to do so and hope to catch up a bit over the next few weeks.

Today as I was putting my art closet back together after having to move 1/2 the things out and cover the other half while my hubby rewired it- which required drilling a hole in the plaster= massive amounts of dust. My welcome back to a semi state of normalcy post idea came to me. I used the necessary moving of my art things as an opportunity to go through my supplies and organize, re-evaluate and change systems that were not working and simply get rid of some of it. I have the really bad habit as many crafters do of hording. Yes I will freely admit I keep everything because I might find a use for it, I plan to do that project soon etc. The truth of the matter is I often do use it. Hubby and son ask for items all the time and I just happen to have them. But there is alot of things too that I simply don’t use, or have had a very long time and it was time to get rid of them. I’m not entirely finished but I”ve hauled out four garbage sacks full of things and you know what it feels good! I’ve got some more elbow room in my tiny closet and I don’t feel like things are going to come cascading down on me….well for the most part.

I also took the time to organize the things I am keeping. It seemed with my sewing supplies especially that I had them spread out in multiple locations, a box on the top shelf, a drawer under my desk all full of similar items like Velcro and elastic, pins and spools of thread. I really like to have all my like supplies together so A. I can find them but B. I don’t buy more of something I already have. I try not to spend tons of money on craft supplies- hence where the re-cycler and hording come into play, so buying something I already have but can’t find drives me crazy. One of the areas that really needed help was ribbon. I have quite a bit of ribbon and most of it was in one box but it looked like this

a jumble of cut pieces, rolls with half the roll undone etc. etc. So I rolled up those ribbons that were on rolls and pinned the ends so they would stay on their rolls. For the cut pieces I grabbed a handful of fat Popsicle sticks and started wrapping them up and pinning the ends. I’m pretty sure that I saw that idea on Pinterest (where else!) and if I remember correctly they were then storing them in cute class jars. Mine went back in the box with the rolls but now when I want to find some I know I will feel significantly less frustrated and will be more likely to use what I have rather than buying more of the same.