What a motivation! I will clean off my cutting table, TODAY!

When I finish a project, I like to cut the left over pieces into squares and strips. They go into my leaders and enders project. It at least keeps my cutting table a little cleaner. My goal this year is to keep the one end of my cutting table clean. Always seems to be my "catch all" area. I could be using the whole length of my cutting table, instead I only use an end because of the stuff stacked up on the other end. I will do it, I will do it!

I have a catch all basket at the end of my table. When I can't find anything, I check there first. Often the pencil/ pen or couple pieces of this and that and a few scraps. It's about 6x12 and is the perfect size.

I am going to take your challenge and work 15 min. cleaning one cabinet under my cutting table. You have given me some motivation to start this project. You may have to remind me daily to do something. (PUSH ME) I get lazy and stop doing things. Thank you.

Wow, amazing timing for this. My sewing storage room has just become a bedroom for two adults, and DH's office has just become a bedroom for two little girls. The whole house looks like an explosion in a storage unit! Lol! I will let you know if I survive this. My OCD is having fits looking at the disarray!

Well, I did it! I got almost all of the "stuff out of the cupboard. Coins that need to go to the coin shop, antique holiday cards that were sent to my grandma ready to go into preservation sleeves and a lot of other "stuff" ready to add my Current UFO project.

I need to organize my scraps. I have 2-1/2" strips and -1/3" to 2" strips in plastic boxes. I have made 2 charity quilts using blocks I cut out in the 70s and 8os. I want to cut some scrap fabrics into 7" squares and go down. I'm afraid if I put them away I will forget and start cutting up more fabrics. The scraps never run out.
I am going to stop and make a quilt for a family friend before I continue to use more scraps.

I thank all of you for your organizing ideas. Now I will get to the 15 minutes of organizing.

I cleared off my sewing table today and Put Away sewing tools and thread.
Next project: go through my plastic containers and remind myself what is in them and LABEL them. My goal is to do 1 big one or 2 small ones a day.
Breaking up the cleaning and organizing makes it doable!

Haven't done any organizing today, but I did replace a faulty light switch which I'm pretty excited about!! I was glad I didn't have to bring in an electrician!

Jan 2 at 8:45 P.M. I turned off the lights in my sewing area, all counters clear, cutting table and sewing table clear, by Jan 3 at 7:30 A.M. said counters, cutting table, and sewing table were covered with all my scraps. Spent all day sorting by color and being very honest with myself. Will I really us that small of that peace again? By 6P.M. all scrap are sorted, put away and another 30 gal. garbage sack has been hauled out. not all fabric, found some extra trash to top it off. LOL Everything is cleared off again, tomorrow maybe I can get back to work on one of my UFO's

Fantastic!!!! Wow, that's inspiring! Being honest with ourselves--knowing who we are and how we function and what we value--is key.

If I think something is "eh" now, there's a really big chance it won't "grow on me." I don't want to keep "eh" stuff around when I could free up the space or replace "eh" with beauty. It's getting easier to part with things when I evaluate what to keep or throw based on my personality and values, not based on what I "COULD" do with something, but WILL I? Do I want to badly enough or would I rather have the space?

I was the same with scrapbooking. Lost appeal. With fine art supplies, I kept one box and a few blank canvases. The sewing is really my main hobby right now and has been for 4 years.
Imagine how good you'll feel to move forward with what you LOVE NOW.

In our house growing up, we had a saying, "Progress always makes a mess." It's okay. Keep at it. The results will be so worth it.

Ditto! My cutting table COULD be as spacious as Wyoming, but the clutter reduces the work space to the size of Rhode Island if I'm not diligent. Today it resembles Illinois!

How did it go? 15 minutes later you saw a difference, right? Keep coming back here for motivation. I think of myself as a fellow traveler, not a pusher. LOL Everyone here needs a little "umph" from time to time (daily? yes, I do!). I will be taking care of my husband after his heart surgery tomorrow so won't be able to check in here, but you all can keep adding progress and encouragement .

Wonderful! Doesn't it feel good.

Sorry I forgot to return and tell you that I completed cleaning the one cabinet. Today I will work 15 min. on the second of 4 cabinets.

Thank you for motivation.

I have returned. All of my rulers are in one place and thread in another and stiffing in another. Thank you

I've got two new rolling carts for my longarm supplies and thread. Fun part it getting everything located and put away. First I have to help DH move the long arm to it's new home. He's got it apart enough we can haul it, and then he can put it all back together for me.

Good ideas...Thanks..I will try to get organized...

