I like to look at all of the ‘my house is so pretty’ blogs.  Well, sort of.  I like to look at them, but then I tend to look around at my actual house (the one with the extra cat and the pile of laundry and the dishes in the sink) and think it all looks a bit…less than stellar.  So, on the off chance that you too occasionally look at those sites and are left feeling a bit glum, I’ll present my closet.  I assure you it is not a magazine closet.  It is not full of custom shelving and matching storage bins.  It’s just…a closet.  A tidy closet full of yarn, but a closet none the less.

This is the view straight in the door (that’s the door over there on the right of the pictures).  And  yes, the closet does have a window.  That’s a big part of why it’s the craft closet and not the clothes closet.  The clothes didn’t like the sun. Those are the shelves I got at Lowes.  On the bottom two shelves are The Stash.  Well, the Non-Sock Stash.  The Sock Stash lives in the card catalog out in the office proper. It’s all housed in these awesome 27 liter plastic totes.  They’re flexible and squashable and hold a surprising amount of stuff.  I found them in the gardening section of one of the big box stores and bought…um…several.

Next is the printer.  The printer was the impetus for this whole reshuffle.  It’s giant and heavy and noisy.  But it prints pretty pictures, and I need it, and I needed it to be somewhere closer than the basement.  Next to it is the mini laptop which is playing the role of ‘magical-make-printer-go-device’ for the moment.  I have a suspicion there is a more efficient way to do this, but I’m not really using the laptop since I got the ipad, and it works, so we’re calling it good for now.

On the top two shelves are…baskets of knitting stuff.  One holds mini sample skeins from some of the yarn companies I work with, one holds knitting things that are awaiting some sort of attention from me (socks to darn, things to photograph, etc).  The other ones are empty.  That’s right…actual empty bins.  I’m sure something will come along, but right now I’m enjoying the breathing room.

This next shot is taken looking over to the left into depths of the closet (the ceiling slants way down).  I’ve got an old set of shorter shelves that I’ve had for years (my sewing machine is on the bottom shelf, the top shelf is empty).  A bit farther back is a stack of extra totes (I’m assuming The Stash may someday grow).  They’re sitting on top of the file box that holds the records for and leftover from Book the First.

Then all the way at the back is…other crafty stuff. The front left blue basket has my sewing supplies, and the one beside it is full of coloring books and colored pencils and bits of funny paper and more drafting tools than I could possibly need.  Behind the paper is a basket full of beads (don’t ask, it was a previous addiction).  The fourth one is full of stuff for making straw stars (a traditional German christmas ornaments…it’s another previous addiction).  For some reason Barry loves hanging out on the straw for those.  He doesn’t eat it, so I don’t stress over it.

On the bottom is my secret shame.  I’m usually really good at getting rid of things.  Obnoxiously good at it.  I’m not terribly sentimental, and I love empty space, so I’m pretty ruthless about tossing things out if I don’t want or need them.  But I’m not quite perfect.  So those two drawers there at the very back are full of things I totally don’t need and likely won’t use but can’t quite bear to throw away.  I figure everyone needs a bit of that, and if I keep it to those two drawers it’s not too unmanageable.  And every now and then I sort it and see if any of it has lost its luster.

Over beside the drawers are frames and pictures I had every intention of getting framed until I actually went and got an estimate and now I’m not sure I actually like them that much because holy crap is framing expensive.  Am I the only one who does that?  I really should learn to do my own framing.

So, that’s the closet and the stash.  I still need to purge a little bit more stuff (there is some yarn in those totes that I totally don’t need), but overall it’s pretty organized, and there is room to grow.  How do you guys store your yarn and crafty stuff?