Getting My House in Order

The kitchen is done and we are putting it back together as we cook. What dishes, pots and countertop appliances do we really use? We're in no hurry and we're weeding out a lot of things that we rarely use.

When we did the kitchen we also did the floors on the whole first floor. It was all dark brown 1980's carpeting and we replaced it with oak flooring. To get to the floor we had to move a lot of books and my desk. Now it all has to go back, somewhere. I'm trying to wrap my head about how to organize them.

I moved my desk into our family room and now I have one book case for my nearest and dearest fiber books and any work fiber I want to keep out of the basement. I'm starting with all of my spinning books, books about color and two containers. The containers will hold review things for Knitty and my working fiber, fiber for articles, videos, patterns and blog posts.

I have no idea where the file cabinet is going, it's a necessary working evil, but I don't use it much.

Our living room has many more bookcases now. It used to have three and now it has six, maybe seven, plus two library carts. A whole room of books; it makes me weak in the knees!  I'm a person who organizes books more by type, alphabetical anything is optional. I know that two of the shelves on the red wall will be fiction and one general non-fiction. I know I will have one whole bookcase devoted to big sexy textile books. What I don't know is what knitting, weaving, embroidery and other craft books to keep upstairs. How do I choose? I have about 8 bookcases of fiber arts books in the basement. I've been doing fiber and working in publishing for the same amount of time and have almost never said no to a book.

I'm thinking stitch dictionaries and knitting books that inspire me for knitting. But do I bring up all of my Rowan magazine's? I go all the way back to number one. I have the same issue with other fiber arts. It's a fibery book lover's conundrum. I am having great fun

How do you organize your craft books?