What are we Organizing Today 2025
 

Hiya!

This used to be a zoomin' thread, back when I bowed out off the board. Last year ending post in October. Does this mean ya'll are done? Awesome Possum. Guess it'll be me myself and I all by my lonely.

2019 I bought a big ole house many rooms. The room that will be my sewing room is empty, well, tools and drop cloths, pending finish renovations, including custom lighting. As the house is 1920, and I discovered the entire upstairs, 3 rooms, sleeping porch, bathroom, and huge hallway are all on the same circuit, well, custom outlets in the sewing room as well.

But, the room is just there. You know, pending. Cuz. That's how I roll.

So I sew on the sleep porch. The room that will be my bedroom is piled around the edges with sewing stuff & furniture. Conference size table, cutting table is in there. The guest room is currently Box Room. Lots and lots of boxes of fabric.

I sew on a card table. far third was piled with misc. middle third was piled with bits and pieces of several random in process projects, and I was sewing on the outside third. The bed (twin) is piled. When not piled, it is my design board. The bottom layer is rows of a quilt pending joining. I'd say there's a good 9-12 inches piled on there.

Cutting room. Somehow, a pile of fabric folded bolt size had got pushed off the conference table. Cat denies, but I'm saying, ya know? Laid there for um yea musta been a year. Cutting table is angled, and back in the small triangle is the table I die cut on. Back in there was the pile of fabric.

So, stage is set.

On Saturday March 1, I got fed up with the sewing porch and can't say cleaned, cuz no vac or dusting was involved. Tidying, yea, that's the ticket. Lots of tidying. I had trays of Star Climber's Courthouse logs in stages on the floor. Those ended up on the far third of the card table, at this point, they're L&E. Sewing porch now in much better, less frustrating use.

Well, you know how it goes when you make something better, other things scream for attention. Cutting room. I was die cutting. That poor lil pile of fabrics were crying. I took pity, and lint rollered the lot. There's a set of waterbed under cupboards stacked, make a great cabinet. at the end is a pile of bolt folded fabrics. The tidied up fabrics went there. Then the cupboard got lots of attention. It isn't done, per se, but mucho wander hither thither and non putting like with like, in their goes here for now places.

Last fall, I had got fed up with cat antics on the cutting table. I had cleared it off, and made a cover of a piece of King sheet. Now, I don't have to lint roller the cutting mats before use. The cover works great, really speeds up my cutting processes when I need to cut.

That said, the cutting table is semi piled as I am in process of cutting for 3 quilts. Planned use up of 18 FQ bundle purchased in August. Fat Quarter Shop's Star Climber, Border Creek Station's 2025 Stashbuster Challenge using Blackford's Beauty block, and AbyQuilts' BOM Optimism. I've pulled a selection of supporting fabrics. All of this is neatly organized on the cutting table.

You sure have been busy. Fun busy for sure. I would love to see pictures of your sewing rooms.

Fun organizational adventures but I envy you all the space! I do all of my cutting, sewing, sorting, messmaking on the dining room table. My design "wall" is the guest room beds (two twins pushed together) upstairs. I, too, would love to see your sewing spaces. :-)

I'm glad this thread has been resurrected for this year. I'm always eager for ideas to keep me organized! At the beginning of the year, I reassessed my need for the totes of fleece that I had stored in my basement. I had no specific plans for it but thought "I might need it someday", then I realized that I can always go out and buy it if I needed it, so it went to a niece. I filled those empty 2 totes with some of the vintage linens I've been collecting (hoarding?) which left me with open space in my sewing room upstairs. That didn't last long. Those spaces were filled with projects and purchases that were just accumulating on the floor. I also went through the boxes stacked on top of the closet of the sewing room and found things I no longer needed or wanted. I would love to do a whole house decluttering but my husband just can't get on board with throwing things out.

When I retired, one of my priorities was organizing my stash. I’ve made a good start to that process! I bought a whole box o’ boxes at The Container Store, the “large shoebox” size, which is perfect for my folded collection of 1-2 yard cuts. Bigger yardage has been more neatly sorted and stacked on the bookshelves. Definitely makes “shopping my stash” (which I’m trying to do when starting a new project) much easier.

In the rush and confusion and everything else of moving, I did move more fabric than I wanted to move, and more importantly more than I really want to have. Nothing wrong with large stashes, but I decided I wanted the work space more than the storage space. Now that I can see again, it is time to finally finish my move and look like I live here now. Anyway, I'm going through another round of organization and then another purge, asking myself "do I love it" and "do I really see myself using this within 5 years".

These might be old hat to some of you, but I was recently gifted a set of these project bags from a friend, who had somewhat recently got one as a quilt camp present. Before I wanted light safe packaging, now I have a closet to store the fabric and it is awfully nice to be able to see what is in each bag. As an added benefit, the size she sent fits my totes!

@Iceblossom those project bags look helpful

You asked for pictures of my work spaces. Here is the cutting room and the sewing porch.

Cutting Room left & right

Sewing porch left & right

And here is the room under renovation to be my sewing room, left & right

It was actually Gemm who requested pictures, but I always love seeing what other people have going on!! A lot of our move to the midwest was about affordable housing -- but we are not handy people. I can see what your big old house can turn into, I/we just can't do that.

During the move I discovered the joys of wheels... we got a couple of these flat dollies from harbor freight.
https://www.harborfreight.com/24-in-...lly-59309.html
Right now the still-to-be-assembled long arm is on a couple of them, but I have one holding up (and moving) some large totes. My fabric totes are smaller, honestly this size is too big for me to be lifting and hauling. The bottom tote is the first part of my purging, the middle is unsorted fabrics, the top is waiting to be filled with purged fabric... The stack of totes (not on wheels yet) next to it are my ready to be quilted tops, along with their backs and bindings.

In the "music" corner of the sewing room/basement I was originally wanting nice heavy duty executive office type barrister bookcases to hold my vinyl record albums. I also looked for other more furniture style options, but had problems fitting the existing space. To those that don't remember (or never knew) vinyl is heavy, and the covers need a 12.25" minimum shelf height and depth. Older crates were big enough but a lot of cube storage are now too small, 12" inside or outside. Same with shelving, plus you need reinforcements for the weight. I watched used furniture options for over 6 months and none came up and I realized that once in place, I would never ever move the records or clean behind them or whatever for the rest of my life... so wheels (and industrial storage) again to the rescue! I set up the shelves so the records would be out of the light, the intention is to keep that middle shelf open so I can see out the window. And the top shelf is the speaker stand :)

We had closets built in the sewing studio. When I say I'm going from a room full of stuff to a closet, it is at least a large closet! One side is designated for fabric storage, the other for more general household stuff like decorations or whatever. In a perfect world the insides of the closets would be unfinished, or two inches larger so I could fit in standard shelving units. And I didn't fully take into account the space taken up by the folding doors, so once again -- wheels to the rescue! Even with the wheels on, the shelving can come all the way out of the closet.

I've been rearranging my work studio. I put 3 domestic machines in one area with a small wool mat and iron, longarm stayed along wall, cutting tables near windows!, and ironing board in the center. The main straight stitch machine is more open air to access rather than the boxed in feeling I had before!
I need to snap pics before it all gets scrappy!