Shelves, Closets, and Wee Small Hours ---

The shelves are up.

But first that meant moving EVERYTHING out of that storage closet ---it really is just a large ugly cinder block lined corner of the “mud room” side of the basement ---So when people were asking to show pics, I was thinking…REALLY? SERIOUSLY!?

It’s not "House Beautiful" down here. I live in a 1970s bungalow style home…the top floor has 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. The main level has the master bedroom, bath, kitchen, living room, dining room and sun room – but the BASEMENT SPACE is what I really loved about this house.

It’s often been said around here that if there were a kitchen and bath in the basement, I’d never come upstairs at all!---- That’s MOSTLY true! :c)

So as the Hubster was doing his manly thing of assembling shelves…..I needed somewhere for them to go, and that meant --- hauling everything from that closet into the quilting room, which is the OTHER half of the basement.

The way I first thought the shelves were going to go, which would have been the easiest of all --- didn’t work, the corner unit made one wall too short for the adjacent shelves….so that meant that even the “DEEP STASH” ((This is the stuff to use for backings, the weird things like novelty prints, older stuff that needs to be cut REALLY SMALL and other….”what was I thinking?” type stuff)) needed to come OUT of its wire cubbies so we could move the wire cubbies to the OTHER wall, putting one shelf set where the cubbies were, the corner unit in the other corner, and one shelf unit along the next adjacent wall. EVERYTHING had to come out of the closet to do this…OY!

I did NOT get a picture of the mountain of STUFF before putting it all back in.

Like I said..this is an ugly room/closet. It’s not glamorous, it would never make “coolest sewing spaces in America” ---but I love the shelves already! There are NO MORE STACKED TUBS OF STUFF on the floor! This is the view from the door as you enter the closet….do you see all those empty shelves? They likely won’t be empty for long ----That laundry basket holds deconstructed shirt parts, and I really need a tub with a lid for those, maybe two – just haven’t gotten there yet.

The self set on the right of the corner unit --- Machines on the bottom two shelves. Including a serger that hasn’t been plugged in in maybe 7 years, and I probably couldn’t remember HOW to thread it if I needed to! And the rest…all the necessary stored junk – on top – BASKETS. How does one person collect so many baskets? I don’t know, but I love them and I keep thinking I’ll find purposes for each and every one. The electrical cord you see goes to the dehumidifier that is a basement necessity in keeping fabric from smelling musty in basements like this when you live in the South East humidity. It does a great job!

This is the DEEP STASH. Some of it is backings, some if it is old FQs and parts that just don’t go in the regular FQ drawers ((Too old, too ugly, no real category, etc…)) My Batiks are here, Christmas too. There is now room to spare ---

To the left of the photo you see the edges of tubs…those are on the shelves on the next wall:

THIS was all I could get photo wise of this last shelf unit,I am all the way IN the closet up against the other shelves, and can't get any farther away to get a whole shot. This is the tubs and bins you see in the cubbie photo above. I just started putting things on shelves to get them out of the way so Karen can come quilt her quilt today --- needed a PATH to the long-arm!

I finally gave up about 1:30am --- when I realized that the only critters up were me and this guy:

He seemed as big as my hand! He was on the front hall floor --- I saw him move out of the corner of my eye when I went to get the broom and dustpan from the utility closet….EWwwwwwwwrrr! ((Okay, I was not so grossed out that I didn’t have time to quickly wield my phone out of my back pocket and SHOOT HIM! But when I tried to get him with a paper towel – he ran UNDER the front hall closet door, and I was NOT going to go in there to search for him. I turned out the lights…put thoughts of big giant fuzzy spiders out of my mind and went to bed!

Karen will be here shortly – there is still more stuff to move ((As in rolls of batting and other STUFF)) before we can pin in her quilt and start the quilting. I had plans this morning of more MQX photos but --- time is a-wasting! Later today? And then --- there is ALWAYS tomorrow!

OH – I found lots of STUFF for the next Yard Sale Saturday that will be happening on May 5th! I’ll be up in Somers, NY Teaching at their quilt show over that weekend, but I think I can get a post written ahead and have it ready to go before I leave town. If you are wanting to join in --- CLEAN THAT CLOSET! If I can do it – even an ugly closet can become a more user-friendly space ----and it looks even better with the door CLOSED! :c)