 to get started on this Fixing the Flow video. And the next question in my list of questions, I wanted to talk to you about actual workflow, traffic flow, planning out your space. So every single time I've moved in my life, bar one, when I was a teenager, which we won't discuss right now, I've planned out my move before I've gotten into space. To the point where I draw even before I knew what I was doing or how to do it accurately, not the minor super accurate or anything, I've drawn out a basic floor plan of the space I'm moving into and done some kind of rough draft, not necessarily to scale of the furniture and pieces I want in the space. I remember taking a drawing class of school and for whatever reason we did architectural drawing, I wasn't super great at it, but I remembered enough of it to help me in this and it's helped me every time I've moved, especially in the art space. So we're gonna switch down to my iPad because I'm gonna record the audio here while I'm doing this, but this room you're looking at right now is my old art room, which was about 10 by 10 and it did have a closet right here and the closet had no doors on it. I had a curtain on there. I don't know how many of you all remember that in the first incarnation of the space before I started filming for YouTube, we had taken the doors off completely then and I had built in a desktop into the closet. And so that was extra desk space. When I, and I was doing a lot more sewing and this whole wall back here, this whole wall was floor to ceiling shelves in and around the window and it was all sewing patterns. I did a lot of sewing. I wasn't doing any painting or drawing, even though secretly in the deepest part of my being, I always wanted to draw and paint and someday we'll get into the discussion of why I thought I couldn't do that. But anyway, so this is primarily a sewing room. I did a few other random things, but mostly sewing. And then after I stopped doing daycare and towards the time I got hurt at my last job that I now retired from, I started doing some painting and drawing. I thought, why can't you do it? So I decided to rearrange to the room. I did still want the closet for storage. So this was still storage but I didn't want to see the storage. I want to see the storage. So instead of putting the doors back, we just put curtains on it. That worked. I had right here an old kitchen cabinet, microwave cabinet. It was a pretty tall one. It was like five or six feet tall. It was an Ikea cabinet. Drawers on the bottom and a space for a microwave on the top. We weren't using it in the kitchen anymore. So I had it here for storage. Later on when that got went away, I had a four cube system. Funny enough, I still have the four cubes. And then this and this were the exact same corner desks and they fit side by side perfectly on this wall with spaces where I could have the chair here, which is where my computer was right here. Or I could switch the chair around to over here and I could do a little painting or drying in the corner and that worked. I had the window here with cute display space on the window sill. And the room only had one center ceiling light fan. So when I started filming for YouTube, I had a table here, which I only recently got rid of. It was about six feet long. And it actually went to my niece who is also a creative and she's using it in her art space. And because it was, there was no light over here. I added two lamps. They were clipped to the shelves above the desk. Let's take some of this away so you can see what I'm talking about. So this is shelves. So when you're in a very small space, like this one was about a hundred square feet, it was 10 by 10, not including the doorway. So then you have to use all the space up and underneath your furniture, which I did. So I had wire, deep wire shelving above the desk all along this wall and then into the corner too. About here, it might have gone a little farther, but I don't remember that it did. And I had two or three of them going all the way up the ceiling and then underneath the desk, because I'm short, I don't need all that leg room. I had some rolling cabinets, drawer cabinets, sterile cabinets under the desk up against the wall that stored some other stuff. And then in the closet space, I had floor-to-ceiling plastic shelving that I could put stuff on. I had a lot of stuff. I had probably twice as much stuff as I have now in this little tiny space. It was a lot of stuff, probably too much, but I loved it, I made it work. And I knew right away when we were in the space, again, remember it was 10 by 10 feet, that I wanted the center of the floor to be open. I wanted to be able to go into my space, quickly find my chair, if that was where I was headed, to be able to walk around the space, to be able to, on a whim if I wanted to do a sewing project, because I still have and then did have all my sewing equipment, I got rid of the patterns, to be able to lay out a thick piece of fabric on the floor, to have this center floor space be open, even though the room was small and felt a bit claustrophobic because of all the stuff I had in it, I did still have the open floor space which allowed me to occasionally set up an easel over here in the corner and paint, to set an easel up like here and do some painting on an easel. Again, it allowed me to do some sewing. I could be here working on the computer, which was like right about here. I could move the chair, which was on wheels over here, do some drawing, work on some mixed media. I can also, of course, you move the chair over here and work on this table. This flow of traffic, if