I like to celebrate March with a big spring clean and organize and this year I’m in desperate need of it, particularly in one area. My work fills this place but the center of it all is a wall of shelves that hold most of my supplies, fabric, antique garments, tools – everything. Over the last year or so it lost whatever organization it ever had and it’s overflowing. I spend a lot of time looking for things, the stuff that gets used the most and should be easy to access is buried, it’s a big time waster, it looks terrible and it’s kind of depressing. I’ve been spilling over with new ideas lately and I have no room for them physically or mentally.
I love this from Sarah From on why organization is so important to creative work ( find the full blog post here):
“Organization is in part about being prepared for the moment when insight strikes. It’s about creating the conditions for creativity to flourish, so that when you enter into creation mode, your physical world is set up to support you. ”
My physical world was not set up to support me, not at all – and it was making me intolerably anxious so I made it the priority this past weekend to fix it. I took everything out, got rid of a ton of stuff and put it all back in a more thoughtful way.
I can see at a glance where everything is and the things I’m using the most right now are easy to grab. I even ended up with a couple empty boxes. I made labels for everything and attached them with clothespins for flexibility. I’m happy with my brown file boxes (I get them from Uline) and I replaced a few that had gotten crumpled and sad looking. And while I was on a roll I attacked my work table too – it had become a place to park piles of things lately – not much empty space to work.
It’s all still a work in progress but it’s such a big improvement! I felt instantly so much more able to manage my tasks and ideas. I was excited to get up and look at it this morning – I gazed at it adoringly with my coffee. It was a big time investment I hadn’t planned on this weekend but it was absolutely worth it. Onward!
