Looking at my dining room, or what I have christened “The Yarn Room” today, it would appear that organization hasn’t been to difficult. I have my 8’x4′ pegboard full of yarn in color order:
My sock yarn arranged neatly on the bookshelf:
Push pins marking where I’ve made sales in the US:
And, although it is an old picture, sometimes the needles make it back into the mason jars:
But let’s face it, it’s a struggle to put the yarn back on the hook or shelf and the needles and hooks back in the jars in creative mode. Ten skeins of yarn on the couch later there are hooks lost between the couch cushions and more WIP than I can count on my fingers. It is always a blur in the moment, but once the creative wave passes it feels like a tornado just passed through. It almost feels as though my brain doesn’t realize the disaster I’m creating. How do you prevent the disaster in the midst of the chaos?
By the time the creative mania has ended I am so exhausted and the disaster stays…. and stays… and stays while I continue to create in the middle of it. By the time I have the energy to reorganize it’s three days later and looking at the mess and knowing that I created it frustrates me more than the mess itself. The frustration then delays the cleaning even more and a week later I finally reorganize.
The biggest struggle is avoiding the disaster in the first place. How does a person manage to dive into a creative mode and not turn their living room into a disaster zone? How can I train my brain to, in the midst of being overly excited by a new creation, clean up after myself as I go along.
As I sit in my living room now staring at an armchair that is hidden under 9 blocking mats with the qulitghan almost finished on top, a partially created mermaid tail afghan taking up on cushion on the couch, an ottoman covered in the accent yarn for the lattice blanket with the blanket on the floor next to it, and all of my barstools taken up by WIP. And am I too exhausted to clean it up? YES Does it frustrate me? YES And this is why my organizational struggle is so real.
The Crochety Old Lady 