Sewing Room Organizaiton

I've put off saying anything so far, mostly because I disliked it so much, but Grandma was moved to a nursing home in March. It was at her request. Her dementia had gotten worse and she was very depressed. She knew she was forgetting things. Since her form of dementia caused sun-downing she was, for the most part, cognizant during the day, and it upset her a great deal. She felt she was a burden and we couldn't seem to convince her otherwise. My uncle made the arrangements and she is in the nursing home now, in a regular ward for the time being, awaiting being moved to their dementia ward as soon as everything can be arranged. I didn't like it a month ago, and I don't like it now, so that's all I'll say on the matter.

With another room available, hubby and I decided to bring Kay downstairs, to have a room of her own, and move Bree in with Ri, leaving the little girls in the room they had shared with Bree. Hubby also decided that it would be best to move the multipurpose room into the room Grandma had used since it was so much larger, giving Kay the smaller room which, although it's the smallest bedroom, is still plenty large enough for her queen sized bed, a bookcase, hope chest, bench and her end table.

It took us about a month to get everything moved around and organized, but part of that was because I let my father and his brothers take their time moving Grandma's things out. They already had all of her other furniture stored at their houses, so it took them a little time to find places for the rest of her belongings.

Kay got all of her things moved out from the room she shared with Ri and arranged to her liking pretty quickly, but I was much slower with the other room. I decided to go through EVERYTHING, right down to my stash of buttons, while going through the process of moving and reorganizing. Many things were culled, even some of our books. I also spent a good deal of time looking for affordable solutions for organizing a sewing room.

Here's what I ended up with.

All the sewing machines are down one wall. Here's mine.

Hubby gave me the tackle box on the shelf to put my buttons in.

Trust me, this cabinet is much neater now.

Most of my sewing and pattern books are on the bottom shelf.

The thread takes up the upper two shelves.

The bins on the door have been cleaned out too; holding my sewing needles, a variety of pencils, a small hot glue gun, a few spools of ribbon and a couple of cutting mats and grids, among other things. Some of the other small items are in the organizer on the base of the lamp on top of the table.

Next is the treadle machine with one of the other machines on top, and Ri's table and machine are on the end.  I just put up her shelf so she's not finished organizing her table yet. There was a little mishap with hanging the shelf that necessitated the lag time required to spackle and paint a small section of the wall. Hey, I said it was a small section (actually two small sections), and I never claimed to be good with a hammer.

One of the baskets holds yarn and knitting needles and the two plastic ones hold quilt fabric that needs to be cut out and sewing projects that have already been cut out and are waiting their turn. Ri's see-through trash can just has to squeeze in the best way it can. All of those baskets have to move when Bree sews, but that doesn't happen on a regular basis yet.

This is the best place I could find for the ironing board right now.

The door to the room stays open and the closet door is usually closed, so it doesn't cause much of a problem. An outlet on the short wall behind the door keeps us from having an extension cord run across the room.

One of the organizational tips I ran across on the internet suggested this method of storing fabric. It works great. When I ran out of pants hangers from the dry cleaners, I went and bought the plastic ones at a discount store.

The longer pieces of fabric are on the right and the shorter ones are one the left.

That was so I could put this file cabinet and organizer drawer under the shorter ones.

The drawer holds lining fabric (since it's slick and would slide off the hangers) and interfacing.

Some of my patterns are in the file cabinet. This is also where Beenie keeps her guitar case.

The other side has a variety of stuff - my knitting bag, some more patterns and boxes of fabric scraps.

The rest of my ribbons, threaded on a wire hanger.

As you can see, we stacked the cabinets that used to hold fabric.

The top is mine. Embroidery supplies, lace, elastic, and other sewing notions share space with DVDs, greeting cards, evelopes, return lables, other officey (yep, that's a word) stuff, and my bibles - yes, I know there's only one there now. I took the other to church yesterday and it hasn't made it back here yet. I did get it out of the car this morning. :D  

The bottom is for the kids. Puzzles, coloring books, crayons, a few books and some school stuff.

The rest of that wall holds the computer, printer, and the other bookcase.

Don't your library books sit on the floor in a reuseable grocery bag, adorned with a frog?

And last, but not least, a table. I originally had the smaller folding table in here, but hubby nixed that and decided the larger table would work better and we would still be able to move around in the room without a problem. He was right. There's more room around the table than there appears to be in this photo.

I love having this table in here. I can cut out fabric without having to haul everything in to the kitchen table. I can lay things out and not have to move them if it's supper time. We actually have enough room to do school, and don't have to move that stuff for lunch if they aren't finished. It's just great.

I didn't really do much with the computer or printer table, but there wasn't much that could be done different with them. I do like the way I have the sewing things arranged now. I've been trying to catch up on some of my stuff. I'll do a post in a couple of days on some more of the things I've been sewing.