My Work Space

My husband and I spent many months have been getting my Dad's house ready to sell.  We did a lot of painting, cleaning, fixing, sorting, hauling and throwing.

Dad had a LOT OF STUFF stored in the house and the two-car garage.  A lot of it was NOT valuable or worthy of hanging on to.

Of course, there are some things of his and my mom's that do need to be kept.  Right now, they're all in half of the front garage, part of the back garage, and also in an old vehicle stored next to the back garage.  Many of these things will need to be stored over the winter so my siblings and I can get together and divvy them up.  Many other things can be sold.  So I should be organizing all that stuff into piles of items to "store" and "sell."

But first, I thought, I should clean the house.

It started with a general house cleaning, and has evolved into a complete house makeover.  My work room, which used to be my library when I was writing "women's fiction" and trying to get published, was full to the brim.  Full of lots and lots of old books, knicknacks (pretty English dishes), stamps, paper, ink, adhesives, ribbon, stickers, more stamps, more books, magazines, seed beads, stone beads, bone beads, glass beads, metal findings, beads, beads, beads, finished jewelry, jewelry making tools, metal stamping tools, a torch, two desks, a wicker trunk, four 12x12x? plastic paper drawer units (each with 3 drawers), another plastic storage unit with 6 containers full of punches, clay, paints, and more stuff in every nook and cranny on every available surface ad nauseum.

I've managed to empty 3/4 of the room. 

Then decided it would be a good time to paint those walls that haven't been visible for many years.  However, that means I have to move out more stuff that I wasn't planning to move.  However, the family room is almost full so I need more space to temporarily put the things that are still in my workroom.  I also need to clear a path so I can move in a piece of Dad's furniture that I decided I wanted to keep because it will help me store some of my stuff out of site in a more organized way.

But first I needed to organize the two extra bedrooms so I could temporarily put some of my work room stuff in those rooms while I'm painting and sorting and organizing. 

And then I can sort and organize my stuff into piles of "keep", "throw", "giveaway" and "garage sale".

So you see, there is a grand plan! 

I'm just in the chaotic middle surrounded by my stuff!