 So, I've been requested to do a video about my craft room, organizing my craft room. I'm just going to put my pen away, but I'm going to leave it out in case I think of anything while we're filming. So yeah, I'm going to share a few things with you. I'm just opening up my notebook. Yes, I took notes. The first thing I want to say is if you want to follow along with the process that I've been using with my craft room and my space, and you want help, advice, encouragement support with yours, direct support from me, become a patron or supporter, you have ready access to me on social media, especially we have a private YouTube channel, but we also have a private Facebook chat. Now if you don't do Facebook, there are other ways to get in touch with me if you're a patron or supporter, but yeah, anyway, so think about that. Now, if you don't know, back in, I need these, hold on, back in, back in sometime, back in, I don't know when. I want to say like 2016, 2015, I wrote a book. So creativity and self-expression, a journey, and it is available on Amazon. This is the Amazon copy. It's not a very big book, as you can see, and it's kind of a workbook. On the back, I wrote, do you want to have a more creative, self-expressive life? So do I. Here are some things I used to keep myself on track. They work for me. Who knows? They might work for you too. And the very first workbook page is a page where I talk about my journey and then ask you a question, and the whole book is like that. And the question is, what can you do to feed your muse and keep her happy? If you'd like a copy of the book, I will link it down below, and you can do that. I'd appreciate this port, but I also think it might be helpful to you. So throughout the whole book, I talk about what I think is going to make me happy, why I'm exploring the journey with creativity and doing what I'm doing, and figuring out what I want to do and how to get that done. And I think that's the first question you have to ask yourself, is with your creative space, figure out what you want to do in your space, and what's your focus or feeling that you want to have in the space. For me, I want my space to be a calm, peaceful, inspiring place, my safe place that I can just sit and chill in, and I can just be, I can sit in my chair here in the corner and have some coffee, or in this case, bone broth, I need to drink that. I can read a book, I can do some stitching, I can do some writing, I can do a little painting and drawing, watch YouTube videos here in my chair. And I do have six questions, and I think this is going to be a little bit of a series of videos. I do have, when it comes to organizing my space, in particular physical things, I do have three people or three YouTube channels that I do find inspirational and helpful. One of course is Marie Kondo, we all know who she is, the founder of the Konmari Method. She has written a couple of books, and she does have some videos here on YouTube. If I can find them, or that she has a channel, I'll link it down below. I also have two other channels I like to follow that aren't solely decluttering channels, and they're not minimalist channels, but I do find the way they do things inspiring. One is the suitcase designer, and the other one is called My Great Challenge. I will link them down below. I also have, I was going to say three tools, yeah, three tools that I use to help me when I'm doing this. So I have my horde, seriously horde, or storage bin collection. I also have labels and or label maker, and I have space to sort things out. Not everybody needs to label and bin things. For me, I have anxiety disorder, I have depression, and I am borderline a compulsive person. And I definitely, because I'm a creative, I mean, I could save every little tiny piece of paper I ever come across thinking I can do something with that someday. Someday may never come. So I did a long time ago decide that it was probably helpful for me to start the container idea, meaning that I save collections of things in limited size containers. And when that container is full, I can no longer save whatever that item is, or I have to use up what's in there before I can save more, or cull through it and get rid of some stuff. That seems to be working for me. It's been working for me for a really long time. Does that mean my collection is perfect and I never have to look at anything again? No. This is a constant thing for me to constantly go through my collection once or twice a year, pull things, purge things, reorganize things. I think it's part of my creative process to rearrange things and replace things, redecorate things to boost my creativity. But as I get farther down the line with my room and my space, I find that I am doing more minimal things than major things because the major changes I've made I love. I've gone through a lot of sections of my stuff, categories of my things in the past. Does that mean I never need to revisit them again? No. But there are sections that I kind of ignored the first time around or the second time around or the third