Working Hard

Started off the week well on the making front, then decided that my sewing room was a tip. On Friday started the big tidy up, using the Julie Morgenstern's method, which is very logical and works, once you start and that for me is the biggest problem, finding the energy and enthusiasm to start. On this occasion it has all got a bit overwhelming and needed to do something, namely wanted to move a desk from my workroom to the sewing room for the embroidery machine to be in a permanent location, so something had to be done.

Sort: Going through everything in a given room and grouping it according to categories that make sense to you — which is why the previous point about identifying your own preferences is so important. Resist the urge to return items that you think belong in another room straight away; put them in a dedicated box and return them at the end of the process, or you'll be endlessly distracted.

Purge: Getting rid of items in each category that are broken, useless, superseded or otherwise irrelevant. Morgenstern is a firm advocate of the "if you haven't used recently, ditch it" school of thought, but this is another area where your own personal judgement becomes important. That said, if you fail to purge anything during a cleanup, you'll probably find it harder to keep everything organised.

Assign: With purged and sorted groups of items, you can assign each group a permanent home (which won't necessarily be in the room where you've done the sorting) — again making use of your own preferences and existing habits, and bearing in mind any space restrictions. Ideally, this should involve saying "this goes in this item of furniture/area", rather than just in a particular room.

Containerise: Minimising clutter means having somewhere to put stuff away, and that's where storage containers (whether that's a new bookshelf or a container to keep batteries in) become important. However, it's always better to hold off on buying (or recycling from what you've already got) until you've done the first three stages, reinforcing the point we made recently that you shouldn't shop for organising gear until you know what's there to organise. Having dedicated locations for everything also makes it easier to put everything away, which is the next critical stage.

Equalise: The final key to staying clutter-free is dedicating time every day (or every week for less frequently used rooms) to equalise: returning everything to its home. If you've been thorough with the previous stages, this shouldn't be time consuming. Morgenstern advocates revisiting the clutter-clearing process every six to 12 months to make sure that equalising doesn't take too long.

Makes for this week

A good friend sent me some lovely gifts and wrapped around them was this linen ribbon, not wanting to waste it as so pretty, have made up into some flower pins

Another vintage style card, bit concerned as these take so long to do but could also be framed and kept.

Finally finished the 4 scarves, love this yarn reminds me a bit of the pencil shavings, when you kept on and on sharpening to produce a curl as long as possible. Shows what I got up to at school, little things.....

That is it for me this week, have a god one and if you do not hear from me next Handmade Monday, please send out a search party as could be buried under a ton of fabric.