Every 6 months or so I get to the point in my studio where my works in progress, stash, gifts, random house stuff, and hid-away-so-guest-won’t-see-it” completely takes over my studio.

After this last clean out was done I got rid of:

• 9 boxes and 2 garbage bags of craft stuff
• 3 bags of trash
• 2 overflowing boxes of recycling
• a whole pile of things that had no reason to be in my studio and found homes elsewhere in the house.

And for every box I kept, I was getting rid of a box, which was a pretty good feeling.

I’m lucky to have ample storage space for all my art supplies. I never in a million years thought that I would have a partner who would be so completely understanding of my need to squirrel things away to use later…. within reason. For me, I know that it’s not that I need more space. It’s that I need less stuff. And I need my stuff to be more organized.

Every time I reorganize my studio I think “this is it, this is the best way to organize my s*&t ever, it will stay clean this time.” Nope. But each time I reshuffle my things I do learn a few valuable lessons. Sure I’m hopeful that this time I have it. But will I give myself a hard time if it’s just as bad a year from now? Nah. Life is too short. But I’m hoping for it to be a full year instead of 6 months time before I have to do a complete clean out.

Organizing a Studio Lessons

• While daily cleaning is key, sometimes it’s good to tackle a big clean out all at once just to get it done on be able to move on to the more important things in life – like knitting!
• If you can afford it, invest in a nice set of containers that fit your stuff AND your space well. I have these really great shelves in the “tile room” where I keep all my supplies. But until this last clean up, I was keeping my stuff in piles and random boxes.
• Don’t buy said containers until you’ve actually gone through your stuff and figured out what you need. For me, I’ve learned I need about 20 shoebox sized ones and 10 double wide shoebox ones.
• While donating and selling and recycling is great, even I need to realize trash is trash and my house is not a trash bin. You cannot “organize” garbage. Just throw it out! Do it.
• But, also don’t forget about donating what you can and recycling what’s recyclable. And if you have the space and the time and the desire fill a bin with things you want to sell and get it listed on ebay IMMEDIATELY and if it doesn’t sell that first time, donate it!
• Daily cleaning is key. Weekly cleaning works well too. Yearly clean….. come on now. Just pick up after yourself (myself). Me, crap I’m bad at that. But I’m still young and I’m learning.I’ll get it eventually.
• Don’t just tuck something into your craft space to “put away later”. You won’t. I won’t. And things will pile up on the edge of your work table until you’re (cough, read ME) trying to cut fabric on a 1/4 of the table because the pile has taken over.

On an up note. I have been doing really well keeping my office clean. But, that’s because I clean it up every morning before I start my day’s work. And once a week I take out trash and make sure I’m not stashing things in weird places like behind my books. If you don’t have an issue with cleaning, you may not get the sanity of this. But I know some of you, yeah, you right there. You totally get what I’m saying and you’re shaking your head thinking – oh crap, I really should get that something something from behind there.

Happy Crafting!
Kristin Roach

That’s right, I’m showing you a picture of how my fabric should look. It’s so bad I’m not even going to show you the current chaos. Think of the worst your stash has ever looked. Then imagine your whole house looking that way. That’s how it was after the wedding.

Whoops. I think my studio exploded. Or at least that’s the way it looks. If you’ve been hanging in there with my random postings over the last 18 months, you may remember posts about my “craft supply room” aka the tile room and how I’d been making progress getting it cleaned up. Well, when the wedding came around, that little room turned into an exploded pile of everything that needed to be hidden away from upstairs. This included, but is not limited to: a computer desk, tower speakers, piles of wedding craft stuff, ames c.art stuff, files, office supplies, random randomness.

I started to have a bit of a panic attack this morning when I turned to face it after getting back from vacation. There was disgust. Anger. Frustration. Sadness. And then inspiration to make it better.

Instead of trying to get the whole thing done in one day, I’ve opted to just do a couple of boxes at a time. I would like to have some kind of sense made out of it by the end of the weekend so I can get cracking on Renegade production. I do need a place to assemble all those zines after all.

