The Craft Room - Before the 29 Day Organization Challenge

This poor, sad, little room is where I churn out quilts and cards and other decorating stuff (unless I need more space in which case I will move to the dining room table).  There's not a lot of space in here, and that's magnified by the fact that this room has become a hot mess over time.  I need inspiration, and that's why I'm going to take part in OrgJunkie's 29 Day Organization Challenge.

I'm  posting my before a little bit early because I may get some extra special help with this project.

The view from the hallway - that's a dining room table I use for sewing and that weird brown thing in the back is part of a cat condo I was going to do something...with....once.

The view from the exterior wall back in - I know you're jealous of my high quality quilt design wall back there.  The string hanging off the knob of the dresser drawer is a cat toy.  Really.

And a peek inside the closet where there is a true attempt at organization - at one point in time it was very neat and tidy in here.

Based on the first photos you might think that I have zero organizational skills...not so!  This is actually on the landing in the attic.  See how all my altered book stuff is neatly organized and labeled?  I can do it!  Really, I can.  That room just calls to chaos and clutter.  Part of the problem is that it's the gateway to the attic, so anything coming down or going up tends to make a pit-stop on the crafting table or the floor.  It was worse than ever a few weeks ago because of all the holiday decorations that I'd dragged down, then put back up into the attic again.  Ok, some of those decorations were Halloween still.  But now they're all back up where they belong. Imagine what this room looked like a week ago.  *Shudder*

On to the fun part- what will this room become?  It depends on a few factors.

Challenges

•    I want to put my house on the market soon, so I need to fix up the plaster walls and avoid putting a bunch of holes in them once that’s done.  Plus the wall behind the ironing board is actually the chimney wall and defies even Command hooks most of the time.
•  There are three doors all on one interior wall – hallway, closet & attic access.  I wanted to get a picture of them all but I couldn't get far enough away.  Here are two of them -->
• Small space…and I don’t have the budget right now to replace the table as my work surface, plus I need a big area for cutting fabric.
• This room stores craft crap for quilting, a little traditional sewing, altered booking, card making, beading, and random projects I come up with.
•  I have WAY too much quilt fabric but did a purge last summer of everything I thought was ugly at the time – not sure how much more I can force myself to part with.
• I don’t do window coverings – as in curtains - but I do need to put up white wood slat blinds in this room yet, I was holding off until I repainted the trim.

Opportunities

• 3 doors I where I could incorporate over the door storage on at least one side.
• Replace the dresser with a big Expedit unit fromIKEA or a similar smaller cube style storage unit I saw at Menards (not sure if I’ll get to Chicago during this challenge period).
• The closet has a decent, if not ideal, storage system for fabric inside, I could probably find space by re-organizing and refolding things.
•  There is more easy-reach space just up the attic stairs if needed.
• Ok, and I work for SpaceSavers - I can get my hands on cool organizing stuff pretty easily, but I still want to stay low budget on this job.

Redecorating Plan

• Walls will be painted Benjamin Moore “SilverFox” or “Abalone”.
• Trim & doors will be touched up bright white.
• Accent colors will be orange, lime/Kelly green, and maybe sky blue.
•  I need to buy a new chair, or else create a cover for that one with some of the ridiculous amounts of fabric I own.
•  I plan to put down carpet tiles either in the main area of the room or wall to wall – undecided on that just yet, it may depend on how far the box stretches. I just ordered them in Shaw Living Berber Ocean Blue 

That's where I'm at.  I promise not to touch anything until Feb 1...or at least not to organize.  I might go make some more mess if I start another project.