crafting desk – Kathy Bohannon Creatively Blessed

PART ONE: THE DESK

So I binge-watched Marie Kondo’s Tidying Up, and here’s the short list of what I got out of it:

I like her way of organizing.
With all due respect to the Shinto culture, I’m not gonna “thank” inanimate objects for their service. I do, however tip well in restaurants.
In order to achieve my crafty-McCrafter spirit, my studio needed some serious Kondoness.

My studio is a large room made out of two bedrooms. We took the wall down, left the bathroom and BOOM! We have a studio. Okay, I have to add that we did install specialty lighting and a pretty nifty floor too.

I didn’t have to buy much for the room because I have a fair amount of IKEA storage units, a result from “back in the day” when my kids freed me from the tasks of daily drama / duties / exhaustion (ie: they GREW UP) and the hubby and I invested in making a special place to keep me quiet all day.

Thus a studio was born. Then we moved back to our hometown, renovated a house and boom! This bigger studio was born.

The result is a place for every task, however, those tasks began piling up. They piled up because I was trying to hold onto things that, for lack of better explanation, didn’t “spark joy”. There were the stacks of paper that I was keeping in case of, well, I have no idea in case of what. I was just hoarding them and actually, they weighed me down to even know they were sharing space in the room with me. For some reason, it took a bit of Kondo to transcend me into the world of Toss This Crap OUT.

Once I bagged up all the cardstock and retired papers, I didn’t thank them for hanging out in my studio, but I DID vow to never keep such a stash again.

Here’s the thing: I even had stuff from – ahem – 30 years ago when I was a beginning papercrafter. Ok, so it was more than 30 years ago, but who’s counting? Well, I am, but I’m pretty much over the guilt now. Because: Kondo.

Where to start? Well, that corner unit that looks like a bomb was dropped. It’s the bookshelf full of “blanks”. These are unadorned, unpainted, un-vinyled, un-etched items. You get it – items that are waiting to be crafted upon. I honestly DO get great joy from walking into my studio empty handed and emerge with a great wedding gift (example: a carafe with the bride and groom’s monogram etched into the glass. Thank you, Silhouette Cameo and etching fluid!) So purging some things and reorganizing that bookcase was pretty awesome.

The “blanks” bookshelf is on the left. My vinyl and heat press are in the center. I have a kid’s table for the Littles to use when they visit the studio. They have their very own (real) craft supplies.

Note: the door on the right is actually on a sliding track and slides like a barn door. It leads to the bathroom.

I realized y’all might want to actually SEE that door, so here ya go. The “window” is plexiglass and covered in a translucent vinyl. I added a French design with grey vinyl and voila! A door is born. If you speak (or read) French, you’ll know it says “Bakery”. That is definitely NOT a bakery in there.

Once I Kondo’d the blanks area, I headed to my “business” desk. This is a non-crafting area that serves as the holder of my laptop, keeper of my planner stuff and household business stuff. What I like most about this part of my studio is the window that offers morning sun and glimpses of the back yard fire pit, which is where I keep the hubs when he’s not in his shed.

Y’all: I got rid of a lot.

For the overall tasks ahead, I moved a 6 foot folding table into the room (should have lost a few pounds because there was much squeezing to get by it) and it served as a holding station for things to sort. I emptied the top of the desk, wiped everything down and added back only the items that I knew I would need, tossed the rest.

The finished area is awesome. There is one task left to do. I left myself a note in my pen box (yep, just like Marie says, use little boxes to organize) that says, “Get rid of all pens I don’t love. Replace with Pilot Acroball.” Yep. I found a pen that I need in order to live a normal life. One that will not skip and it isn’t too fat or too thin. If you’re as “pen”ticular as I am, you know the feeling of grabbing a pen that will not spark joy of any sort. So one day when I have nothing else to do, I’ll purge the rest