Spring Clean

Are you confused by the title of this post? It is not spring anywhere in the world at the moment.
I never do my spring cleaning in spring. I find spring to be a very busy time of the year. There are always plenty of commitments and obligations as the weeks seem to hurtle towards Christmas. Certainly no time for Spring cleaning.

I prefer to do my spring cleaning in summer just after Christmas, when there are no commitments and it is often too hot to do much else. I pack away the Christmas decorations and give the house a good tidy up. It didn't happen this year though.

I have had a really busy first half of the year. I spent months trying to get my two latest quilts ready in time for the Sydney Quilt Show. I also had plenty of teaching dates and my daughter's Engagement Party and my sons 21st. My daughter's wedding is later this year so we have been having a lot of fun planning for that.

I have spent the last three weeks sorting, tidying and cleaning and it feels so good to be organised again. 

Quilting and Art magazines were piled all over the house. I sorted through them all, pulled out any articles and photos that I wanted and threw the rest out.

I couldn't throw out my Quilting Arts, Machine Quilting Unlimited or American Quilter magazines though and I have filed them in date order.

I was also being overrun by my quilting books. I solved the problem by packing away all my novels that I will probably never read again to make room for my books. They are sorted into groups like applique, piecing, landscape etc but unfortunately they are not in alphabetical order. That would take far too long.

I have many more books than this photo shows but it all looks as neat as this.

I sorted out all my fabric and gave away three big bags to the Charity Quilt group at our Guild. It was fabric that I loved when I bought it but my taste has changed over the years and I knew I wasn't going to use it and it was taking up valuable space.

I have 4 big built in cupboards taking up one wall of my sewing room that houses all my fabric and each draw is labelled with it's colour. The colour I have the most of is green. The draws are labelled, dark, medium and light and blue/green. I have other draws for landscape, hand dyes and silk etc.

I bought some more thread containers because the sellers were closing down and they were half price. So now my threads are super organised.

It is not a very good photo because the light wasn't good but they look great in the room.

I sorted out all the notes for the classes I have ever taken and the classes that I teach and information that I have collected over the years and put it all into 2 large filing cabinets. Everything is labelled of course!

I put away all the sheet music from on top of the piano because my son plays an electric keyboard now and set  my ipod up there.

So everything is in its place and I am ready for the second half of the year.
I know it won't stay neat and tidy like this but I will try and keep it under control and it feels so good!

Bye for now,
Linda