Sewing/Craft Room Clean Up

Acck, do ever walk into your sewing/craft room and just want to turn around because of how messy you have let it get.

Well, now that I have a door on my sewing/craft, that seems to be happening a lot more often. However, I have developed some very useful storage tips. These tips will also make clean up much easier to clean up when you did let your space get to looking like above. Trust me... that picture above, did not to justice to the mess. Notice how you do not see the floor in this picture. That would have just been to embarrassing to post.

Now, some day I would like to have a fancy pretty sewing room, but I kinda have this feeling that this room won't be mine forever. So this is not a post about my pretty craft room. It is a post about tips to keep it clean or at least to help you clean up quickly.

So how did I get this room clean in less than 15 minutes? I just make sure that everything has a place. Here are my top three issues and my top three solutions.

#1 Rulers - Awwh the rulers and templates and all those nifty tools, but after you use them, the what are you to do with them?

I hang mine up. I just got some command strip type hangers. Slid the ruler though the hook, held it up with the ruler attached spaced them out so the looked some what cute. Just make sure you remove the ruler some what quickly as you have to give the command strips time to set.

#2 Boxes / projects - I needed a way to store all the projects so I went and bought 6 boxes from target. My goal is to only have

six current projects. We will see if that ever happens.

You can see how nicely a project fits in (these do hold layer cakes too). I couldn't find them on target.com, but they have them in the storage section. I think I got them on sale for like 3 dollars each. I started with 4 until, but when I saw I had more room, I added a couple more.

Then I just set them on a bookshelf. And ta da! Nice and organized. Just ignore the pile of bags in the corner and the exercise equipment I should be using right now instead of writing this.

#3 Fabric - I have a couple ways I store fabric. Did you see that bookshelf above? The white boxes have precuts and kits. On the shelf there are also some mini bolts. These particular ones are called Fabric Organizers. 

I just wrap my fabric that is greater than 2 yards on them and then I can easily cut off what I need.I also label them. So that I know what they are. I am always getting my kona and bella mixed up.

Now for the bulk of my fabric. I wish I could afford to buy mini bolts for all my fabric, but as my mom was kind enough to share the ones above with me, I needed a less expensive option. So, I use these nifty stack-able plastic bins. They come as 3 drawer stacks, but you can pop them apart and stack them even higher.

Inside the drawers is the best part. The fabric. I fold anything a 1 1/2 yards or under into nice little squares and then organize them by color. It is interesting what you find out.

Like this drawer. Hello my name is Jenniffer and I don't know what the color yellow is. Nor do I enjoy the warm side of the color wheel.

Case in point. I may have a aqua problem. I seem to really like buying fabric in this color range.

With these storage solutions, in just a few moments, I was able to put everything back in its place, and my room is pretty much clean.

That is if you ignore the need for vacuuming. There was no way I was not going to do that on a week night.

I hope you enjoyed my tour of my sewing/craft room and that you might have found a tip for helping organize your own space.

I am link up over at the sewlux.blogspot.com Stitch & Share Challenge - January 2012.