Even though I am considered a “housewife”, I don’t really do much (or enough) “housekeeping”. Or cleaning. Or whatever it is you call it. But now that the holidays are fast approaching, I find myself with alot of house guests and friends coming to stay with us. We are booked every weekend! Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love hosting and having people over (and cooking for everyone!), but it IS a swift kick in the pants to get the house somewhat presentable and “clean” (see how I put that word in quotations?). =)

I’ve been dreading cleaning the craft room for a year. The closest picture I have to a “before” shot would be this one (while viewing it, imagine the mess to be 3 times worse, and that you can’t even see the floor).

Now here are the “after” shots! (Click on each of the photos, and you’ll be directed to the same Flickr photo where you can mouse-over and see all the tags I made for where everything is organized in its place.)

Doesn’t that give you an “ahhhhhh” feeling of satisfaction in your soul? When things are set in their proper place, I have to admit, there is some psychological comfort there (at least for me). Especially when the cleaning/organizing process took nearly two full days!!

And so, while I was cleaning/organizing, I found 7-8 other WIPs I had completely forgotten about. A few of them were socks. Which is sad, because I suppose I can never finish the second sock because I had no idea what I did with the first, and left no notes, or any indication on where I left off last. So I ripped out a couple of them. That was sad at flrst (the letting go part), but then relieving (relief that I have less projects on my “to-do” list to finish). And then I found this little fun thing I made a year ago:

Coasters!! I must have been trying to use up all my leftover Rowan Cotton Glace. 

What a treat, to find a fun thing amidst the yucky mess. =)

I hate to admit it, but I am a resolution kinda gal. The thing is, I don’t have to wait til New Year’s to want to start over, but sometimes it takes an excuse like New Years to kick my butt in gear. One of the more immediate items on the to-do list is to clean this baby up:

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It’s hard to be creative when your place of creativity is trashed. It’s hard to find anything in my piles of projects (I guarantee you that I have +10 WIPs somewhere in all those bags). My knitting is MIA in there, I can’t find my crochet projects, and my jewelry stuff is everywhere, and my sewing is buried under everything. Very uninspiring. So I will be cleaning that up in hopes that I can reclaim my creativity and hopefully grasp control of this area. Wish me luck. =P

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On a brighter note, I made some handbag purchases that momentarily distracted me from my craft room frustrations. This portion of my post is an homage to my friend Jen’s Thursday Purse Days. Not only do I love my new purchases, I got a deal on them too, which I’m sure would make Jen proud.

1. Red Handbag

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This handbag was on sale and I paid only $25! It was the last one on the shelf. What’s so great about this was not only the color and the structure of it, it has a coordinating CLUTCH that fits right in – if you need to downsize, it’s so convenient! How awesome is that?

2. Chococat Handbag

It’s Chococat, hellooo! $13 at a Sanrio outlet store. Enough said. =)

I think I LIKE the idea of being organized, and sometimes I can even be anal about it, but in most cases, I’m too lazy to be a neat freak. I do, however, love all things stationary-ish and anything related to office supplies. This also applies to anything container-like (see The Container Store). Give me an office supply catalogue any day and I’ll actually take the time to thumb through it just as if it was a yarn catalogue – eyeing things that I don’t necessarily need, but it’s just eye-candy for me. =)

So today when I came across this craft container, a swivel/revolving desk organizer at my local Target’s, I nearly died with excitement. I instantly purchased it and when I got home, I went straight upstairs to my craft room to put it together.

I figured it would be a useful purchase, to help me clean up this mess on my desk (here is the before picture):

After some organizing, all clean (the after picture):

It measures 9 inches x 9 inches, all the way around. There are a couple drawers, complete with compartments, a side for magnets, two places to display a pretty picture, and oh, did I mention that it swivels?? =) A couple angles of my revolving cube organizer (click for a close-up):

Seriously, I’m so stoked about this piece of desk organization that sometimes I just sit at this desk and swivel it around and stare at it (lame, I know). It’s only a matter of time when things get messy again, but for now, I’m enjoying how everything is placed in their proper place. Yay! =)