I’m still working through my Sewing Room Declutter Challenge! This is meant to be a 21 day challenge in January but having started at the beginning of February I’m still working on it!! If anyone fancies doing a declutter this is on YouTube, it’s by Karen Brown of Just Get it Done Quilts

Day 12 was electronics, a fairly quick one for me as I don’t have much extra electronic things in my sewing room, two sewing machines, an overlocker and my computer mainly. I have a CD player for when I fancy a little music too. I’ve just bought a second-hand little Janome sewing machine for workshops, so my old machine has now gone. I’ve put all the leads into one drawer and that was about me done.

Day 13 was quite a big one for me, notions, such an innocuous word but it covers a multitude of sins, buttons, zips, interfacings, trimmings, linings…and I’ve got one drawer at least for each of those, it has taken a while!

I seem to have amassed rather a large collection of buttons. I haven’t actually bought that many but several people have given me a button box found when clearing a relatives house. I’ve tried various methods of storage over the years, loose in a button box, tied together in colour, safety pin sets, but I have finally found a system that works for me. A couple of years ago I started changing my bead storage over to little plastic pots made by a company I think called Siesta. They come in a choice of size and come in their own plastic box, so there might be 30 small pots, or 12 bigger pots, different heights too. I love them for beads as I can organise them easily according to colour and take a single pot to a sewing project. It crossed my mind that this would work for buttons too. I now have six trays of button pots! It works really well as I can easily see what I’ve got, they fir nicely into a drawer too. I have a tray of novelty or buttons for embroideries, some bigger pots of buttons sorted by colour, a tray of bigger buttons etc I had a good sort out of buttons I really couldn’t see me using and they’ve gone in a box for the Cone Exchange in Harrogate.

I have two drawers of interfacings, one white and one black, so that one didn’t take long, though I also have a box with rolls of the stiffer interfacing I use in craft projects etc. Similarly linings are just in two drawers, plain and fancy!

Zips have been tidied into a smaller drawer, trimmings are still a bit spread out but I have culled them a bit. I have a little drawer of the trims I use on embroideries, another of bindings, another of bigger trims such as pompoms. Elastics have been sorted with old lengths which had gone off going in the bin. Ribbons have been tidied and very old lenghs or bits I’ve been given which I can’t see me ever using either going in the bin or the Cone Exchange pile.

Lace has two drawers, I’ve been realistic on stuff I’ve had for 20 years and that’s gone on the ever growing Cone Exchange pile.

I’ve separated stretch from non-stretch lace and made a little pile in a drawer of lace that’s there to be cut up for textile projects. It’s been quite nice getting reacquainted with some of my stock, I do have some very pretty lace!

I’ve got several drawer units which over the years have been labelled with a silver marker pen, usually bearing no resemblance to what’s in there now. I’m planning on painting the wooden drawers again but I’m still working out what goes where. I’m thinking of waiting until the end before I finally decide and label the drawers again.

Day 14 was recovery day…I needed one! One week of challenges to go!