I surprised myself how much I was able to get done in just one hour. I thought I would maybe get through one box of stuff. Instead I made it through about a dozen. Quickly sorting into piles:

• Trash
• Other part of the house
• Art and Craft supplies
• Art and Craft tools
• Ames C.art stuff
• Office stuff
• To be filed
• To be donated

So far trash has been the largest pile. It’s weird how boxes, papers, packaging from purchased stuff just piles up.

While I don’t expect it to be Martha Stewart level of ocd crafty closet bliss, I do now think it will be a usable organized space by next Monday, which is very promising.

How’s your holiday crafting prep coming? Are you getting organized so you have a bit of space to work in?

Happy Crafting!
Kristin Roach

As you all know, and I’m sure many of you are dealing with the same issues as me, I’m working hard to use up all my leftovers and stash and in general not going willy-nilly in the craft store impulse buying up things I don’t really need for current projects. Yeah. That’s a Run-on-mouthful.

So, when on vacation, it’s especially hard to resist visiting the local yarn shops. Yarn shops are my favorite. All the internet in the world can’t replace a good yarn fondling. You know exactly how I feel. All the colorful pictures in all of the world wide just won’t do. So you can explore online all you want, but the point is, I love seeing (and feeling) the different fibers that aren’t available locally. It’s really hard not to get away from myself. Like here in Katy, Texas at Yarntopia. Look at all this:

Yum and Yum!

Here’s the bargain I strike with myself. First. I go check out any stores I want. If I try to just avoid them, I usually end up going anyway and then I blow it and buy like 3 sweaters and 6 hats and 4 socks worth of yarn. We aren’t even talking about fabric stores – a yard here, a half yard there, 6 quilts worth of fabric later. Yeah. You know.

Anyway, so I let myself go to the shops I really want to. Like @LindaMade on twitter recommended a great yarn shop here in Katy, TX. I found a really neat stone shop that sold beads in Eureka, AR. I bought a little bit from both. I buy enough to make a project and I have a project in mind for each purchase. And I give myself a trip budget. So say if I know I’ll be traveling over the course of 2 weeks, I might budget out anywhere from $25-$100 depending on how the bank is looking. But I stick to it.

I can buy a sweater’s worth or a couple of small projects. Maybe they sell a pattern book I haven’t seen elsewhere. Maybe they are having a super sale like the fine ladies at Yarntopia were and I was able to buy up 6 skeins and a pattern book for under $50. Point is, just like grocery shopping, have a list of projects in mind before you go is always a good idea. Have a budget at the ready so you don’t (like I totally want to) go nuts. And granted this is like a once or twice a year trip vs every weekend. In which case I’d put myself on a monthly budget :)

On the topic of Yarntopia, I had a really nice chat with the owner. So friendly! They had a great selection of yarn and happily most of it was yarn that my local shop doesn’t carry. And they had all these needles. And just so cute. I love the way the shop is put together with a nice area for hanging out and knitting. If you ever happen through Katy Texas, do make sure to stop by and snap up some of their delicious yarn!

Happy Crafting!
Kristin

The weekend before the wedding I decided it would be a good idea to build a day bed for our guest bedroom. To some this might be crazy, but to me, it was perfect. We ended up finishing the daybed on Thursday, just a couple of hours before the person due to sleep in it arrived. She was thrilled!

And now, we have an actual guest room. Okay, so it’s actually more a “nap room” as it’s the quietest room in the house during the day and Jason and I have both been habitually napping there.

The project itself came together pretty easily. Anna White‘s plans were really thorough and if you have the tools, I know you could build it too. It’s opened the door to a whole new world of things to make for the home, yeeee! Exciting!

I would say I’m of “intermediate” level when it comes to woodworking. I have some basic knowledge and skills, but still don’t know all the terms, cuts, and am still a bit sloppy.

When it was all said in done, the whole build cost about $100. I still need to buy some paint or stain and wood putty to finish it up all the way, but I’m not going to worry about that until Jason and I return from our honeymoon (leaving next wednesday).

Next up on the list of “to build” is the Narrow Cottage End Table for our living room. But when, I’m not sure. I’m excited all the same.

