Empty space, yippie!

Ok, I finally have my space back to myself.  I have an empty room.  In a few days I'll have another room too.  Now it's time to get my own routine back.... for now. 

I need to turn things like this....

and this.....

and this.....

back into a somewhat organized set of quilting and art storage that's not overwhelming me or my home.  At the same time I need to stay on schedule with the customer quilts.  True, I have only 4 customers right now.  Those customers are very important to me.  They are also my friends.  My quilting schedule is top priority.  The organizing is second.

Before I can organize anything, I'll need to know what it is I have, and the amount of space required for the storage.  I'm taking an idea from the show "clean sweep" and adapting it to my own organizing.  If you haven't seen that show, it's where an organizing group goes into the home of someone, who's overwhelmed with lots of stuff, and help them reclaim the space for living.  The first thing that's done on every episode is that all the stuff is carried outside and sorted into piles of like stuff.  Books in a pile, crafts in a pile, toys in a pile, and so forth.  Then everything is counted, measured, picked through for duplicates, some is discarded, some is sold in a yard sale, and so forth.  What's left over after all the sorting and discarding is then put back into a well organized space.

Realistically, I can't carry all my stuff outside like they do on the show.  If I did that, my stuff would be gone in a matter of minutes.  My neighbors would think I was being evicted.  The one empty room I have is going to act as my sorting area for now.  A little at a time, I plan to move everything into that area and go through it all.  When it's all sorted and measured I can start getting together the organizing containers and finding the space to store it.  Eventually this one room will become a living room so the stuff can't stay there forever.  Hmm.... that's the goal anyway.