you will, in my room worked very well for me. So now in the new space, when I knew we were moving, I did the same thing. I went and did some basic measurements, the floor space is quite a bit bigger. It's a little over 400 square feet. It's like 423 or something square feet. It's huge. These two spaces, again, this is closet storage space. So ugly stuff, tools, supplies, I don't need out all the time that I'm not gonna use all the time, but I don't wanna get rid of because I love them or they're useful, they go in the closets and that's where they live. These are two double doors entering into my room. And again, I wanted a good walking workflow space. I wanted to be able to easily come in, walk around the room, find the different sections, get to them easily, not have to move a bunch of stuff out of my way to get to things and to find what I was looking for without a big hassle because if I have to take too much time, I'm just gonna not gonna bother. So this here is my rack of stencils. I have a floor rack that's got four tiers on it that I hang my stencils on. I found a link I think for something similar. I'll link it down below. This is what I affectionately call the small bits bank. So it's a series of the square cube shelving on the floor with different types of small and medium sized stair light drawers on top of it. And then hanging above it here is Ikea pegboard. And this is where all my small bits and parts are. And if I want to acquire something else, it has to fit in here. If it doesn't fit, I either have to get rid of something, use something up or I can't have it. I have to do that to myself, otherwise I'll just save everything. This door here that you see here, this is the furnace closet. It's a fairly big closet. I kind of wish it wasn't there, but then I'm glad it is because if it was empty and just a closet closet, I would fill it up with stuff. So I don't need any more stuff than I would just forget what was in there. This is the sewing desk. This window faces out into the woods next door and the thousand year old tree that's right next to my house. I do, again, this room only has a center ceiling light here above the table, a fan. There are two cam lights in front of the closets. That's it. So I have a lamp here on top of the cubes, on top of a stack of books and drawers. Then I have another LED light on the wall. There is some IKEA pegboard on this wall and it's part of that whole system. And I can shine it down on the desk. When I am sewing and working on a project, there is another, oh, let me look, let's, yeah. There's another light on the wall here that we've added. We added a shelf bracket and then we took a clip light and clipped it to the bracket and then the cord runs down the wall. Behind these are shelves and these are my supply shelves. So these, all of my paint mediums are here. My die cut machine, my dies, paper punches, glue, pens, all that stuff is back here on shelves and in boxes. And we'll get to that at some point and I'll show you how I organize it. This is a spare tall chair. This is the tool desk that we just did in this video. There is a table top magnifying light right about here. It is an odd light. I don't know that they make this particular one anymore but having a magnifying, very bright light, especially where you have your tools, I think is a good idea. Fun fact, if I'm working on some tiny stitching project or something, it also comes in handy when I can't really see what I'm doing. Right about here is another shelf bracket with another clip light on it. This is my painting easel corner right here. So you have a series of bookshelves here with my palette mixing station on top of it. This is a rolling cart with painting tools, brushes, mark making tools, my water buckets are here. This is my easel and this is a trash can. Oh, and by the way, up here, trash can. So this is a nice corner and I can either stand here and paint and reach everything I need is right here, backups of mediums. If I run out of something, maybe over here, that's what this is for. But everything is over here and I also can get some inspiration because here's a window looking out onto our driveway but I can also see the woods next door through this window. This is my computer desk, computer and paperwork. We do have one rolling chair that's usually over here in addition to this one. And I can roll them around where I need them either to the work table in the center of the room or over here to the sewing table, wherever I may need them. This is my relaxing corner where I'm sitting right now. So I've got a chair and foot stool. I have a table next to me, which is where my phone is propped up and we're recording the audio right now. We've got a little garbage can back here. I mean, I tend to eat lunch up here. So that's where all the trash goes. This is a printer station. So my printer is here, my printer paper is there and a few currently being used office supplies. A lot of backup office supplies are over here in the closet. I don't need to see them and I only need out what I'm currently using. So they're there. And this is a little, it's actually a nightstand table. It used to be in my daughter's bedroom. A number of people have called it my little altar space. I have little things I've collected, little things I've made, things friends have made, things that make me smile right here on this wall and underneath it are some sewing tins, one of which is my grandmother's who's no longer with us and they have some of her things in it, which I love. All along the room on the edges on the walls, I have artwork and mementos and things that