What organizing my cookbooks taught me about the sewing room

Hello from the midst of a decluttering tsunami currently going on in my creative space. My left brain is still getting a bit of a workout because of all the decisions that go along with this…but before I fill you in on what’s been going on here…let me answer the question that you’re all asking - what do cookbooks have to do with it?

A lot, actually. The photo at the top of the blogpost is a before and after of my cookbooks in my kitchen at home, taken the weekend right after Thanksgiving. That before is definitely not pinterest worthy - in fact, it’s a hot mess. See, I’ll say it for you!

We have lived in this home for over 40 years, and as a new cook, I had many cookbooks that I enjoyed - it’s rather obvious, isn’t it? Several years ago, I converted to a gluten free diet, and that meant that most of those cookbooks are no longer used by me. In fact, there is exactly one cookbook in that shelf that is a Gluten free cookbook.

That section frustrated me no end, because I had printed out recipes but no organization. None - and I just couldn’t take the stress of knowing that I had a recipe for XX somewhere but I had no idea where it was or how to find it. So although I don’t recommend taking this drastic step in the middle of Christmas week, I pulled everything out of the shelves to really look at them (many, for the first time in years, made their way to the donation box that weekend.

Now, one of my guilty pleasures during this pandemic has been videos on You Tube which talked about reorganizing your pantry. I’m sure it has something to do with brining order out of chaos - and I finally applied that to this area. My kitchen made sense, the recipes and the meal planning were actually fun because I could find things, and I really enjoyed my kitchen this season - something that hasn’t always been the case.

And that defintely wasn’t the case up here in the sewing room. I would come in and walk right back out…which is odd, because I didn’t think it was cluttered. It took me a while to find it…

I spoke last week about moving my UFOs to my 2022 UFO list to work on….and in looking at that list, it became readily apparent that I didn’t want to do many of them.

How many?

make me an offer…

I had the opportunity to donate several of the UFOs to a fundraiser last week…and I make great use of that chance. It caused me to take out each of the projects in the sewing space and ask that ‘Spark Joy’ question. What I found is that many of them didn’t - which is why they weren’t getting worked on. And they were taking time - and energy away from the projects I do want to work on.

Once the projects were looked at (and dealt with) in the cold light of a January day…I saw the clutter that had been hiding in plain sight. Books, patterns, papers - and even obsolete computer equipment - were in fact causing my stress and anxiety in the place that was supposed to be my haven. I’m working my way through the mess, but decluttering is it’s own stress. I have to admit that I am tired of feeling overwhelmed.

The really good news? Going in, I was afraid I was going to find out I had too much fabric. Fortunately, that’s not the problem I had - and now I have many ideas how to work with it. I literally can’t wait to get started.

Welcome…

Hi, I’m Linda Pearl - quilter, teacher, designer and blogger, and I’m happy to have you here. I’d like to tell you a little bit more About Me…

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