time around. But now I'm like, you know, it's time to go through that. So the other thing besides making a notebook and writing down that first statement or question that I think you need to do is go around your creative space and make categories. categories of things, tools, items, arts and crafts, styles of stuff that are in your room. And I'm going to go through my list here and I will try to, sorry, put them here. All right. Paint, watercolor, tools, fabric, needlework, collage, mixed media, stencils, stamps, books, clay and resin, office supplies, mediums, dies, tape and adhesive. Yes, I have a hoard. Decor, bags, Leslie, you know what I mean. Packing supplies, notions, paper and notebooks, the organizing hoard. It really is just there's three big shelves in the linen closet. You guys have no idea. Random stuff, beads, glitter and embossing powders. Why I still have those. I have no idea. I haven't used them in like four years. Dry pigments, punches, pens and pencils. Your list is going to look different than mine. Mine maybe is a good starting point for you. But I want you to make a list of your categories and really take a look at it. We're going to do things by category. We're not going to. There's a lot of people out there. They empty their whole craft room and then slowly put everything back. Maybe that method will work for you. I've tried that method. It doesn't really work for me. It just makes my anxiety go off the bridge, off the cliff. I find it much easier to focus and deal with one category or collection of things at a time. That works better for me. Yes, it takes longer, but it works much better for me. I've done the other way. It doesn't work for me. I do admire people like Diane Fago right now. I'll link her channel also down below and she's doing her whole space and has disassembled her whole space at once. I can't do that. It doesn't work for me. But if that's what's going to work for you, by all means. Now I have a really big space. It's like 400 square feet. Yeah, no joke. My old space was only 10 by 10. Whether you have a big space or a small space, it's not about the size of the space or how much stuff you do or don't have. It's not about being a minimalist artist or creative. It's also not being a maximalist artist or creative. It's about having a space that makes you happy and whatever that looks like. I will, through the series of videos, show you some things that make me happier in my space and some things that don't. The one thing I did do recently is put this chair and a footstool in my space. I have a little table next to it that the camera is sitting on. I've got a little trash bag next to me. That was the best change I've made in my creative space in a really long time. One of the first things we need to go through is my fabric stash. Yeah. All right, let's go. First thing to do. Figure out what your category is, in my case, fabric. Get all of it out into one place. In that respect, we're going to do some Marie Kondo. We're going to get it all out and put it in one place. In a pile on the floor. All right, I'm dreading this, but let's go. I kind of see the one box. This is full of stuffing and I have some interfacing and plastic and stuff that I use occasionally. I haven't bought any of this in a long time because I'm using up what I have. I don't really want to get rid of that because it is useful, but it's also not pretty or easy to put in a bin out here and doesn't need to be out here. When I was doing more slow stitching, well, I still do occasionally, but I don't really need to keep a can of stuffing out on the table. I'm going to put this in the bin in there and then we have an empty can. I'm the one with the organization hoard. That probably means the can's not going anywhere, but yeah, that's a whole other problem. And then we'll get to the pile on the floor. I do have this other bag that a blanket came in at Christmas time. Now, I do like to save these, but should I? For right now, I'm going to save them. I wish I could tell you that was all of it, but it's not. Hold on. Okay, these three bags are full of old couch cushions and old couch cushion fabric. They've been sitting in there for a long time. The kids actually have our old couch and they didn't want the pillows. I think the pillow forms I can let go. I need to think about the couch fabric though. I know very 1980s, right, but it's this beautiful tapestry fabric. I think I need to hang on to that for the moment, but I have three bags of these pillow forms. I know it's not fabric, but I think they can go. Just because I have a big house and can store the stuff doesn't mean I need to create a situation where every closet has stuff in it. Let's just not go there. Okay, here's another thing, this sweater dress. It's got a couple of holes in it and I fixed one hole and then I found another hole and then so I stuck it up here, see, I stuck it up here thinking, oh, I'll fix it again or I'll cut it up and make something else out of it. It's never going to happen. It's got to go. Okay, I have some white tool. I bought