Time for a Little Housecleaning!

Aloha, all!

     Well, it's not the whole house that needs cleaning – it's my Craft Room! Boy, have I let things get out of hand this past week. Between making cards for 4 different swaps, for blog posts, and for samples for two different classes, I made a real mess.

     Actually, the original mess was a lot worse than this. It wasn't until I put several pieces of Designer Series Paper away that I realized that I might as well show you some of the not-so-wonderful side of crafting as much as I do. Oh, would that I were one of those people who used a product then put it away before taking out and using another. The good news is that my craft room really is a room of its own, and, except for the scraps that fall on the floor to be dragged into another room under foot or paw, how messy it is doesn't impact the rest of our lives. But today it got to the point that I couldn't find 3 products that I needed for a new project and I realized that enough is enough. So out came the cleaning brigade (i.e., me).

     I would be fibbing if I told you it stayed like this. As I was writing this post, I decided an "after" photo would really seal the deal. But between the time of the original cleaning and the point at which I am writing this, I created another project. So when I turned away from my computer to go take the new photo, yikes! All the stuff from that project was still there!!! Oh, my. I think this is in the realm of the "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" aphorism. Heavy sigh. But as I am writing these words, this is how the work table looks! I still have another hour to finish today's projects, though. One can only hope that I can managed to straighten up afterwards!

     Oh, and there was another cleaning project in the middle of all of this. One of the set of products that needed to be put away was just about my entire collection of the acrylic blocks that I use for stamping. For this week's class, we used just about every stamp in the High Tide Stamp Set, which used up most of my regular blocks as well as blocks I've received in kits and as part of Paper Pumpkin – a lot of them! And as I started collecting them to put away, I realized how dirty some of them were. In fact, one of my class attendees mentioned that in the class before last. So what you see below is a beautifully cleaned set of acrylic blocks – and all the others in my collection are clean, too!

     I even cleaned out the container – who knew it could get so dusty?! To clean the blocks, I actually had to use Goo-Gone on some of them, and Stazon Cleaner on others. Of course, I finished them all off with a good bath of warm water and soap. Ready to go for next week's class!

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