A Better Way

I called in sick to work today.  I've had a nasty bug for a few weeks that I can't seem to shake, so I decided that I would take the day off and try to rest.  I slept late, lay on the couch with a book drinking tea, had a semi-nap...  Now what?  One side of me tried to talk myself into doing some work (I have a pile of essays that need marking), but the side that knows the weekend's coming up said, "Just do it on Saturday," and won.

So here I am in the craftroom - what a surprise.  After looking around on Pinterest and my bookmarked blogs, I realized I have no reason for my room to be such a mess any more.  For the past few weeks I've been letting it slide, justifying the mess by saying that I am preparing for the craft fair.  Well, the last one was 2 weeks ago.  Time to get my butt in gear.  So, in great procrastinator form, I decided that organizing my scrap bin was priority #1.  Never mind the piles of things placed around the edges of my craft space - those can wait.

When I'm done working on a project or come home from a workshop, all of my scraps go into a huge rubbermaid drawer.  It's about 24" wide, 7" high, and about 9" deep.  There is a LOT of room in there.  I really didn't want to deal with it, and contemplated throwing the whole thing in the fire that's raging in the wood stove, but I thought better of it.  I decided that I would pull out all of the pieces that I had cut to card size and score them, and then put them in a nice little box, ready to go.  This took care of quite the pile (that's the bottom row in the pic).  Then I still had a lot of papers that has pieces punched out or cut away, making it useless as a card, but perfect for making base layers out of.  So then I cut as much as I could into 4 X 5.25 pieces.  Wow.  There were a lot of these (top row in the pic).

So then I was left with 489 little pieces.  If it was smaller than 3" square, it went in the fire.  Now I just have a nice little box of scraps (white and vanilla have their own box), and I have learned a good lesson:  Cut your extra pieces into matting layers before throwing them into the scrap bin.  This will save you time in the end, and keep your drawer nice and tidy.  Pat on the back for me.  

Now, I think, would be a good time to re-alphabetize my bookshelves...