just make me happy and make me smile. Let's clear off some of this. If we can, it will take a minute. Okay, so before we moved in, I did some kind of floor plan and using what I currently had at the time, which was a little bit different than I have now, I made it work. And as I was in the space, the longer I was in the space, the more I realized that I had to change a few things to make the workflow a little easier for me to make me a little happier with going in and finding what I needed to right away and not wanting to come in, go holy crap and just leave. So you should wanna go in your space, be able to easily find what you need to create with what you have. You know, if you're like me as we get older, I mean, it's so easy to have it out of sight out of mind. When I was young, I didn't understand that. Now that I'm almost 60, holy cow, do I get it? I also find in my space, I have four garbage cans, one here, one here, this is a garbage can and then one back here. So I don't wanna have to even go hunt for the garbage can to throw trash away. I want it to be able to be easy. This table in the center of the room is my main work table. It's a brand new table I just got. It's about three feet wide and about seven feet long. I found it at the Habitat for Humanity Restore. It was $10. Behind it, there are some short wire bookshelves that come just to the top of the table and they are my place for works in progress and drying racks. On top of it, I have a series of little drawers and cubbies which are my currently using most often used tools. So if it's something I wanna use but it's not something I use a lot, it's gonna be over here, it's gonna be over here but generally, it's gonna be back here. There is a Ikea cart right here that rolls around and the other one is this one right here. I'm using it there because that's what I have, not buying anything new, using what I have. That's sort of my current journals project cart. It's got my current journals on it, current products I'm using because I would send them to use in videos, bits and pieces I wanna use up. They're in here and I more often than not will just get up and walk around. I mean, I'm not that lazy. But if I wanted to, I could wheel it around and just wheel it around to this side of the table and have it there next to me while I'm filming and that would work too. The space isn't really big enough for one more of these shelves and I don't wanna spend the money right now. We're trying to do this on a little bit of a budget because I have a lot of stuff. I shouldn't need to buy anything. So that's another thing, depending on what your budget is and what you're comfortable with, trying to rearrange your space using what you have or what you can get. There are a number of websites that you can get things for free or cheap and we'll go over those in just a minute. But drawing out your space and even if it's not to scale, this is definitely, I can tell you not to scale, but drawing it out and roughly planning where you think you want things really does help a lot. And I know the first time I did this with our first house, I actually drew it out on graph paper and created the little pieces of furniture on separate pieces of paper so that I could actually physically move them around until I had something that I really liked that I thought was gonna work for both of us. And we liked that so much when we moved into this house, we did it again, only of course this time we did it this way. So it's something that I would suggest that you give it a shot anyway. Okay, so there's a number of websites and or groups that you can look for free or inexpensive stuff. There's of course Craig's list and Nextdoor has a marketplace, so does Facebook. But we also have things like the Trash Nothing website. I think in, I don't know if it's worldwide, there might be a different name for the site in Canada. I'm not sure, but we have Trash Nothing. We also have a Facebook group for your area called Buy Nothing. And Buy Nothing, they give you the stuff. You have to put your name in, you don't always get the first bid, but somebody will post something they're getting rid of and then people will post in the comments, hey, I could use that and they'll pick one of you to give it to. Also in Facebook Marketplace and on the Nextdoor Marketplace, there are a lot of people that also give things away. They don't just sell them. So if you're really on a tight budget, also you know what, ask friends and family, hey, I'm trying to redo my office. Do you have any bookshelves you're trying to get rid of or whatever it is? You never know. So anyway, give it a shot. I hope this little talk about arranging the big pieces in your space helps you with the flow. Now let's get on with the video. Hey guys, welcome to another video in the Fixing the Flow series. Take this out. Do you hear background noise sort of rumbling? Yeah, it's raining. Welcome to Portland. Anyway, so, how have you guys been doing with the first two episodes of this series? I hope you've been doing well with it. Some parts of doing this are gonna be difficult. Some parts will be easier than others and sometimes you just need to set things aside because you're not sure. Maybe put them in a box or a bag and put them in a corner and revisit it later. If you find that you're not using it after a few months or a year, revisit it again because maybe it just needs to go. But it's not easy. Especially the first few times you do any sort of reorganization, much less purging and getting rid of stuff, it can be very difficult. Especially if like myself, sometimes you're not exactly in the