Zatera Ul

Organizing from the Inside Out, by Julie Morgenstern. This book is geared toward helping you develop your own organization scheme, rather than the author’s, or anyone else’s. It includes asking the questions “What’s working?” and “What’s not working?” and developing a strategy before you tackle your piles of clutter. The first two chapters are all you need to get started; the rest of the book elaborates on it further, and gives examples from the author’s professional organizer experience, for different areas of the house.

So yesterday I spent an hour or two on my office/creative space, which is about the size of a cubicle. I decided that my work area was working ok, but that my corner for sitting on the floor to read or do crafts wasn’t working. Also, I wanted to bring all my crafts books in, because I work out my project ideas here. Finally, I wanted more storage space for craft materials.

I appropriated a cabinet that had been sitting on the porch, for lack of a better place, and turned into crafts storage + workbench. Actually, I took the doors off it, and used one door to extend the top of the cabinet. To support this, I found that I had a piece of wood from a scrounged table that was just the right length to be a leg. The cabinet itself was scrounged, so I didn’t feel bad about drilling holes through it for the screws. Furniture that’s not worth much is very flexible that way (and sometimes literally too).

Then all the non-books from the bookshelf went into the cabinet, and the bookshelf had just enough space for the books.

The last thing will be to find a rug of some sort, for when I sit on the floor and leaf through my craft books. We have some shag carpet in the garage, from friends who are redecorating their new house. MFH fell in love with the pattern, which is big black and brown splotches on a white background, because it reminds him of a big, shaggy dog. I may cut a piece from that.

I am trying to get MFH to skim this book, not that he has any time. He has more of an archaeological organizational scheme: go to where you last saw the object you want, and start digging down through the strata.