A trip to IKEA on Saturday for something entirely different ended up in a spur-of-the-moment purchase of a shelving unit from the "as-is" section. The unit was really marked down, and for what I'm not sure - it was scratched, but you'd have to be an inspector or something to notice the imperfections. The only real hassle was that the unit is huge and we had to either strap it to the roof of the car, or take it apart. We ended up doing both - strapping to the car to bring it home, then realizing it was too big to get down the stairs to my basement studio, so had to take it apart anyway. It wasn't any problem at all, really (well, for me, anyway. I kind of just waved at it and asked my husband to make it magically appear in the basement. He did.).

I'm kind of a messy person. Let's just blame it on being creative, shall we? I love organizing and giving everything a place, but it's just difficult for me to remember where those places are when I'm "in the moment". Especially when I don't have an organized space to begin with - it just gets worse from there. I've been finding that after the flurry of making things for my craft shows, I have to spend an entire day just re-organizing my space. Not the best use of my time! Here are a few examples of my studio post-craft-show-preparation-mayhem:

In the back of mind, I'd thought of a million ways to organize my space, re-group shelves, re-place items that I use all the time. It wasn't working. Until I found... the shelving units of all shelving units! Well, really, it's just that square unit from IKEA that everyone seems to have. But I saw it, and it was a great price, so home it came with me. And now? It's like the clouds have parted and the angels are singing when I walk into my studio. I'm ready to prepare for the upcoming shows. Not only is everything neat and tidy, it's easily accessible, easily stored, and hopefully, easily put-away-able. I'll let you know how it looks after the next show! Here it is for now - quite a different, no? Added bonus - it hides the gawd-awful furnace! The two tables I use? Used to be his and her desks in our office, until we merged everything onto one desk. The white desks will be for sale once my old dining room table (also an IKEA as-is special!) comes downstairs to be my new work table. This will only happen once my husband finishes building the new dining room table that he promised to have for Christmas - last year....