I know what you mean, for years I have held onto things because it could be used for something and I might need it. What use is it if I can't find it because it's lost in all the chaos. Next step is 15min. a day on my shelving and drawers before I start sewing. Just before Chrisms did the same to my kitchen, finally found what I was looking for to start with. LOL Moved 4 totes of dishes and small appliances out to storage building. By summer I should have enough for a really big yard sale. LOL Saw some pace where you should turn all our close hangers in your closet backward, rehang after wearing as you normally would, in one year if hanger is still backward get rid of it. You haven't worn it in a year. Think will give it a try.

I have been TRYING to get back into my "fabric corner" to do more
work on my fabric sorting/folding etc..

We had been gone on vacation from 24th-27th (mid-afternoon), home
from the afternoon of the 27th until EARLY (5am) on the 31st when we
went up to the cabin returned home midday on Sunday (the3rd).

So needless to say I have not had a chance to do anything with my fabric
or anything else.

Here is a link to my shelving/storage of some of the fabric.

I WILL post some pictures when I can get more done in that corner of the
room.

What a terrific idea. Can't wait to start.

Oh I can relate!! I have to get the Christmas decorations down to get the sewing room back to normal (need help to do that so I depend on when DD and DS have time). Hopefully this weekend I can start.

Yesterday I joined the 15 minute group, but took a bit longer! Organized my GO dies......have three shelves worth, so "named those shelves A,B,C,andD. On printed list of dies from website, I checked off those I have and what shelf they live on. I got so tired of treasure hunting when I needed a die! And don't you know I found two duplicates! And why did a buy a 1" strip die? And found a few I forgot I had too. Dare I start on the pegboard exploding with templates, rulers and ??? stuff. Oh, this has got to end.
Ah, there's a package on my front porch from mail carrier..oh,oh,......

Tonight I got the dining room table moved back to the dining room, and the three vintage machines moved out of the room the daybed is going into. Right now the daybed is the support for my cutting table, so it's going to take some doing to get it to the point it can be moved. Then the new cutting table gets set up, and I can start trying to fit way too much stuff into the space I have.

I jumped on the bandwagon today! I separated all my home dec weight fabric into bins, bundled my stack of wool sweaters waiting to be felted, and set aside some quilting fabric to rehome. Now I can at least see (some of) my UFOs.

I too could have a much larger ironing and cutting area if I would stop stacking projects on the end rather than storing them neatly until I have time to work on them. Baby steps!

Woohoo! Bet it looks good, too.

Well today I used my light box and some patterns and cleaned them up today also. Normally it stands around for some time. I will try to do something daily however small.

Don't you love the progress??

Now that's just crazy talk! : )

FINALLY today I am going to be able to work on my corner some.

It has been a few weeks since I was able to crawl into the corner
to work. So I am going to set up my music to play along with a
timer set at 15 minute interval and see how much I can get done.

One thing I believe is going to help me is that my hubs had to work
today, which leaves me at home alone.


Let the disco music commence playing.

Haha. The image I got in my mind when I pictured a cluttered corner and disco music was "Staying Alive"--or is that "Buried Alive"? LOL. How much did you get accomplished in how much time?

Not nearly enough :thumbdown:

I did get a little more done today than yesterday, but still not
enough to show a difference.

I just found this thread today. I had already started organizing because of the christmas thing. The last of the decorations came down and got boxed up. That cleaned up half of the cutting table. The other half got cleaned up when I finished the Raggedy Brick Charity Quilt. Today I took all the plastic bags and separated them by color for the tote recycling project. Don't ask me when I'll actually get around to that because there are many projects in front of it. But at least I know how many bags I have in each color. And they are all flattened and ready for cutting.

The next project is to removed the tin cans and airplane snips from the bottom drawer and put the kits in there so that it doesn't look so messy on the bookshelves.

So I did some more sorting this weekend. Since I work full-time M-F, the weekend is the only time I have. It's interesting the stuff one finds that had been forgotten. Sometimes it's like Christmas all over again! I have all my Christmas fabric in one large bin, my scraps in another, slightly smaller bin. Some day I will have to go through that scrap bin. Lots of fabric on one shelf unit that still needs sorting. Today I didn't make as much progress as I did yesterday. But it does feel good to make even a little progress. Baby steps, I guess.

I didn't get to the tins yet but I did get all of the templates corralled and put up on their wall hanger so I can find them when i need them.

wow I got the egg cartons on their way to the lady with chickens. I got the extra cookbooks that I don't care for on their way to good homes. I even got the garbage to the dumpster...I'm exhausted.

Scraps got so large I put them in an underbed storage box. Decided to spend 2 hours today cutting them down into projects and/or usable dimensions.

I was happy that I cut the left over pieces from my last project into strips and cleaned off my cutting table before starting a new project. Little steps!