Studio Musings

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox and the Never-Ending Studio Re-Org

bye bye studio - thanks for the memories!
2018 has been a year of huge changes for me.  The most recent - I’ve moved my studio back home.  For the past ten years I’ve rented an amazing space in an old warehouse building.  With 15’ ceilings, and 10’ tall windows along the east wall, it was a fantastic place to work.  Unfortunately, with changes to the various bus routes, it kept effectively getting further and further away from home, to the point that getting there involved walking a little over a mile, and two bus rides.  The entire commute could take well over an hour, each way, depending upon time of day.  And anything I wanted to bring to or from the studio had to be schlepped in my backpack.

I refused to give up the studio last year.  Packing while I was dealing with my health issues would have been awful, and giving the studio up would have felt like a sign of defeat.  This year, I’m doing a lot better physically (so long as I stick with my strict diet).  But I still wasn’t going to the studio, except for ‘foraging trips’ to collect supplies to bring home for my next project. 

This summer, I decided it was time to simply move the studio home.

Guest bedroom closet, freshly painted & ready to load
Which was easier said than done.  I’d had the studio space for ten years.  It was almost half the size of our two-bedroom house.   My plan was to spend the last two weeks in August reworking our guest bedroom so that it could do double duty as a studio as well, earmarking the guest bedroom closet as my craft storage space. In preparation, I emptied the closet, repainted and splurged on new craft-supply organization system through BestCraftsOrganizer.com.

Unfortunately, shipping took a lot longer than expected due to storms and power outages and who knows what craziness, so the system wasn’t here yet before moving day, let alone installed and ready to use.  



waiting for storage furniture to arrive
Moving day, everything that came home got piled into my living room and dining room.  The next day our two young nieces came for a very welcome, but unplanned visit.  So everything got stuffed into the closet willy-nilly using the storage that was already there.   Our nieces headed home just in time for us to head out for our 25th anniversary trip.  And I willfully ignored the hoarders disaster that was my home. 

On the plus side, Best Craft Organizers was willing to work with me, and they held my order at their warehouse until we got home from our trip, so I didn't have to worry about the boxes arriving while we were gone.




my new storage system




Fast forward to the end of September, I’m back from my trip and the craft organizers arrived - 12 big boxes that once again filled my living room.  To get them set up, I had to empty the front bedroom closet, and find room to store everything inside.  Yikes!

Then it was build the new furniture, and modify the old closet storage system.  That only took a day.  But I’m still working on sorting and organizing the supplies back into the closet.  Which is where I got stuck in Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox.  Every day I sort through several more boxes.  And the number of boxes waiting to be sorted doesn’t seem to diminish.  As I go through each box, most things get sorted into the new drawers and storage systems.  Some of it is earmarked for giveaway.  But far too many things get set aside on the guest bed for further sorting, or because I simply wasn’t sure what to do with it.  At the end of each day, the guest bedroom looks like the aftermath of an explosion, although the closet remains neatly organized.


See?  The closet is looking fine, but the bedroom was a disaster!
We’re now speeding through October, and if I can stay focused this weekend, I think I can make it through the last big hurdle to the studio change over - sorting through four (plus) tubs of fabric.  At the most, I have room for three of the tubs - two large and the smaller square.  They will live under the guest bed.  The extra fabric will either need to be given away, turned into something immediately, or moved to my storage unit.

the closet is almost together
It’s time to get this done so I can get back to actually crafting!  Oh, and did I mention that my nieces may be back next weekend?  And my brother and his whole family will definitely be coming to visit the first week of November?  Yeah, it’s definitely time to finish this. 

Wish me luck!


2 comments:

  1. Great job with the move and organizing!

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    1. Thanks JoJo! It's felt like the never-ending project. I sorted through the fabrics over the weekend, but found more that needed to integrated into the overall space. Amazingly, as of this morning, the room is almost functional again.

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