Organised Chaos

Dedicated to Lefty and all his years of nonthanked service.

What a difference a tidy blank crafting desk makes. To the negative that is. I wish I'd known I was a clutter person before I went through the tidying process, but Kay Sarah...

I had been moaning (in almost an English way, dare I suggest it) that I no longer had the space to create for months before Christmas. This was pretty much true - you should have seen my craft room during the last quarter of the year - you couldn't see the bottom of my desk, and the Argos cheapo bookshelf had long-time given up on the load of scrapbooking and crafting idea books I own and collapsed. So all the books and magazines were overtaking the carpet in large hip-deep piles. There were various layouts in states of potential scattered across the desk, piles of photograph envelopes, and embellishments lumped into any handy drawer they might fit in.

I had inherited an old metal file drawer set from the previous house owners. That, and they also left a dining table. And a glasshouse. All of which were in various states of dis-repair but obviously they simply couldn't be bothered moving them out of the house when they moved out. The metal file cabinet was heavy, so I left it in the corner of the room, and topped it with various plastic drawer units for supplies as the years advanced. Another plastic drawer set had come from my move from New Zealand. It had a name - Lefty, due to the fact that the left hand drawer was a bit broken when we bought it. In New Zealand there is a company called Payless Plastics, and for a pittance we adopted old Lefty and put him to great use.

What got me the most with my old setup and complaints was the general "bus-i-ness" of the whole thing - different filing drawer units, and topped off with huge murals of Egyptian artwork (again inherited from the previous owner). She'd even decorated my large semi-circular inset craft desk. Egyptian decor is not conductive towards creativity, especially when augmented with mess.

For Christmas, Santa brought me two huge 6 x 6 foot Ikea Shelf Units, each with 25 cubes which are exactly the right size to fit 12 x 12 cardstock. What a good MATH (Man about the House) I have. My mother-in-law even added to my presents and gave me an Ikea storage box designed to fit exactly into a cube. In ruby red - which currently matches my Egyptian ceiling I must add.

We spent the Christmas to New Year break putting up those shelves. It was definately a two-man (or one man, and one little hopeful crafter) job. The shelving units are extremely heavy, and extremely difficult to align the cubes into squareness (there's no doubt a technical name for this, and something related to those spirit levels and a good mallet hammer - both of which were not used in our household). We only managed one a day, so the putting up of each unit became a long-winded (and admittedly sweaty) affair. Of course, it took us a good day again each time, to clear out the clutter (books on floor, Lefty the drawer unit, etc) temporarily to allow us to find wall space for the shelves once made. And there was a minor sizing issue with the last shelf unit, which fits across a small part of our wall radiator. However, I should count my blessings that my craft den actually fits fifty 12 x 12 shelves in it, plus the desk, a coffee table, our household file cabinet, a door into the downstairs toilet, a ranchslider window to the outside, a widescreen TV with my MATH's Playstation 2 box and a lazyboy leather chair with push out foot rest. Oh, and room for the budgie cage too.

Finally they were there - and my magazines and books made an appearance in cubes. I then complicated things even more so by going out and finding some bargain Really Useful Boxes (known locally as RUBs) - some plastic boxes of various sizes, all with good clickable lids. I bought them in red and green - red to match the one storage box from my MIL and green because the combination seemed so, well, Christmassy. My embellishment collection came out of the drawers and into the RUBs and cubes. I even (don't laugh) labelled each RUB with it's contents. There are RUBs for sewing materials, RUBs for eyelets, RUBs for ink pads, RUBs for chalks and RUBs for everything. And my desk made an appearance.

The next day all the mess went to the local dump. It is with deep regret that I must now inform you that I treated Lefty with great callousness. A dedicated drawer unit for years, and one which made a 12,000 mile journey for me - was simply tossed into a waste bin. I feel a lump in my throat just writing this. That's one of the perils of organising - it causes great adrenalin rushes and you do things in haste which perhaps might be worth a night or so's contemplation. The inherited metal file cabinets went out in the rubbish also - I don't miss them.

There is another cause for concern - we will have to move everything when we finally get around to applying the cream paint overtop of the Egptian walls and desk. I can see a postponement there, as we contemplate the actual work effort involved.

And then there's the repercussions on my creativity. A blank desk is something like a blank piece of paper, right? You can't start anything, for fear of it being wrong. It's not like creating in a heap of mess where any wrong directions are hidden behind the pile of fluffy ribbons you purchased from the local market stall but never used.

So saying that, I have managed to create not one, but two layouts over the last two weeks since O Week (Organisation Week), plus a circle journal entry. I did notice on the last layout that I left a lot of mess out all over the large desk, whilst in creating-mode. Was this to perhaps give it that creative / lived-in appearance? But I cleaned it up afterwards.

There are two other bonuses out of the O Week Chaos - in having to move all my embellishments into the cubes and RUBs I discovered many which I'd completely forgotten I owned. And, goodness you should see how much more spacious the room is now.