right head space to do it. So we're gonna talk about item number three on my list, which is make a place you can breathe in and that makes you happy. That means hanging art and things on the walls that make you smile and give good vibes. My art room has lots of art on the wall. Most of it not mine, but not all of it. Some things that are just hanging on my wall and over my desk are from like my Nonna, my Italian grandmother. Some things are from, well, let's turn you just a little bit, shall we? There we go. So some things like these that are hanging here right next to my reading nook space are ribbons and badges from doing like the Avon Walk for breast cancer, family trips to Disneyland, trips my husband and I have been on to Hawaii and things like that, things I've just collected that just make me smile and make me happy. And your creative space shouldn't just be a workspace. It should be a space that you can go in and relax in and of course easily find the tools and things that you're looking for, but a space that you don't mind hanging out in and that, well, and if you're like me, that you have trouble getting anything else done in the day because you just wanna be up here all day. I mean, you know, it's not, again, it's not about having a minimalist art space or a maximalist art space. It's about having the art space that works for you and if it's not working for you, then why? Let's revisit that process and why isn't it working for you and let's make it so it does. For those that don't know, as I've said in the prior two videos, I have written a book. I wrote it quite a few years ago. It is a workbook that is all about figuring out if you wanna create a expressive life and if you do, how you wanna do that. The back of the book says, do you wanna have a more creative, self-expressive life? So here are some things I use to keep myself on track. They work for me, who knows? They might work for you too. This is the cover. It's available on Amazon. The link will be down below. I do, again, as I've said in prior videos, do find Marie Kondo, despite her current change in attitude because she's had children, I still find her inspiring and the suitcase designer and also my great challenge. Life always throws you curveballs. So even if you are a minimalist, there's gonna be probably times where that's just not gonna work. But whatever you decide to do, whatever path you wanna take, especially as we're talking about in your art room, to feed your muse and make your creativity flow easier and come to you easier and to be more productive. However that happens for you, cool, let's do that. Let's make that happen. I'm not really buying anything new to do this with. I didn't know when I started this video series, I'd be getting rid of anything. And if you've seen the first two episodes, I've gotten rid of quite a bit. So next today, if I'm gonna make a place, this a place where I can truly breathe where that really makes you smile, there is a corner of my room I need to work on. And I call it the tool desk. So it is a desk that is in here should Bob wanna come in and he likes to occasionally do miniatures and things. But it also houses my art tools. I don't mean paint brushes and palette knives. So if you're like me and yes, I primarily consider myself a mixed media artist in watercolors, but that doesn't mean I pinch and hold myself. And if you've seen recent vlogs and videos of mine, you know, I've made myself a variety of things over the years and the months, including urban sketching boxes and all kinds of stuff. So rather than constantly going downstairs into the garage, I have my own hammers and hand saws and screwdrivers and all the things. I also used to be a licensed dispensing optician back in the day. I am retired from that business, but I have most of my old optical tools still. They're all in the desk. I keep trying to purge the optical tools, by the way, but I do wear glasses. So do most of my family. So I occasionally need them to fix something. So that doesn't mean the desk can't be better organized. And I do have a set of carving tools that one of the adopted kids borrowed, and he recently brought it back. And I'd like all of that to be in the tool desk. And I'd like that to be a place that when I do carve, I'm over there at that desk carving. So I think that's what we're gonna work on today. I don't really wanna do the desk. I'm not looking forward to it, but sometimes you have, if you're like me, whether it's cleaning out this desk or it's getting exercise or anything else I don't wanna do, I have to kind of make myself do it. Once I get to doing it, I'm like, oh, cool. But the initial impulse is just to sit here in the chair and turn on YouTube. I know you can relate. All right. So hopefully the tool desk is on here somewhere. My list. Oh, yeah, tools. It was like the third thing on the list. Cause yeah, it is something that needs doing. All right, let's put the book down. Let's move the video camera. I'll grab my water and let's get to it. All right. Okay, this is said tool desk over here in the corner. I'm going to take everything off the top. This is the bin of carving stuff. I'm gonna take everything out of the drawers. We're gonna reorganize. Hopefully get more things in here. I'd like to turn the bottom drawer into the carving drawer. Right now it's a hot freaking mess, but there might be tools in here I can get rid of. Maybe. We'll see. All right, let's go. That top drawer is mostly Bob's tools for model making. And so there's a lot of room in the drawer. I may add a few more things, but for the most part I'm gonna leave those where they are