Cleaning the Craft Closet, a #projectsimplify Update

I have not been doing all that well with my One Little Word this year. Simplify is such a great word — and I did some good stuff with it at the beginning of the year — and I have every intention of seeing it through in every way I still can with what’s left of the year.

A book coming out (or getting a new contract, or having a book deadline) seems to be my silent permission to let things slide for months. But I’m done.

And to show myself I was serious, I started back in on my yearlong decluttering and simplification project in one of the hardest and most necessary places.

My office closet.

I love this closet. It’s kind of long and narrow, with built-in shelves along the back wall. I bought freestanding shelves that fit under the closet shelf (it was built to have a high bar and a low bar, with a shelf in between) for more practical-for-a-crafter storage.

And then I proceeded to stuff every damn thing in there.

There were books, yes. And boxes of yarn and projects in progress, in timeout, or that I never planned to go back to again.

There were things I was keeping for the girl, rainy day crafts and toys and whatnot. Lot of my craft supplies, too.

Pretty much anything I didn’t quite know what to do with but didn’t want to bother taking to another room ended up in my closet.

There is no before picture. You don’t want to see that.

So I took almost everything out.

All the books.

All the yarn (well, there’s still some in a shoe organizer on the door that needs to be dealt with).

All the supplies and randomness.

I purged a bunch of books and made plans to read a bunch more so I can get them off my shelves.

I organized the supplies and put them on the low shelves.

I brought in craft books that had been scattered through the office.

There’s no yarn in there right now, and many not ever be. But I’m ripping out a bunch of those projects in limbo and trying to figure out what to do with some yarn I don’t want.

The rest of my office is still in the worse-before-it-gets-better phase, but the closet is so. much. better.

Probably the best its been since we moved here.

It makes me happy to go in there.

I actually want to read the mountains of craft books I need to review because they look so much more attractive on a shelf instead of in a pile. (And I know I can get rid of a lot of them once I’ve looked at them. More space!)

And as I’m going through yarn, touching it and thinking about what I might want to make with it, I’m starting to feel some little sparks of creativity return.

The thing is, I knew all of this would happen.

So why did I wait so long?

Getting started is the hardest part, for sure.

But now that I’m going, I hope I won’t let anything stop me.

Do you have a crazy space in your house that you’ve been longing to deal with? How do you think it would feel to have it done? What’s stopping you? I’d love to hear your thoughts and challenge you to get it done!