Hi Fran,

Try not to be overwhelmed, think of it as how much better you'll feel & what nicer work you'll produce when it's been straightened out.

Oddly, I do have clutter issues myself, but not usually w/ my sewing/quilting areas. I tend to keep those the minimally workable to continue doing work.

Hello Fran. I also have been bogged down and disorganised with my sewing lately. So today, I finished my last project for Christmas, then brought out two large plastic storage boxes and swept everything from the tops of tables, my sewing desk and where-ever else stuff had accumulated. I just don't want to look at it for at least a week. Then I will hopefully go through the boxes and return everything to its proper place ready for a new start. As I live alone, I have allowed sewing to take over the whole house and although I am not a neat freak - I do get very edgy when cluttered and a sort out is long overdue. Isn't it great to have guests and be forced to tidy up? Beth

I hear ya Fran--I feel the same way--I keep reorganizing from time to time but I have so much stuff and so little room that I can't even remember where I reorganized some of it to. May I also mention that my sewing room is also the room that I play with jewelry making in and You wouldn't believe the beads I've collected. It fairly boggles the mind.

I reorganize in the summer and it seems to be working pretty well but the worst part is when you reorganize you find new homes for things and I still have not found some of them. The problem with sewers there is always clutter of one kind or another. Good luck it will get better. Jayne

You should see mine. No, actually you shouldn't. I, too, have a New Years resolution to get on track. I'm glad I'm not alone.

Have a wonderful Christmas!
Faye

I'm sitting here laughing, because I'll bet each and every one of us here on the forum has that for a resolution! No, mine doesn't gross me out, because there is a path beaten through the middle of it, and one can walk from one side of the room to the other. LOL .

My fabric is in decent order, but I have boxes of more odd-ball fabrics in the closet I don't have homes for yet. They're upholstery fabrics, and old jersey shirts for braided rugs, probably. The best you can do is put them in a box/bag until you use them, and I'm afraid I am into quilting so much now, it's going to be awhile before I tie in to another large braided rug. That is where I use the most terrible of all my large fabrics like old sheets with pills or threadbare spots. I do not throw anything fabric away. Ever. There is always someplace useful it can go.

I shall be renovating the whole room sometime soon, removing the horrible, horrible wallpaper I put up in a lapse of sanity, and getting rid of the 30yo carpet. It's a two hundred year old house, nearly and I'm going to expose the plank floors in there and paint the walls.

Use "Aunty Ruth's Breezeway Solution!" Throw everything, unsorted, into a carton or two and stick it in another room where it won't be seen.

In her later years, my favorite aunt, Ruth, found it hard to climb the stairs to her bedroom, so she slept on the living room sofa bed, which would accumulate newspapers, clippings, and any crafts she was working on. She was a great craftswoman, doing sewing, embroidery, and knitting.

Not very often, some old friend would call to say she wanted to drop by, and then, amidst spluttering, my aunt would just bung everything on the bed or lying around on the chairs into a carton or two and banish it to the (once attractively furnished and decorated) breezeway between her kitchen and garage. She never got around to sorting through the cartons again, so by the time she died at 81, they were piled high on either side of the pathway through to the garage. She used to warn her daughter and me to be sure to go through all of them because there might be money in some! We did and there was. LOL

I get my love of handcrafts from her, so I am always aware of the specter of a room full of cartons and I try to be careful. It helps that we have no spare room and I have to sew in the living room.

Fran, I think you got into my house by mistake. That sounds exactly like my sewing room.

beverly

HA Ha Ha Ha Ha! HO HO HO Ha Ha ha ha! Whew! Hee hee, heh heh.

I tried to make room for a Christmas tree, but I finally just draped lights over the mantle. Couldn't take out my quilting frame, you see, or put up my bead box. And the ironing board has to stay out for two other ongoing projects, and then the extra floor lamp...and the card table full of threads/rulers/markers.....

For some reason I get non-quilty at the holiday season. All the extra flotsam and jetsam around the house gets put in the sewing room when I clean and get ready for Thanksgiving. Then December is here, a very busy time for me at work. Then I'm baking 2 weeks before Christmas and sorting out the holiday decorations. I think the only time I have been in my sewing room to sew was to hem a couple of gift kitchen towels.

This year is different: no decorations, not too much baking, very little shopping, no sewing. I have had a bad upper respiratory infection for over a week, 2 doctors visits, 5 meds, no leaving the house except to take the dog out briefly. I missed two days at work and I'm not going to inflict my coughing on my family get-togethers. It was my turn this year, next year will be better.

Wishing all of you happy holidays!
Teresa

Biwacko, I've come to the conclusion that we must be related. I'm positive I'm genetically related to 'our' Aunt Ruth. I love her.

Faye

About a week and a half ago I shoved every bit of sewing detritus to the back end of my huge cutting table and brought out the wrapping paper.

This was fine while I was wrapping gifts. Then the DH and the DS went into my studio to wrap gifts. I may never see the table again, LOL. Paper scraps, ribbon bits, tape on the cutting mat, and where the heck did they hide by 6 1/2 square ruler??!! I must find that before I hit it with the rotary cutter.

I usually use the day after Christmas as a day to sort and play with new fabrics (DH bought me (5) 1/2 yard cuts and a 2 yard cut of gorgeous fabrics this year - he knows the way to my heart), but it will have to wait this year. I love taking this time of the year to sort and organize.

BUT - my son has a new girlfriend. She's gone for the holiday, of course (they are seniors at UT Austin), but she will be back on Monday. He wants decorated cookies to take to her.

I have plenty of gingerbread cookies baked (I give them to the neighbors), but he was serious - he wants to decorate them himself, because Krisztina doesn't believe that he can. He's really quite good at it. So I'm going to be up to my ears in royal icing in several colors - I mix, he decorates, LOL.

Here are some he did last Valentine's Day (for a former girlfriend).