Wednesday, October 15, 2008

More Plastic

I am still slowly sorting through the mess in our home. The storage problem around my work area is now pretty much fixed. Worried that I might be hit by another flood, I have transferred all of my semi precious Blackline Masters into two existing plastic boxes and bought a compatible plastic craft box from Big W to store my growing sewing supplies. These three boxes stack up very nicely. The transfer freed up two black paperboard boxes and I used one to store objects that I have been collecting for Montessori purposes, whilst the other one is used to store incomplete sewing projects – these are projects I had started around the time I stopped attending sewing lessons and am now stuck on because I needed help to complete them. Other things stacked or placed neatly under my desk now include two other plastic boxes housing sewing supplies, my new laminator, my puzzle maker and my trusty sewing machine in its very daggy carry bag.

My desk is pretty big but it is usually cluttered with all kinds of stuff because being a part time crafty person, I am forever accumulating a punch here, a stencil there and had given little thought to how I should store them. At times, the clutter has been quite a put off. So I bought another one of those plastic drawers from Officeworks to store these bits and pieces. With everything hidden inside the three drawers, the desk did not only look neater instantly, I also rediscovered precious freed up space as well. We already had a similar plastic desktop organizer except that the old one has 5 drawers instead of 3. That one is used for our complicated finance system. The two organizers are now parked side by side on my desk with my loyal lamp sitting on top of one of them. Someone once informed my mum that I was becoming a spendthrift for buying that lamp. Sixteen and a half years later, this lamp is still loyally doing its job and required only one replacement of its light bulb about 4 years ago. Back to the organizers, because they are light and mobile, I really like how they can be stationed somewhere else temporarily for when I need extra space.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone is reading my ramblings. Part of the reason that I am blogging about how I/we tackle my/our mess is because I think it will encourage me to do more. I am hoping to get rid of the mess by the end of November, at the latest. Part of me is also feeling horrible for solving my storage problems by purchasing and using things made of plastic. I had really wanted to buy wooden boxes from IKEA and I especially liked the ones called SNACK. If I had chosen to do that, I would have to buy enough to replace all of the plastic boxes under my desk for a uniform look and that would have been quite pricey. We have allocated a small budget to ‘upgrade’ our living areas and so far, M has already used up his portion and I have only $20 left in my portion. So, going for natural products is out of the question this time. Plastic can’t possibly be all bad, can it? Despite the guilt, I do feel more assured knowing that some of my fragile paper possessions are now safely stored in waterproofed containers.

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