this for the baby shower that we're having coming up. Whatever I don't use will get donated, but for right now until the shower is done, I probably need to hang on to it. This is full of knit fabric. I was sewing myself some clothes at one time. I may still do, but do I need to keep all this fabric? Doubt it. Some of it's cute, but am I ever going to wear? So let me just go through the fabric. I'm going to keep what I love and if I don't love it, it's going away. I'll be back. Okay, guys, so I didn't catch all of that on camera because one of the little ones from next door who shall be left unnamed came by to visit, but holy cow, did I have way more fabric than I thought I did and we have made a right mess. She's trying really hard not to take too much home because, yeah. But anyway, let me turn the camera around and show you the pile of stuff that's going away. Moment. All of that is going away. We've really tried hard to just keep what we love and we know we're going to use and not keep things just because. I'm trying to stick to the bins I have, however, all the stuff I kind of want to keep and I don't have any more empty bins, so I don't know. We need to rethink that. I'll be back. Okay, guys, and interruptions from little ones from next door, but I think we got it done. I do have a couple things I found at the last minute. I thought I was done and I found two more bins of fabric in the closet that I didn't know were in there, you guys. So I'm going to take some pictures of the stuff I'm letting go of to share with neighbors and friends and see if any of them want it, otherwise it's going to just get donated. And then I'm going to try to squeeze everything into the limited space I want it to be in. I do think we're going to... I'm sorry, I'm looking for it. There we go. I do think we're going to end up with two empty drawers, which for the moment I'm going to leave empty. But I do think I know what I want in the drawers, which will clear up some other space. And so bonus, we might do bonus content here. It would be yarn. Yeah. All right, I'll be back. Guys, I didn't expect that to be emotionally and physically challenging today, but it was. Oh my God. All right. I do have two empty drawers now. I do think we're going to try to put all the yarn in one place. I like to put everything together, collections of things together, whether it's the water color paints all in one place, acrylic paints all in one place, empty journals all in one. It makes it easier for me to find things. So I wasn't going to do the yarn today, but I've got two empty drawers. Let's make use of them today because I do think since it's over by the other needle work stuff, which is where the drawers were at, I think it's a perfect use for them and there's already yarn over there. So let's go. Guys, we got interrupted a little bit. I had a nice phone call with my friend Leslie McGrath. Hey Leslie. Wow. That's all I can say. Wow. Okay. So that whole pile of stuff is going away. Let me turn the camera around. Hold on. I have two bags of fabric and three bags filled with pillow forms. One of these does have more of the tapestry fabric in it. This is not that one. That fabric there, they are the old pillow covers from these same pillows that used to be on our old sofa that the kids now own. They didn't want the pillows. I'm keeping some of the fabric, but I don't need to keep all of it because I do think I want to make myself a tote bag out of the fabric. I really love the fabric. It brings about fond memories. So anyway, so all of this is going to go. I also was able to, there was one bin of fabric here and a bin of yarn here. They're gone. I also found two more bins of fabric here, which are also gone. I used to have a blue bin here along with all of this other stuff that was full of yarn. Because we were able to empty two of these drawers, my yarn is now down there. I didn't purge any of it because I already did that a long time ago. I will be relabeling the drawers because the labels are wrong. I am that person who has to label everything. So my best organizing tool or tip is to tell you label stuff. If you're like me and you just get tired of digging in bins and opening bins because you can't remember what you put in there, label it. Like that's what I do. I just label it. I also had those blue cans that we emptied over here. They also used to be on the art table. They're just not working for me in this space anymore. I keep moving them around into five million different places. When I just keep moving them around and I'm still not satisfied, then I know that it's just not working. They need to just go away for a while. This stuff won't get donated or get tossed out. It'll go back into the organization hoard. I keep talking about that, so I guess I should share now. Oh God. All right. Hang on. This is our very large linen closet upstairs. It's outside the art room and I have three shelves of organization stuff. Now I am that person that has to limit myself space-wise, otherwise I will fill up the entire house with collections of