Drawer Day #2!

When I started cleaning drawers yesterday, I didn’t realize how ONE clean drawer would push me to clean another --- or clean something else.

I started at the most neglected drawer in the house, the bathroom drawer – because it was really of no concern to anyone else but me.  But in an effort to spend 20 minutes cleaning that ONE DRAWER, I discovered my desire to do more.  In small bites.  A little bit at a time.

My bathroom is really small.  The house was built in the 1970s, and when we moved here, I had given up a large and spacious master bath, to this little one that reminded me of a cheap hotel bathroom.  Never mind.  It’s not like we sleep in there or anything.  It has what it needs to have.  A shower, a toilet, a vanity with one sink --- two drawers, one for DH and one for me, and the under-the-cabinet space that was a big open hole.

When we moved in I bought two of these 3-drawer thingies, one for under his drawer in the cabinet, and one for mine.

Mine have been in disarray for quite a long while….as a girl with long hair, there is a collective mess of barrettes, bows, scrunchies, elastics, bobbie pins, combs, brushes, and other bathroom type items…and they’ve gotten REALLY MESSY over time.

This was my job for today.  It isn’t going to make the biggest impact in my life to have this cleaned out ---but it was underneath the NOW clean drawer from yesterday, and letting ANYTHING go is good for the soul – so I tackled it.

Boy! Did I tackle it!  How many combs do I need?  How many hair thingies?  I’m “NOT” a girl anymore.  Do I really even wear hair bows anymore?  Time to rethink this.  It’s the year 2012.  Not 1990.

Just a wee bit better!  About 1/2 of the contents are gone and now things are not all mixed together, they are sorted.  And I feel better about it.

I know it has “NOTHING” to do with quilting, but having things a bit better in my “Upstairs” life will have an impact on how I deal with things in my “Downstairs” quilt room life too!

My organizing spree yesterday also lead to cleaning up the area on the “other side” of the basement where I have my yardage cabinets and the table where I use the accuquilt studio.  Yes, there are 6 sewing machines on the top of those cabinets, but to me it doesn’t look cluttery, nor does it take up any valuable space.

I’m hoping that this winter we can change the flooring down here.  The side where the yardage cabinets are is the “unfinished” side of the basement.  The mudroom side.  That door goes out to the lawn mower garage.  It’s not very well insulated and it gets dang cold on that side of the basement in the winter time.

It has a concrete floor, which doesn’t help matters.  Someone painted the floor WHITE in an effort to make it look like a brighter wide open space, but you can’t scrub it without the paint coming up off the floor making it look worse.  I’m thinking of industrial carpet tiles for the whole basement.  To warm it up a bit, make it softer under foot, make it vacuum-able ---and even replacing the white berber carpet that I’ve been living with on the studio side of the basement.  Come on.  WHITE CARPET? in a walk out basement? It’s definitely reached the end of its days and hasn’t been worth even the thought to do more than vacuum it.  It needs to go.

It’s just going to be a lot of moving stuff OUT, so we can get the carpet out and get the new carpet in. 

Karen put the kind of carpet tiles I would like in HER basement studio after a flood forced a re-do on her.  They look great, and if you have a problem with one area, you just pull the tile and replace it.

Yep --- I’ve got big dreams for my space!  I'd like to paint that wood paneling on the "other" side of the basement to brighten things up in there and bring it into this century as well.

And the organizing continues!

Look for me around 9pm Eastern time tonight – I’m going to fire up the QuiltCam since the DH is still out of town.  Come keep me company and let’s sew a while!