Friday, April 30, 2010

Spring Cleaning, a Genetic Imperative? Bead Organization, Part Two

I realized during my recent cleaning/organizing effort with my beads, that this may be the last remaining symptom of the Spring Cleaning bug I inherited from my mom.

When I was a kid, turning out the closets, cupboards and storage areas in the house was an annual ritual. I think it must have been this way back in the caveman days...after a long winter sweeping out the accumulated bones, fire cinders and schmutz of months of people huddling together for warmth must have been a great relief, not to mention a hygienic necessity. 

Why this is mostly limited to women, I don't know. Do men who live alone spring clean? I sincerely doubt it. 

Just like the urge to buy school supplies in late August, spring cleaning is an urge I still get. Fortunately, I've learned to mostly quell it. I don't do heavy cleaning anymore, and whatever organizing I need to do I try to spread throughout the year. 

Yesterday, the additional two drawer units I ordered arrived. I've labeled and filled the drawers, though I still have one drawer left over. I'm sure it'll get filled pretty soon. I was able to break up three of my "color" drawers for beads...the brown/tan/orange one is now two, one for tan/beige and one for brown/orange. I split out the true blues from the blue/blue-green drawer. And now red is split by size, large & small. Those were the three fullest drawers, and now I'll be able to find things much more easily, not to mention acquire new stuff. Ahem. Eventually. Not soon.

And now I have a drawer for my ultrasuede, a separate spot for all my stringing materials and wire, and a whole drawer for cabochons. Designing will be easier, though I'll be sliding a lot more drawers during the process. 

All this is in service of getting stuff off the top of the desk, so I can spread out and work, and also keep things a bit neater. The work area is in the living room, after all. Yesterday I also got a couple more of the project cases for seed bead storage, and I'm still seeking a way to stack those while retaining an easy way to get them out of the stack. Whatever I want is always at the bottom. 

The goal is easy access, logical organization, and elimination of visual clutter. Less crap, more beading.

Still a work in progress.

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