Yarnie related news and an update on reclaiming my home and studio after the wedding. Can’t wait to use all my new Craft Leftovers up!

Happy Crafting!
Kristin Roach

We are just 9 days away from the big wedding day, which means just 6 days away from the first wedding guest arriving. We really want to have the all the wedding related things done + the house prepared before those first guests start arriving.

Of course Jason and I both have two large projects coming up due about the same time we are getting married. And we are trying to get loads of work done before we leave on our Texas Triathlon trip so we can actually relax and have a non-working week long vacation. Chaos was consuming. The house was a mess. Still looks semi like we just moved in (maybe not that bad). But definitely was without the “homey” touches we both wanted, though the kitchen has always looked awesome. So…

Two weeks ago we did something that I only ever dreamed of doing. We hired help. My friend Aimee is a wonderfully talented creative woman who not only can make the dullest of dull things shine, but has an uncanny talent for organizing and bringing order to a disordered space. It’s a special type of personality that can cut through the clutter of a home and restore order in a way that it will stay organized despite the residence (Jason and I).

We’ve been able to clean and restore order to the bulk of the spaces that need it. Only the guest bedrooms are left and now we can focus on a little dash and splash decorating to tie this whole place together. This weekend I’m taking a “break” from wedding projects per-say and working on some home projects – a day bed for one of the guest bedrooms and a shoe caddy/bench for the living room.

I found the perfect day bed for one of our guest rooms (formally our offices), but with the $1000 price tag Pottery Barn had attached to it, I was going to settle for a much less attractive piece. That is until I found this amazing website that is revolutionizing my home woodworking projects. Have you ever seen Ana White: Homemaker? This website is brilliant. And I see about half of you have already liked it on facebook. I feel so in the dark sometimes! Why didn’t you tell me!

And wouldn’t you know it, she’s put together plans that knock off the very day bed I was envying? The Storage Day Bed: Lovely. I especially love Kara’s version and pictures of the bed. I guess it’s finally time to dig out my sewing machine and make all those pillows I’ve been talking about.

Encouraged by this tri-box approach, I’ve decided to build a knock off of my own. I found this “perfect” bench on amazon, but at $300, couldn’t really justify the expense. Especially because it would over-lap our living room windows by 5 inches+. I realized if I just leave off the bottom footer and give it a slightly less abundant cushion, it would fit our space perfectly. Ah I do love the custom nature of making it myself.

Here are the filofax printables that I laid out in InDesign. You can download them by clicking here.

I like to plan out the main things that need to be done each week. I try to space them out so I don’t feel like I have to do everything on Monday or leave it all to Friday.

Usually, there are a bunch of little things I need to get done each day, so I start out my morning by making a list of all those. Things like packing orders, making kits, finishing a post, cleaning the cat box out, taking chicken out of the freezer to thaw by noon so it’s ready for dinner, returning library books, etc.

For each big project I have, I like to write down the main deadlines and then next steps I need to work on towards getting it done.

I tend to scribble meeting notes on whatever scrap of paper is around and promptly loose them. By giving them their own little sheet, I can fill out the main points and then file it under the project or in a folder in my filing cabinet with that project/organization information.

I actually have these filled out before hand because they stay the same each week. Each monday I clean the cat litter, do laundry; tuesday I clean the ferret cage and mop; and so on through the week. I check them off each week and it gives me an extreme sense of satisfaction. I use the fly lady system, so it’s based off her weekly routine plan.

Just like the weekly routine, these are the things I do each day. Do the dishes, drink loads of water, take Jak for a walk, feed and water all pets, let the chickens on the hen house, put the chickens into the hen house (they are still too young to know that’s where they should be at night).

And that’s that. Combined with some blank card stock, graph paper, and my blog planning pages, my little organizer is very well stocked.

Oh and I just started using the mayo clinic “healthy weight” food log, so I’m going to lay those out onto  little pages too and fill my organizer with that as well. But I’ll respect their copyright and won’t be posting that here. You can, however, get loads of great info on their website. More on the health and fitness thing over on Kristinmroach if you are into that kind of thing.

