THE FIRST STEP...

... to any project is getting organized. Before I can work on any of the daily projects from my GOAL list, I need to get the Studio back in order. So today, I thought I'd share a few horrific pictures with you and let you join me as I dig my way out.

 This is the view of my office/ studio from the doorway. Can you say DISASTER! And it is worse than it looks if you are standing amidst the piles. Once I get in there, it won't take long to put stuff in order, it's just been making myself take time away from the writing to do so. The book case in the far back corner is all books I want to read and pass on this year. I've not counted. But if I can free up that shelf, I can unpack my 'keepers' - thus emptying a tub in the basement. The next shelf to the right is my vintage book collection. I really wish I had someplace better to store these and I'm working on that.

The cabinet the TV is sitting on is full of all my research books. I write fiction and have a list of historical fiction pieces I want to write so I've accumulated a vast amount of material on various points in history. On top of the cabinet I have my PS2. The game I keep trying to make time to get too. But it's there when I'm ready. You can also see stereo speakers. We've discovered the only thing that works on the dual cassette/ cd/ stereo is the radio part. So that will come out. But you can bet I'll have something to fill that space in a hurry.

The desk in the foreground is my stamping table. As you can see, not a square inch of room to stamp. Here's a picture of that corner taken from the office chair:

The entire stamping space takes up approximately 80 square feet. That's a lot of space... when things are organized and put where they belong. In the chair underneath the blue tub is a Epson photo printer my husband picked up at an auction. Everything is there except ink cartridges. When we priced those out, we discovered it is cheaper for me to get my prints done at Walgreens when they have a print sale. So not sure what I'm doing with that. Anyone want a printer? Oh, and the tub goes back to storage at the end of the month. It is holding my bathroom towels/ wash clothes until time to take down my snowman display in the bathroom.

Finally, for the Studio portion.. this stack is a hodge podge of things that just need figured out. I had started collecting the Starbucks bottles when I thought we would be building my new studio this spring. I saw a room partition display in a magazine I wanted to do. Well, I won't be doing that any time soon so not sure what I'm doing with the bottles. The litter case boxes were to be used in place of gym baskets on the shelves. Nope, won't need those either. Those will go to recycling next week.

The plastic cart is full of memorabilia, papers and embellishments to use in Adrian and Abby's scrapbooks. So yeah, if I work on my GOAL list, then this should get emptied and need a new home by end of the year.

Last pic on my list is of the writing corner of this room.
I'd love to replace the monitor with a flat screen, however the tower has been acting up so I'm not sure replacing it is even worth the expense at this point. I'll just work around it. for now.

I need to go through the stuff pinned to the bulletin board and those two tubs of 3.5" floppies. I have a converter but I need to make time to go through them and see which files I need to safe then get rid of them. Wish there were a green way to recycle those things. There has to be a mixed media something or other... right? Hmmm

So that's the scary office/ studio combination and my project for this week. Maybe for Friday's post I'll have a surprise for you. Because until I get this done, the weekly schedule just is NOT going to happen!

What does your space look like? Leave a comment and link me to pictures of your creative space... good or bad!

Creative Blessings!