things. So is this space too big? Probably. But as long as I keep it to this space, then I'm sort of good with it. So yeah, we are going to reorganize this a little bit so we can get these bins in here. And while we're doing that, I go through and make sure there's nothing in here that's broken that doesn't serve anymore and have that go away. I also have another tray in the art room on the footstool I might put in here. So let's get that done. Hang on. I arranged a few things in the closet. I didn't add anything else. I just spread things out a little bit. There we go. Now you can see it better. I don't want to add more stuff. I just want to spread it out a little bit. Okay. Wow. That was way more than I thought we would do today. I'm sorry about the weird lighting. We're sitting in front of a window. That's a little better I think. Anyway, I'm going to go to my list in my notebook after I put my reading glasses on because yeah, that's a thing. You can cross off fabric. You can cross off office supplies because I did purge them already and I just rearranged what I purged into a better system in the closet where some of the fabric was. I've been wanting to do the fabric for a while because I wanted to spread out the stuff I knew was going to stay in the closet. So anyway, I can cross that one off. Needlework. I feel like I need to add yarn to the list. I'm going to cross off yarn because I've already done some purging on the yarn. I just now have it all in one place and I can find everything. I think I own every single DMC floss that there is. We're just about. So I probably have too much, but so I'm going to leave Needlework on the list. I also have some things like embroidery frames that I never use anymore. Anyway, I'm happy with what we did. It was three categories when I only expected to do one. Again, think about today's conversation and how it might apply to you and what you can do to change your space and be happier and more comfortable in a piece in your space. If you Google some of the most famous artists on the planet, their art studios were a hot mess and they loved it and they were super creative and are now super famous. So it's not about being super neat and being minimalist by any means. It's about doing what makes you happy. And for me, being able to find what I have, I really hate when I can't find something I know is in here somewhere, i.e., a specific example is when I got my new art table and I was clearing out stuff to make way for it. I'm clearing off the old table and the old shelves. I found my artist tracing paper I knew was in here somewhere and I couldn't find for the life of me and I ended up using something else because I couldn't find it and it was really pissing me off. I found it stuffed between two books. So anyway, if you want to have ready conversations with me about your space, help, advice, although I'm no expert, I'm happy to give it, but you need to be a patron or supporter. You can also leave questions, comments or concerns down below. My Patreon is very inexpensive and we do have, as I've said repeatedly, a private Facebook chat with patrons and supporters. They have ready access to me pretty much 24-7. I don't know if that's good or bad. And they have their own private YouTube channel with lots of videos on it. You guys will never see on this channel. So anyway, think about that. Also again, my book, the link is down below. And yeah, think about what, why you're doing what you're doing and how you want to go forward with that, how it's going to make you happy. And in order to enable you to do that, how your space needs to look because those are all super important questions. You don't have to do the whole room in one go. Just do a little bit at a time. Don't throw away any bins that you happen to empty because you might need them later on for a different category. That being said, if you're like me, limit yourself in the space that can contain an item. So that's my tip of the day, containment of items. So for me, I am definitely the person that has the I might need it someday disease. And I will keep everything if you give me half a chance. So I have to limit myself to containers, bins and sections for stuff. Otherwise I'll spill out. Fill up the art room. It'll spill out into the hallway. It'll spill out into the guest rooms like it'll just be everywhere. And I have done that before and it's not healthy for me. It's also not happy for anybody else who lives in the house with me. So I don't do that anymore. And right now my storage bin closet is really, really full. When it's full like that, and I have to do the storage bin Jenga to get stuff in the storage bin closet, aka horde. That's about the time it is to go. I need to go through there and I need to perch and stuff in there. So we're right about there. So that might be a category that we have to add when we're done. Anyway, I'd love to see what your struggles are with your art room and see how we can help each other solve them. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. I'll see you later. Bye, guys.