the battle wages on

Halfway through yesterday, I was lounging lazily on the sofa mentally calculating how many vacation days I have left. There were things that needed to be done and my stress levels have finally stopped acting like a cat whose claws are stuck in a screen door during a windstorm, so I thought what the heck, and took another day off.

I got all the must-do's out of the way early in the afternoon (one of which included yet another visit to the vet, Dooley is coming close to receiving his mail there he's gone so many times now), I decided to pick at my studio. (I blame the scarf for my lack in organizing in there so far.)

One of my favorite tools in my war against my studio (yes, I consider it a war. I believe its lack of cooperation in not cleaning itself is an attitude problem and if I shame it enough in public, perhaps it will change its ways. I don't know if it will work but it can't read so all I can do is shake the laptop at it and snicker, showing my snide comments about it. No, I don't have issues, why?) is this nifty little organizer thing from the kid's section at IKEA.

You can buy four different size drawers for this thing. When I got it during the last major battle, I considered it a triumph. Being a mixed media artist is really the polite way of saying, "I have a whole lot of crap that I make strange things out of." I love to do assemblage and I love to base my fiber art on found objects.

Once this became apparent, people started gifting me things. Now, I'm not complaining about it, I rather love it but it did cause me to stop and seriously consider how to house it all. My first attempt was using the boxes that embroidery thread can be organized in. It sort of worked. I had a lot of what I considered wasted space and all of a sudden I was kicking boxes and cussing at the nerve of the little plastic containers for taking up so much space.

So the unit from IKEA was like a gift from the heavens. I got so excited, I did this:


In a fit of gleeful stupidity, I simply dumped out all of the box's contents into the drawers. Thinking to myself, "Self, this will help you be more creative. Everything is mixed happily into a chaotic little pit of inspiration. Way to go, self, way to go."

Bah.

Dumbest move I ever made. It looked inspirational at first but quickly moved into cussing and swearing as I repeatedly drove things under my fingernails (those porcupine quills are a real &$@%) as I dug through it looking for something to use on whatever piece I was working on. In fact, it got to be such an annoyance that I even stopped going into them.

So I knew that it was on the top ten list of things that needed to be addressed this go around. Today I sucked it up, drug them downstairs to the sofa, and did this:





I admit that I cackled a little bit as I was shoving them all into little baggies. It was sort of like a sneak attack, the little buggers never saw it coming.

Some of them are sitting in a tote bag waiting to be whisked off to the fiber art group meeting I'm going to tomorrow. There were a couple bead collections that managed to somehow spread themselves out over five different bins. I admit without shame that I started to grumble insults at them as I kept discovering them everywhere, it was like a plague. I'm giving the ingrates away just out of spite.

I'm considering getting another unit to plop on top of the one I already have. I find it incredibly useful, the most useful out of anything I have in my studio. If I can track down someone who will be willing to help me put it together (that's the only bummer thing about IKEA, the whole self-assembly thing) then I'll go for it.

But don't tell the studio, it could be the offensive that finally turns the tide in my favor...