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And so it begins...
June 28, 2007
I promised kick-off pictures for my clean-up campaign tomorrow, but I have them a day early.
This is my desk in our office. It was almost usable at one point, but then the baby started to crawl. I piled everything that was on the floor on my desk to keep him out of it and safe. I hope to tackle this first for two reasons. I share this space with hubby and would like to respect his workspace and it is a smaller space that I think I can get cleaned up rather quickly. As an added bonus, a lot of the things that are here go in my downstairs studio. If I get them down there first, I can put all that stuff away at once. The studio looks like this:
This picture shows my drafting table, which is my main work area. Again its covered in stuff. Mostly to keep it out of the dog hair, but also because this is in our basement and the floor can be a little humid down there.
Yeah, that's my never used loom in the foreground and a cabinet that was in the house when we moved in just behind it. I started cleaning the cabinet to paint it a while back, but never finished the job. Now I'll have to clean it again.
I opted not to show you pictures of my sewing table that has stacks of stuff from making invites to the baby's birthday party on it or the area around my washer and dryer that will become my dye lab but is currently overflowing with clean folded towels that was use for messy and gross jobs like bathing the dog and dying stuff.
A little history to help you understand how my work areas ended up looking like this. We moved into this house just a couple of months over a year ago. I was 7 months pregnant, (Which equates to huge and not moving very fast!) and we didn't move a thing upstairs so we could remove carpet, paint, and install bamboo floors in our room and the baby's room. After a whirlwind of painting that involved 7 month pregnant me on ladder and late nights sanding and priming paneling, we were happy with the result and began to move us and the unborn munchkin into the almost finished upstairs. This was about 4 weeks after we moved in. I spent the next week and a half painting the trim in the baby's room and sewing the skirt for the crib.
Meanwhile, my studio remained in boxes. To make matters worse, I had certain projects, like the crib skirt, that had to be done. So I dug into the boxes to get out only the things that I needed right then. Right when we were starting to feel settled in the rest of the house and I was starting to get to cleaning, organizing and unpacking my studio, I went into labor 2 and a half weeks early. Good thing we did the baby's room first...
And then we had the baby who had trouble nursing. About the time we got that resolved the colic started. And then my adorable son finally got cute and started napping on his own. I was so happy to get to work on things for his room that I skipped unpacking and started sewing for him. About the time I finished with that it was time for Christmas, so I spent all my free time painting paper, wrapping gifts, making cinnamon rolls, and doing our annual Christmas print. Then there were the birth announcements...
By the time I finished with that I had a 7 or 8 month old kiddo who only took three short (20 or 30 minutes) naps a day, most of which were in my lap. He wouldn't let me put him down. And my work pace slowed to a halt. All the projects I had going got cleaned up and stacked on the desk, drafting table, etc.
Now he's finally napping on his own whether he wants to or not. And I'm finished sewing all the pillows for church, finished with secret pal, and almost finished with the Spring Felted Bag Exchange. I figure it's about time I got this mess cleaned up so I can start working again. I'll post progress pictures every Friday starting next week. Unless, of course, I make some major headway today...