Until Next Time!
Kristin

Two weeks ago I posted about how I was sick of all my zines being in a cardboard box and had started building a system of shelves to house them in the most creative way ever. Well, I got caught up getting my own zine finished and have finally returned to that pile of zines in my card board box.

With the clarity of 2 weeks, I wonder if my “most creative way ever” was really the best way for me to go about building my zine library. I want it to be mobile and functional and organized so I can find what I need. I decided to do what I really do best: research! After all I totally need to use those art history minor skills somehow. I started digging around in zine library websites, googling them, looking for reviews, and in general poking around on flickr for what worked best for what kind of zines. I’m not convinced that my library would best be done with a series of woodworking and cardboard cutting vs. just woodworking.

Zine Libraries I found

“SHOP Vintage Lounge and Arts Venue in Bristol houses its very own Zine Library. We want to create a central reference resource to help preserve and promote the diverse work of the small press world. The library operates by donations from zine makers and collectors, and we are always looking for more contributions.”

I love the reading nook style of this zine library–the big stuffed chairs and cute little table. If I could have shelves like that for all my zines I totally would. But, they don’t quite fit all the littlest of zines I have.

Over on Boing Boing, this sweet zine library, PaperCut Zine Library, was featured. While I totally love the stuff hanging there and really enjoy the visual eye candy, it’s not quite the solution for me because I want to continue to flip through them and see their covers. But wow is that fun. What a great job that would be to have!

The Toronto Zine Library takes the comic book shop style approach with zines in box sort of compartments, almost like a record store would arrange them. I like this idea a whole lot, but the question becomes, how to make it work in a shelf sort of setting? I think I’m starting to puzzle this idea out completely.

The Regional Assembly of Text has that beautiful look of clean, yet vintage, yet slightly cozy and welcoming. Maybe it’s just all the zines. Any place that has that any zines in such a pretty presentation must be a welcoming-my-kind-of-place. They also have a nice stock of little mini zines on the top shelf. They are hard to see, but they are in little boxes. Hmmm, I like this.

I love this, because it makes me think we could eventually have something like this right in our own home town library. If you are able to, encourage your local library to start carrying zines. It’s a great place to start a local zine collection, in a place where people are already coming to read and look and enjoy things in print.

Oh I do love the Roberts Street Library. Someday I’m going to have my office be floor to ceiling shelves of printed deliciousness.

The Little Berlin zine library has a nice little shelf set up to hold their zines. If I had my own shop, I think this is how I would house them.

And this is a really cool looking library at Niagara College, but the image was fully copyright protected, so go look at the neatness by clicking here.

Zine libraries are on the rise around the United States so I was able to get a nice broad perspective on housing and organizing zines. One thing I’ve decided is to start keeping a running catalog of all my zines. I now realize a few are missing and I have no idea who I loaned them out to.

After looking at all these great zine libraries, I’m finally ready to build my own. I’ll be back on Friday (for reals this time) to show you how. Wednesday I’m posting about some of the fun projects I have going on around the house like brewing my own hard apple cider and growing produce in the basement in the middle of winter.

Happy crafting!
Kristin

Every winter I have a nice pile of handmade items to keep me warm when I head outside. With that pile comes a dilemma: Where to put them? Originally, I put them all in a basket and put it on the shelf. Being so high up they usually just ended up on the floor because–I have to face it–I can be pretty lazy and so can Jason.

So instead of on the floor in the closet, our hats and mittens started finding their way onto the floor. Yep, lazy.

I went to my folks for the Thanksgiving break and while there received a nice big basket full of goodies from Jason’s sister. (Yum and thank you! I’m enjoy a tasty cup of tea as I type this.) When I got home and was unpacking everything when I realized that this basket is the perfect solution for my problem. At first I just hung it around a hanger–good enough. Then I had the idea to tie it up using a piece of selvedge–even better because now it hangs straight.

I was thinking, another easy way to keep my winter cozies organized would be to hang a reusable grocery bag or handmade tote.

How do you keep your winter handmade goods organized so they aren’t just a pile on the floor?

