We tucked a craft area into our unfinished basement with a door-turned-craft-table on top of a hand-me-down dresser, with some Buy Nothing stools, all tucked in between a work out space, our laundry area, a bonus freezer and some storage.
I love the space. We’ve added a pegboard wall and a maximalist vibe including the first cross stitch I ever made, and pieces from other artists I love. It has fun lighting we made out cassette tapes, my childhood bedroom lamp and brightly colored scarves and pompoms. Its joyful and a little chaotic and very me.
Oh, and it has storage and tools for my craft interests:
Drawers of fabric. Shelves with sewing and cricut machines. A suitcase full of things to repurpose.
Some minimalists love to talk about how many items they have purged down to. I probably have more items in this 5×7 space than they do in their entire homes.
(I’m not a minimalist)
That big door-turned-craft-table is a wonderful flat surface for measuring fabric or laying out large sections of vinyl.
But “flat surface” is a warning bell in the decluttering world for a reason.
Flat surfaces attract clutter like a moth to a flame.
And this space is no different.
The cooler we had out at our last party. A shirt that needs a little stain treatment before going into the wash. The bedspread I’m thinking about cutting down to tablecloth size. The tools from my last cricut project. The gift bags from a birthday celebration a month ago.
Almost all of it had one thing in common:
It was almost-finished clutter.
Things that made it 90% of the way to their final destination before stopping here. A purgatory of items awaiting their final resting place.
Math was never my strong suit, but I know with 10% of every project piling up around my craft area, I’m 100% not excited to sit down and do a craft there. And it 200% means that clutter will start creeping into other places.
Maybe this recurring clutter means I need to look at my processes and systems – if a system has too many steps to completion I am NOT going to consistently use it. Sometimes it just feels easier to drop the item here because folding the gift bags, unzipping the gift wrap storage bag and tucking them away feels like waaay to much work.
Maybe it means I need check in here more often. Set aside time in my weekly maintenance to clear off anything that is piling up in this space.
Maybe both? I have no neat answers (haha, see what I did there?)
This week I cleaned up the piles. Mostly. And each time I do it gets a little bit better. A little closer to manageable, a little longer between turning into doom piles of purgatory.
Uncovering Real 