I recently began summer-cleaning and redecorating my crafting studio, and was admittedly shocked over how much stuff I had to sort through. Hubby helped for a bit, but had to quit after about the 10th time of going "Why on earth did you save this tiny scrap of X? You'll need a new shelf just for all these tiny useless bits, just throw them away." My horrified expression and quick snatching of whatever tiny bit he was holding may also have played a part in his leaving.
Despite coming from a family with I dunno how many quilts made from "half-dollar-scraps" I did finally admit to myself that the bits of so lovely or sentimental fabric were less than stashable (because I wouldn't find more fabric like it to make a nice quilt.) So I ran to the thrift store and bought up a picture frame with some cheap print and matt-board and arranged all the scraps into a mini-quilt inside to hang on the wall. Even hubby admitted it was a fair use of the "useless" scraps.
So now a good portion of the supplies I bought because they are beautiful but haven't enough of them or matching goodies (yet) to do a real project have begun to be used as decorations. I have a great stash of vintage pom-pom and tassle trim in hues so garishly vivid I will surely never use them, but they are like imagination flavoured eye-candy. So I wrapped them up on empty fabric bolts and hung those up too! And of course I have the mandatory apothecary jars full of buttons and spools as well.
But what does hubby say of all this? He walked in check on the bunny and I, and I caught him looking round with an approving nod. "It looks much better this way, you can see everything you have out in the open instead of squirreled away in boxes. But that one tassle-card thingy is kinda empty. We need to buy you some more blue for it, so it balances with the others." I didn't dare admit I'd been thinking the same thing all day. I just smiled and yelled Victory on the inside.
Aside from being constantly on the watch for that blue trim, my supply buying has been at a rare minimum since I can take visual stock of my whole collection too. Mostly replacement buying, rather than the rampant "this is pretty, buy me this!" and I even managed to open up this shop to help me destash stuff I already have and realized I would never get around to using or didn't know why I had it in the first place. (And all the profits will go to buy me more things I will actually use, win win!) Which also met with hubby's approval and earned an "I am very proud of you for being able to let go of these things."
Cuniculus also approves of this new everything-visible storage system, particularly the random scattering of boxes on the floor that I am sorting out onto the shelves. He spends a fair portion of his very active nights in the room with me now. Funny how that "leave me alone and get out of my cage" rabbit has turned into a "wait for me!" bunny over the last year and a half. We did have to get creative in our shelf layout to make sure that all the trouble supplies, like beads, paint, and dyes, are up high enough to be out of his reach, despite those being the heavier shelves. He also loves when I leave the sliding closet doors in the middle of the rails, so he can run through my closet and play peekaboo while I work. Right now that closet is just used to hang the more substantially sized lengths of fabric and a couple of those canvas hanging shelves with my Retrocrafty shop's "stock" of unwanted stash. I'm thinking we may set up a little space in there on the floor for just him, with boxes and blocks and other goodies once his stash-box obstacle course vanishes.
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