Getting organized when the chill is on

I’m not sure who determined that spring is when deep cleaning takes place, but in January, when wind chill temperatures dip to -14 degrees, I feel more like cleaning than when the daffodils are poking up their heads and the walking path has my name scribed in chalk. If this is the image that greeted you when you woke up in the morning, my guess is you’d dive back under the blankets, or you’d definitely decide to stay indoors and be productive. I did both, but not at the same time.

Really cold temperatures motivate me to get organized. My earlier posts this week showed how I reorganized my acrylic and rubber cling stamps. I applied the notebook system to my brass stencils and plastic templates yesterday, and am well on my way to finishing this project. Temporarily, I have adhered sticky notes to the pages to identify the categories. You’ll notice that some of the stencils are over-sized and extend beyond the top of my notebook. Is there such a thing as a legal-sized three-ring binder? It probably doesn’t matter, though. I simply raised the shelf on my bookcase to accommodate the height needed. Who would have guessed that I had collected so many of these?!

In an exchange of e-mails this week, I whined to Edi, one of my fellow Blogging Business Artisans teammates, that I need more space in my studio. She shared with me a blog post in which she shows how she hung shoe organizers on both sides of the entry door to her work space. Of course, Edi doesn’t have shoes in them, but instead some of her supplies. I thought this was an excellent way to reclaim some space! If you visit Bed, Bath & Beyond, they sell clear vinyl shoe organizers for $14.99, complete with door hangers. I hung one up and filled it with Tim Holtz cutting dies, border punches, specialty hole punches and decorative-edge scissors. This worked so well, in fact, that today I returned to the store and picked up another one to hang on the opposite side of my closet door. Now, if I could just figure out where to put my clothes, I’d be able to use this narrow closet for my paper. A girl can dream, can’t she?

The best part of using a shoe organizer is that I was able to empty some boxes that had been sitting on a bookshelf, giving me a nice, open space for the three-ring notebooks I’ve been working on all week.

I love it when a plan comes together!

© 2013 Judy Nolan. All rights reserved.