A few weeks ago I listened to the audio version of Dana K. White’s book “Organizing for the Rest of Us.” I have listened to Dana’s podcast off and on for a couple of years and I really appreciate her perspective on cleaning and decluttering. One of Dana’s decluttering tips is to start with visible spaces since that gives you the most payoff for your efforts. However, the visible spaces in my house are decluttered at this point and the one spot that really needs my attention is my sewing room.

Due to the fact that my family of five lives in a small townhouse, my sewing room is the closet under the stairs. I am thankful to have a sewing space that allows me to leave my sewing machine set up and has room for a chair also so I can sit down whenever I have time. The closet also has a door so I can sew for a long or as little as my day allows, get up, and close the door behind me.

When I was storing my sewing machine in my bedroom, I had to take it out, set it up at the dining table, and get out the totes that had my supplies in them. After I was done sewing I had to put it all away. The hassle this caused meant I almost never sewed for the first few years after we started having kids because I didn’t have an easy place to work on projects.

At some point I had the idea to move the small amount of items we had in the closet under the stairs to our large entryway closet. This freed up the closet under the stairs for my sewing room. I have a small sewing table with my machine on it, a chair, and a low bookshelf next to the sewing table for storage. My husband hung three old dresser drawers on the wall above the sewing table as shelves. Maybe when it is less cluttered I will take some photos.

The setup is great. Small as it may be, I am happy to have a designated sewing room in our little house. I certainly dream of having a larger sewing room someday in the future when we find a house to buy. In this season, though, the under the stairs closet works well.

However, I am an enthusiastic starter of new projects. I am constantly thinking of ideas for things I want to sew, or knit, or quilt. Unfortunately, I do not finish projects as quickly as I start them and this has caused a disaster in my sewing closet.

I work hard to keep a space clear so I can use my sewing machine when I need to, but the space around the sewing machine and the chair I sit on absorbs all the unfinished projects.

Back to the book I was listening to a few weeks ago, “Organizing for the Rest of Us,” by Dana K. White.

One of the tips in that book for dealing with project related clutter is to finish the project! Dana suggests considering if you will use the project when it is finished, and if so, to finish it and move it to it’s proper home. She considers that decluttering!

This idea stuck in my mind and I have been thinking about it ever since I heard it. My sewing closet is the main area or room in our home that I have not been able to declutter and keep decluttered. Up until I heard Dana’s tip I approached decluttering my sewing closet with the mindset that I needed to get rid of all the half-finished projects. That would mean tossing out so much material and time already spent on the projects.

Instead of worrying about decluttering the whole thing in an afternoon like I would have in the past, I am working a little on a project each day – and then writing about it here on my blog to keep myself on track – with the goal of having an orderly sewing room and being able to spread joy to my home and others by getting my projects out of the closet and into spaces where they can be used and enjoyed.