Closets

Do you ever think about your closets? They can be wonderful (for hiding stuff) and scary (you hid stuff too long) and practical (where else should a vacuum live) and organized (nice even stacks of towels) and disasters (piles of clothes spilling off of shelves). I remember when I was little I had a closet with a long bar. That's what most closets were like back then. I was lucky and had a few little shelves built in on the side. You couldn't really see them because the clothes on the bar covered them. Those long shelves over the bar were to far out of my reach to be very helpful. In the olden days they had pegs for you to hook something on. Horror! No place to hide your messes. Nowadays we have closet systems. How amazing is that! We can arrange our closet to suit our every need. Take a minute to appreciate that blessing. :o)

I recently rearranged my bathroom linen closet and made it my fabric closet. I had all kinds of misc stuff in the closet. All of my fabrics---ok, not all, who could comprehend the all part---most of my quilting fabrics were in plastic tubs under my bed. It was efficient and practical. They were sorted by color and I could just slide out what I needed. Sounds good in theory but not as practical as I thought. Over time it just has not been working. I need to be able to look at several colors at once. Since I like scrap quilts that meant most colors at once. There would be no place to walk; every inch of the carpet would be covered. Cleaning it all up was even harder. Putting away fabrics I had pulled out was daunting. I decided I needed to be able to look at everything I had all at once. I dove in!

I made piles on my bed.

I made piles on the floor.

There was such a mess that I started to worry that I would never be able to reach the bottom, let alone finish. Then I worried that it wouldn't all fit. I realized I had more than I thought I did. Now it is heavenly. There's even wiggle room on the shelves.

Everything is sorted by color. I have a whole box of fabrics to "re-file". I'm trying really hard not to look at it too much. It makes me want to pick fabrics for a new project and I'm still working on completion issues.

A bonus to the whole process was that I found I had yardage that I had forgotten I even had. I'm trying to cure myself of my need to hold on to a piece of fabric and save it for the perfect project. I'm going to turn into one of those crazy hoarders (maybe I'm already there?) if I don't just USE IT! I'm going to try and sell some crafts at the church's fall festival in a few weeks. I need to take some of this yardage and make some bags or purses or something. I'm almost giddy thinking that I could empty one of the yardage tubs now under the bed. An empty tub would be a great place to organize something new...a new project..a new mess to hide...whatever I want.