Clean-Up Advent – Day 1 – Costumes

Before & After, collections, craft, Craft Challenge, Declutter, DIY, House Makeovers, , , , , , ,

Welcome to Day 1 of my Clean-Up Advent!

Pic of my craft room before I started this journey – it’s a wreck!

I am an older Thespian Society geek who comes by her costume addiction through theater, Halloween, and now RenFaires. I have worked theater costume departments, actual costume shops, and now just make for myself and my SO – Rob. I don’t tend to make the core of the costumes from scratch, I usually thrift shop for dresses or outfits then alter to make these into costumes. Then I make all the accessories and add-ons needed. I am starting to delve into patterns for dresses and outfits, but that will be slow going, not going to push to much into that until next year.

All this interest in costumes means I have quite a few. I am trying to keep myself to 4-25 gallon tough storage bins in Dana K. White’s container method. I have had these 4 bins for many years now and it seems to be working. However, starting last year, I really started getting into RenFaires, so I now have a whole new set of costumes to deal with.

Today was all about getting the bins emptied, sorting as I went into trash, donate, keep, and “if there is still space.” Thankfully, I had already washed and hang-dried my costumes that were used during the past 3 months or so. All I needed to do for those was fold and put in the bins as clearly, they were definite keepers. A few weeks ago, I had tidied up the great room and had a pile of costumes ready to put away – into the bins they went. Then I ran through the craft room and grabbed all the costume stuff that was just sitting around within easy reach and got those bits sorted. Even just doing that has made a nice dent in my declutter start. The dining table is cleared, the hanging rack in the laundry room is empty, and my bins are now nicely stored in their usual spot behind the futon.

Space behind the futon where I keep the costume storage bins.

As you can see, the space where the bins sit is still nicely cleared out to hold just the costume bins and costume weapons storage. I am really dedicated to taking a pic after each day to really demonstrate to myself how much of a difference just a little bit of work each day makes. In total, I spent about 2.5 hours on the costumes which is really one of the biggest sections I am setting for myself. My target is at most 1.5 hours per day, with a more realistic 20 minutes per day being satisfactory.

Four storage bins nicely emptied and sorting already started.

I have sorted out two bins of finished costumes, one bin of accessories, and one bin of materials to be made into future costumes. I am really happy with my progress so far!

Day 1 progress pic, with bins behind the futon in lower left corner.

I do have boot trays that I have repurposed to sit on top of the bins behind the futon for side tables of a sort. They work really well. Only one is in place at this point, the other is buried in the mess on the futon which is the Day 3 project!

Day 1 – Costumes

Day 2 – More Trash

Day 3 – Find the Futon

Day 4 – TBD…

Happy Crafting!

Kristin

Craft Room Clean-Up – Advent Style

Craft Challenge, Declutter, How to, Remodeling, , , , , ,

Good Day! It has now been around 6 years since our last post. It is not that we aren’t crafting, or still sisters, life just got in the way. One of my ADHD issues is out of sight, out of mind, so while I would think about posting something on the blog, I didn’t see it in front of my face all the time, so it got shunted to the bottom of my future task list that sits in the back of mind, disused due to all the current day needs.

My craft room, the core of my artistic process, has become finally become untenable. It has always been a challenge, but when it started spilling into my living room, I knew I really had a problem. I am now at a point where I have no choice but to shore up the craft supplies, tools, and wips (works in progress) back into the craft room. What better way to do this than with a Crafty Challenge, advent style!

First, a glimpse of what I am dealing with:

Wreck of a craft room, seriously, it is a mess, there is a futon and 5 sewing machines in there somewhere.

This is my crafting space at the moment. There really is a futon, 5 sewing machines (only 3 are working, well, sort of), another table on the far right that wouldn’t fit in the picture, and a small dresser in this space. I truly have issues. The boxes were brought up to help with sorting to get some stuff sent to reuse groups. These are mostly filled with wips now. The shoe racks are filled with yarn. My cutting table is sort of visible.

As clearly evidenced, I have a huge job ahead of me. This is why I opted to spend the next 24 days working on it. I am a firm fan of Dana K. White‘s container method and have found that it works for my clothing as long as I can rein in my shopping for dopamine. Clearly my room container has gotten stuffed and needs decluttered down to fit to it’s actual size. I also have a very high threshold for clutter as evidenced above and I am shocked that I do actually have a limit!

Wish me luck and Happy Crafting!

Kristin