You all have "been " to my house. Heck, you've seen closets and drawers, places no guest should ever be forced to look. My house is rather tidy most of the time. I work quite hard at keeping it that way too. Now here's a place that I keep hidden, or as the title says, my dirty little secret.
This room was once my sons bedroom, but it is tiny, and the layout was bad-so I moved him into my old office and took this room for myself. I repainted it, made new curtains (silk!) bought a new overhead lamp fixture that I LOVE- then dumped a ton of crap into it. I have cleaned it up- twice! (can anyone say AT cure) but within days it becomes a crap collector again.
Why? Well, my son can't get into this room. There is a special thing on the doorknob he can't open. SO, anything he shouldn't be in gets thrown in here. My art supplies are all in here, some fabric, my books, all of my blank canvas' are in here too. It gets to a point where I can hardly walk. I have seen some of those shows on tv where they come in and humiliate the owner and then clean up the house. This is that type of room. (thank God I only have one like this)
Anyway, this room depresses me, I can't stand it this way, but it just sucks the life right out of me and so I can't even begin to clean.
I just have to get to it, but I don't even know where to start. I just have so much junk in there, and most of it is really needed so I can't throw it away. I need to figure out how I want to use the space and then work on an organizational plan so that everything has a home. I just don't even want to start.
3 comments:
There are several plans of attack. I have an entire basement to tackle, so I know how you feel.
1) analyse exactly what you will use this room for. Is it just a giant walk-in closet? or do you actually want to do anything in here?
2) List everything you thnk you want to have in here. The list all the things that will be here until Junior out-grows his rambo stage. The latter, of course only need a temporary solution, others, like your canvasses will need permanent, and probably specialised ones.
3) Plan, on paper where you want things to go--roughly. DO NOT BUY ANYTHING with respect to storage or furniture YET.
4) Now you can go into the room with buckets/baskets/bags for the following: things to toss (yes, there will be), things that really should go to another room (now that you know what this room is for) things to good to toss, but to sell or give away.
5) Then, I suggest you start piling like things together. For me, this would best be done if I pretended I was moving. So, all the books, here. All the camping stuff, there. All the clothes. The overflow of scrap supplies. The fabric. The papers. You get my drift. Weed and cull as you go. Oh, one thing first--clear the floor or a surface first so you have a place to put the piles as you sort.
6) Now, you can go and buy the organizational stuff you need to keep the area functional. This can get as detailed as figuring out the exact dimensions of linear shelving, or specialized containers (such as I need for my scrapping stuff.)
Schedule your time to do this. If you want to take a month, take a month. And you know how much time you can handle at a time in the room--15 minutes--an hour?
Hope that helps.
What Alana said. That was very well put.
I'm thinking One Room Cure at AT Spring Cure time. Would that work for you?
I know how overwhelming looking at a room like that can be.
I will post some links to office organization type sites later today.
part of the problem that I have is that I have started to pile ( I use bankers boxes) and then I have to stop due to "Rambo" (good name Alana) and then I forget where I am in the process and then it started to go all hinkey again. Good ideas about planning though, I am a planner, so this may be the best way for me.
Right now the space is a walk in- drop off closet. I need it to function as my studio- a place for my art supplies and my finished pieces, and a place to get away from all the boys in my house.
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