a little reorganizing

I'm going to back track a little, since I just emptied my memory card and deposited over a thousand images onto my computer taken over the last month.  There's some good stuff there, folks.  So, I doubt you'll mind indulging me.

Mark and I are preparing to hunker down for another year in our teeny space, much to our disappointment. Every cloud has to have a silver lining, though, so we are taking the opportunity to continue the work we began during Lent by carefully re-considering our things. Just last night I pulled around the furniture in the living room again and listed our sofa on Craigslist.  We've only had it about 8 months (it wasn't new- we bought it used on Craigslist), but our space is constantly cluttered no matter how often we tidy and I'm thinking that if we traded in that huge sofa for shelving space that we'd stop using our love seat as storage (or accumulation, rather).

As part of that constant effort to rearrange and continue to seek the best use of our space and ownership energies, I took some time to rearrange the shelving in our bedroom.  It was a (relatively) quick project and the results were extremely satisfying.

obligatory before photo.

things had gotten really bad. see all those fantastic vintage hand towels? stacked in front of books...

before- the fabric didn't fit on the allotted shelves. 

before- things were really kinda jammed in there...

after- so much tidier!

after- sheets are folded and color coordinated (except for solids)!

after- books have their own shelves, and there are extra shelves for pillow cases and fat quarters.

after- the best part is this basket that I intend to use for scraps and hems.

Our bookshelves have to do triple duty. We use them for books (obviously), storage of sewing and other things, and display for our tchotchkes we might put on tables if we had the space (like the candles up there). In an ideal world, we wouldn't have all those things out on display, gathering dust, making our small space look more cluttered. But, this is what we have to work with, and at least it's looking neat now.

We're redesigning our living room this weekend (Craigslist is my friend) to provide even more shelving and table space for eating, homework-ing (Mark, not me) and sewing (me, not Mark). Maybe if I can find an older photo of how our furniture was arranged before I can do another reveal. Taking photos of the way things are when I am unhappy with it and doing something about it at 2 in the morning is not something I've remembered to do yet, but I doubt last night will be the last time that happens!