A room of one's own
When Himself and I moved to Houston, we bought a house. A house with a lovely two car garage. Which was promptly rendered unfit for motor vehicles.
I can't really complain about this since I've ended up getting some really really really gorgeous furniture out of the deal. And I was not surprised when one of the criteria when we were looking at places to live in the UK was "where am I going to put my workshop?" Our current adobe has a garage, something not very common here, and it is also blessed with off street parking. So...long story short, part of our container shipment of "household goods" included a router, a drill press and a whack-load of hand tools. And our car sits happily in the driveway.
The bits and pieces of my hobby have been scattered around the house for quite a while. Most of the stash was in the gear room upstairs (the ridiculously small fourth bedroom that held all our camping stuff, skis and most of my yarn), but there was a big box of fiber under Devil's bed, and an ever-growing pile of stuff in progress next to the couch by the TV, and a spinning wheel and fiber all over, dyeing equipment in the laundry room... You get the picture.
A few weeks ago, I decided that Something Needed To Be Done. I have an inherently greater tolerance for clutter then my husband, but every so often I get a bug up my ass and Must Clean Immediately. The result of the most recent bug (and yes, this was inspired by the discovery of M*(&*@)#^$ in my yarn), was the movement of all yarn and fiber, as well as some fabric, down to the empty room in the playhouse at the foot of the garden that was being used as tri bike storage. When I was done hauling boxes down there (and putting yarn in the freezer), it looked like this:
There was shit everywhere. However, a few afternoons while the girls played "Butterfly Catcher" in the garden and a £75 trip to Ikea and it now looks like this:
I sorted yarn, I threw out (gasp!) things I was never going to do anything with, I put all my leftovers in one bin so I can use them up in little things. I also got a desk which is not yet quite cleared off, and there are a set of drawers next to with stitch markers, measuring tapes, my hand combs, sample cards and various other miscellaneous bits and pieces (where the heck did all those beads come from anyway?) The last thing to do is hang up a cork board. I envision using this as a lovely escape to design, work on projects, etc, but I suspect it will really just serve as a repository for all things wooly that aren't being worked on this month. Even so, it's so nice to have some space for my hobby.
Plus, I think Himself appreciates not having it spread all over the house. At least not quite so much as it was!