“Operation Re-Group, Winter 2012″ is well underway. My goal from now, until the snow melts, is to spend time assessing our living space and maximizing it to make our overall lives on this homestead easier. The key that I’ve focused on so far, is storage. We are a busy family. I run an online business. I’m an ardent Crafter, and my girls are getting into it too. I knit obsessively. We have developed a farm with poultry, rabbits, a cow and a large kitchen garden. The girls have their toys and interests. Christopher is homeschooling the girls, so along with his own space he has all the educational materials. Then there is the canning and all the cooking from scratch. All that amounts to a lot of stuff. Tools, equipment, supplies, books…lot’s of stuff. I’ve felt very defeated over the past couple years with the reality of living among all the stuff. But most of it is necessary, good, and helpful. So what do I do?
Well a light bulb went on one day, in part due to Ana White. There is a great website, that is filled with woodworking projects. Each project comes complete with a shopping list, a cut list and the step by step instructions for making the given project. I’ve been in awe of what people are doing, and have wanted to join in the fun (see another “hobby” with equipment/tools/supplies…I can’t stop). I started with a very basic shelf with the purpose of giving Christopher a place for his computer equipment and homeschooling supplies. Those items were slowly creeping away from the corner of our bedroom, into the walk areas…due to no fault of Christopher…stuff has a mind of it’s own.
I found a very basic, sturdy, manly shelf, and set off to the hardware store for supplies. I brought the cutlist and had the guy at the store cut the pieces, so I really came home with a kit. Easy. I slapped it together, lightly sanded, painted and popped it in the corner. All the stuff has a place, it looks clean and organized. I loved it.
Next room, the mud/laundry/pantry/recycling/catchall room. It shouldn’t be the catchall room, because being a mud/laundry/pantry/recycling room seems like more than enough for one small room. But because it was so disorganized and over extended, the other stuff just found a sneaky little spot to hang out. Not now. I moved EVERYTHING out of the room, save the Washer and Dryer and Utility sink…I even pulled the cabinets away from the wall. Then I assessed. I determined that I liked the counter top from the cabinet, and if I put it back , without the cabinet, I could put the hampers under it, giving us much more floor space. I then built shelves above the counter top. The upper cabinets went back in, but over the utility sink, since shelves took over their original spot. This is a work in progress because I have plans to paint the entire room, and all the new shelves. I added a shelf above the window, and the pantry closet door. I just keep finding more places to put shelves. This will allow me to keep all the gardening supplies in there, since the garden is right outside the mudroom door. It will give me a place to wash up veggies, instead of my kitchen sink. I’ll share pictures when the painting is finished. I’m thinking some lime green in there somewhere…I need to check with my color consultant, the amazing Jessica. She is a painter/interior decorator, so if you need anyone for such things, let me know. Her work is amazing!
I did all this during the past 2-3 weeks, but today…
I added 44 feet of shelf space to my craft room! One whole wall is shelves and I can’t be more excited. I am going to add another 8 feet when I get to the store, because I found that spacing worked out to give me a couple more shelves than I expected. This is also a work in progress, because I still need to prime and paint the shelves, along with the room.
A note about the painting. I find that one part of feeling good in the space is cleanliness/orderliness, but a very huge part is that it is visually pleasing. Yes, you can slap up industrial metal shelves (which in some applications would look very cool) or you could build shelves of wood, and use baskets for organization. I find that more calming, so that is the endgame in the craft room.
I guess that was a lot of teasing, since there are no pictures to share, at this time. But maybe it can still inspire you to take this “inside time of year” and spruce things up, so this Spring when the planting and brooding begin, you will feel good about how the house looks, and be able to find all the tools you need for your outside projects.
Oh, and Jessica told me, “People are always telling me how clean my house is. The key, is when I move into a new place, I immediately figure out storage. Once you have proper storage it’s easy to keep a space clean. But if there is no place for it, then it will become clutter…maybe clutter in the living room one day, and the dining room the next, but without a home of it’s own it will be clutter.” My other friend, Hilaree, had a good point today too, “If it doesn’t have a home decide if it’s important enough to get a home, and if it’s not consider getting rid of it”. I keep company with very wise women.
Oh, and something farmy I have to share… a great new book.
This by far the BEST chicken book I’ve ever read. It’s perfect. I can’t rave enough. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers–With information on building soil fertility, replacing purchased feed, and working with poultry in the garden