Happy crafting!
Kristin

I wanted to follow up on the post I wrote two weeks ago about my sketchbook organizing dilemma. I’m happy to say that thanks to all of your great suggestions, I’ve found the perfect way organize my sketchbooks without having to dismantle them: Evernote!

And even better, it’s also provided a way to organize all the snippets of photos, links, and documents related to all of my creating. This is definitely an upside to solving my sketchbook solution.

I took a hard look at Evernote’s term of service. I have to admit that I was a little concerned about them having all my ideas, hopes, dreams, disgruntled notes, and drawings. After much digging, it looks pretty standard, similar to Flickr, better than Facebook. So I’ve decided to use it. There are a few really amazing features.

One:

image text recognition – seriously! it takes your images and recognizes any text in them and makes that said text searchable.

Two:

you can tag all the photos and search that way.

Three:

You can install and use Evernote on your pc, mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and it syncs them all up via their server. Which is pretty sweet. So I can be working on things in my office on my pc, then come home and use my macbook at home to look things up. Excellent.

Four:

You can scan, photograph, clip links using a Firefox plugin, and “clip” files on your computer. So you can really pull together all the info and search through it.

One draw back is a monthly upload limit, but you can opt to pay a monthly/yearly fee to increase that limit, just like Flickr or any other similar service. Right now, I can only upload about one sketchbook a month.

Using Evernote to Archive and Search my Sketchbooks

At first I thought I would scan it, but then thought photographing would definitely be the good way to go. Here’s how I’m going to do it, one sketchbook at a time, over the next few months:

1. Set up lights-

-I use 3 utility lamps, one above and one to each side.

2. Tripod

– I’ve been taking photos right over the sketchbook with a tripod, nice a steady.

4. Turn the page

5. Naming the files

I’ve decided that it would be good to name the files according to what they are photos of. It’s a little archiving system so I can see what it contains or search easily for it.

1. A number for each sketchbook that I’ll write on the inside flap of the physical book: 001
2. Then, if I know it, year(s): 2010
3. Then, the spread number: 001
4. And then a letter for what type of thing it is:

• P = pattern
• J = journal
• S = sketch
• A = art project

Now I’m feeling like I want an assistant to help me with this monumental project. But I know for a fact it will be worth it.

Happy crafting!
Kristin

I draw a lot. For every issue of Craft Leftovers Monthly, I burn through about 2 dozen pages or so of my sketchbook, drawings, notes, patterns, and to do lists. For each post, at least a few pages. I see things, I read things, they inspire me, I write them down, tear them out, save them. I get a snippet of an idea and jot it down. How in the world do I organize all that so I can actually reference it later?

I don’t.

And that’s a problem for me.

These are my sketchbooks from the past year or two, some others are already in storage at home. I have 3 boxes full of them + many folders of drawings and small paintings.

I read once that Martha Stewart has an army of interns that file away her ideas for her in a complex, multi-filing cabinet system in her at home studio. I would love that. Without an army of interns, how do I make a system that’s both simple to maintain and works well?

I’ve been thinking more about following her example and setting up a filing system to capture all these ideas and things. I thought about just cutting all the pages out of my sketchbooks and dividing them into categories which would be the easiest way to do it. But that really pained me the more I thought about it.

Some are just notepads I don’t mind dissecting into their categories, but some, like a few hard bound ones, I have a harder time taking apart. And some sketchbooks show a really nice history of where I was when I did that, almost like a diary. Well, exactly like a dairy, just a visual one.

One option I thought about was to number each sketchbook, then photocopy everything in it and label each photocopy with the number so I know where it came from. Then I would file all my sketchbooks chronologically and all the photocopies alphabetically according to category–like “pattern,” then tag it “knitting.”

That would be the best way to do it because I would preserve my sketchbooks. I would also have an easy way to find my original notes for patterns I’ve written (always longhand, always drawn) which is increasingly problematic.

There is only one problem. I don’t have an army of interns and that’s a lot of work.

Do any of you file your ideas/resources/references? How do you make it happen?

Any suggestions for an easier system idea?

On a side note: I’m excited that I even have the time to contemplate such organizational topics. It’s been far too long. :)

Happy crafting!
Kristin