Changes in the Workroom

 To say we worked hard yesterday would be an understatement. What is about the first pleasant weather that makes a person overdo it? At least these two persons, anyway. But we got a lettuce bed planted, the yard cleaned up, Larry got some work done on a dressing table he's refinishing and I canned 17 pints of white bean soup. Then we got to work on putting together the new shelves for my workroom.

I wish I had a "before" photo to show you but take my word, it was horrible. Totes on the floor, books stacked everywhere, a basket of linens also on the floor, boxes, bubblewrap...you get the picture. I was beginning to feel like an episode of Hoarders. And I hate being so disorganized. I still have too much stuff in here, but I am going to slow down buying and try to reduce some of this inventory. On of the big pluses of the change is that I can finally get into my file drawers without having to move things! That's huge. Lifting and lugging totes full of glass and weighing up to 50 pounds is no fun. The part of the shelving in this photo will eventually be for storytelling things only--first step is to reduce the eBay inventory by getting it sold. As you cna see, I have a lot of books for storytelling, even after doing a huge purge recently. It just takes books to find stories and do the necessary research. The stool in front was an auction buy last month. It was made in Africa and is all hand-carved from one piece of wood. It's very comfortable, the perfect size and height for sitting.

These shelves hold all the eBay things plus some lamps that I will either get to a booth soon, or get rid of. That's a promise to myself. Lamps, I've found are slow sellers and might not be worth fooling with. The puppets on the tree will go into a tote eventually and be put on the storytelling shelves as soon as there is space. I like the tree but it takes up space I don't have.

One problem we have not resolved, and that will take longer is that of storage of bigger furniture items that we are storing to put in the booths when something else sells, or that needs to be repaired or painted before we can sell it. The garage is full; the storage buildings are also pretty full. We plan a good cleanout later this month to get rid of the bad ideas and then reorganize to see what space we can free up. We really need a workshop but can't afford to do that yet. In the meantime, we'll just have to make do as best we can. I'm not willing to rent a storage building because that just adds cost to this whole venture. But when we have to keep something in the house for one reason or another it makes me feel claustrophobic. I really want to get as much as possible of the booth stock out of the house and into some space specifically for that purpose, and at the same time keep the eBay inventory down to what will fit on the new shelves. I often wonder if other resellers fight this same battle, and how they have solved these issues.


Copyright 2012 Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.