I am cleaning up.

Slowly but surely.

You know how I mentioned in my blog post that one of my goals for the year was to clean out the craft room so it was functional?

Did you ever maybe wonder why I thought that might take a year?

I'm about to share a big deep dark secret with you, guys.

The DDH and I (now +The Roommate) have a five-bedroom house (the DDH used to rent the rooms to college students). And the front corner bedroom, with the two big south- and west-facing windows and the deep(ish) closet I claimed for my craft room. I had a big table to spread out on and drawers filled with scrapbooking supplies, paint, ribbon: the usual sort of DIY-crafty type suspects. I even used it for its intended purpose for about six months.

But now?

This is what the craft room looks like:

Yeah.

And let me point out, I had already spent probably three or four hours cumulatively in there cleaning over the past few months.

It used to be worse.

At one time this was a useful and even organized room.

But then my parents brought some drawers filled with my stuff from high school.

Then they brought a half dozen giant boxes of random stuff.

Then they brought a few more.

And then my mother-in-law gave us a pile of furniture that will all, eventually, be useful and store the supplies that I end up keeping.

And then The Roommate moved in and I had to hastily move all the boxes stored in the guest room into the craft room.

Now I have to sort through my entire life from elementary school onward. Pounds and pounds of school papers and cards and notes from friends and trinkets and presents and toys and just everything.

And in the meantime meantime, I keep collecting more DIY crafty-type supplies: empty jars and containers and old t-shirts and cloth scraps and ribbons and what have you, and I can't even get to the drawers where I would eventually like to store them in neatly organized bliss.

Bit by bit it's coming together. Any time I have a few moments I'll set the timer for fifteen minutes and just work. The place has good bones now, with drawers and shelves and places to store and organize the stuff I packrat away. The giant overstuffed black trashbag you can see in the pictures has been dragged to the curb and another big box is already half-filled with things to toss. So we're getting there.

But yeah. It will probably take all year.