because if I, but I've already found a few things. I know I can get rid of where I think I can. So I'm gonna make a little pile. I'll be back in there as I thought. Oh my God. I got rid of way more than I thought I was going to. Everything else has to go on top of the desk somewhere. So I'm gonna arrange that so it's convenient, but looks nice. Maybe I'll be back. We talked about this before, but the only thing left to do is label things. So I'm going to do that. I have one drawer that I've kind of changed that I need to label. That's where all the carving tools are. And I put two bins up here, one with disposable cups in it and one with gloves. Safety is always a concern in the art room. Well, in any space in your house it should be. And we have two fire extinguishers, one down and one up here in the art room. It lives on the desk here. It's easy to grab. I don't really want to hang it on the wall. It's convenient where it is. So we're gonna leave it there. I didn't get rid of that many tools. I did find some things to get rid of, some things that were trash that didn't need to be here. I found a mat cutting tool. I don't cut mats anymore. I just buy them. I find cutting them ultimately frustrating and money wasting because I'm not good at it enough to know what I'm doing and I waste a lot of mat board. So the cutting tools need to go. I have some other other cutting tools I saved and some letter punches and stuff like that. I don't use them too often, but I'm not gonna get rid of them. I also have this heavy block, metal block that is great for said letter punches. I also have some hole, die cut hole punch things that work well on this. And also when I'm setting eyelets, it works well on this. I have a wooden block too, but this metal one is very handy. And I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out. I think it's a nice comfortable corner. I did recently on a trip to California, go to Daiso, and I got one of these little mini dust pans and broom. These are, I think, intended for table scraps. I do use them in the art room often. They work really well. This one has a magnet on the back so I can stick it to one of the cans on the desk or I can just put it over there. Yeah, this is gonna work really well. Okay, so for me, having work stations in my art room is fine, but there are some things I need all in one place, AKA the tools. When I'm searching for a hammer, I don't wanna have to search over in woodworking supplies or I want all the tools, general, where are we? There, general tools just in one place. It makes it easier for me. Just like all my acrylic paint is in the painting corner, which you can't really see yet because we haven't gotten there. Boop, boop, boop, there. All my watercolor paint is over here. All my small bits over there. I tend to categorize those things that way rather than having, oh, and you know, because we did it, all my sewing and needlework stuff over here. So I don't do things like, well, my mixed media journals here and my knitting and crocheting over here and my, like I tend to group things in larger categories. I don't mind digging, but I don't wanna have to dig for eternity. That might not work for you, but whatever system or way of organizing things works for you, do that. Everybody's different and maybe you wanna try this way, but maybe you want a different way. I find it extremely handy having a desk full of tools. I can come over here. I can pound in an eyelet. I can grab a few tools to make a new art urban sketching box. I know where all of it is. It's very handy. So anyway, talking about my tool desk and how it's set up. So here we have a plug strip, which I used to not only extension cord power across the floor to the art table when needed, but to do things like charge my camera batteries and the like. We have most often used tools and parts safety equipment on the desk. The drawers are organized and labeled, cleaned out, I removed everything and wiped them down. My new carving drawer. Got this miscellaneous drawer. And then this is full of cutting tools and I actually have a second dremel. No, whatever space you choose to tackle this week to work on the flow in your art room and make sure that you're creating a space that you can breathe in and create in freely. No matter how big or small, when you're done, call that progress. Even if it's one box or one bin, it doesn't have to be a whole section or a whole category. Just take it a little bit at a time. Your collection took years to acquire. Reorganizing it, if you choose to purge some you can, but reorganizing it and making the workflow in your space be more productive isn't gonna happen overnight. So don't beat yourself up about it. If it takes some time, there's nothing wrong with that. Anyway, now I can find my tools as long as I remember to label everything. And this dirt can find the tools too because if I don't label things, I'll get in trouble. Anyway, check out the video description for relevant links. Put any questions, comments or concerns down below. If you want ready access to me and advice and help with your art space, join my Patreon. It's very reasonable. The link is also down in the video description. They have ready access to me and there's quite a number of them that are working on their space. Wendy, I'm very proud of you. Again, it's not about getting rid of everything. It's just about keeping what you love and reorganizing things so that they don't kill your inspiration, but they inspire it. Yeah, all right. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe and go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye guys.