Cleaning, as Requested

Hi everyone.  Not sure I am glad it is Friday (or just about as I write this Thursday night)  as summer is going way too fast, but it is just about the weekend, and it is going to be a really nice day. Hurrah for that. I am ready for a little break from the heat and humidity.

So several of you readers asked for me to show you how my happy space cleaning is going. Sorry, I didn't take any pre-cleaning photos ( the mess was rather embarrassing-even just with my own family! Grin!) 

OK, I guess I lied. (Not on purpose really.) When I went to post my clean photos I found this photo of Maddie and Pete keeping my company while I made some art one day earlier this summer. You can only see some of the mess, but I am sure you can image it.

The door in the background is partially closed because there is so much behind it I can't even close it and all my projects are scattered in the floor between me in my seat and the dogs.

Now here's a few of the now, not fully finished project.

But first, a little background.

Last summer my daughter moved out and took all of those things she didn't want to take and stuffed them in her bedroom closet. Literally, you couldn't even open the door without something falling out. I asked her everytime she came home to go through her things, which of course, she never did. So project number one this summer was to clean out her closet and move my work clothes in there asmy bedroom closet is small and the hubby's clothes take up all of the hanging rack.

So what does this have to do with studio cleaning?

Well all my work clothes were hanging in the closet of the bedroom that I use as a studio. Now that I moved them out, I had a wall of space!

Now the second part to this story is that I had a cabinet in my upstairs  landing that stored some linens in (my house has only bedroom closets-no other). The shelves in this cabinet wouldn't stay in place as the pegs that held them were broken and the cabinet was a little too big for the space anyhow. So I decided to move a  different cabinet I had from another spot in the house to the landing, and then move the cabinet with the broken shelf pegs into my studio.

I bought a dowel to cut and make shelf pegs, which I did and it fixed my shelf problem perfectly. Now I had an area to put all my journals into, as well as the books I either plan on making into journals or that I use pages from in my art.

And in the other cabinet photo you might notice some plastic drawers and bins next to this cabinet. The drawers came out of my daughter's closet, and she so kindly donated them to the cause. They fit and work out perfectly  because in my daughter's room I had some bins of yarn, and now I could move that and some fabric I had into this. It is now easy to get those supplies when I want them.

On the top of my cabinet I can stack a bunch of plastic storage bins and also move a little mini IKEA desk storage unit where I keep my stickers. If you're having a hard time reading the edges of my bins, it's because I have used them before and I still need to make some new labels for them. 

And now I am working on cleaning up my stamps and doing a purge to get rid of those that I've had for almost 2 decades and which I haven't used in forever.

I'm getting close to finishing that.

And this floor was covered with all the things I took out of the closet that I wanted to rearrange, and now it's starting to look pretty good.

I'm getting there.

And here's a page that I created in that mess.

And I am linking up to Art Journal Journey and the latest challenge: Count Your Blessings. This month's host is the lovely Elizabeth and her handsome sidekick Bleubeard.

Not only are summer flowers a blessing but so is making art. I was lucky in Newfoundland that I could get some French printed materials. That's because (in case you don't know) Canada is a bilingual country. with 2 official languages-English and French. 

Guess I've said enough for today. Happy start to your weekend.

And as always, thanks for visiting.