Peace of Mind Organizing

January 2025 tiny projects challenge: Day 5

18 January 2025

Here’s my last post for this month’s tiny project challenge. I’ve had fun taking on little organizing projects that have made my home feel more enjoyable because they’ve eased little irritations.

Today, I focused my attention on my two elfa drawer banks that knitting and needle felting supplies. Before we moved, I had three banks of elfa drawers for yarn but three wouldn’t fit where I wanted them in my office. So on moving day one the narrow banks was moved to my kitchen overflow closet. (It was my focus on Day 4 of the tiny projects challenge.)

Before I moved, I donated a lot of yarn and knitting supplies. But after I moved and discovered I had to repurpose one of the drawer banks, I had to let go of more. I did a great job, I think. I kept just the yarn I knew I liked to knit with. It was a stressful moving-in time (and my husband was in the hospital) so I couldn’t give it much careful deliberation. But the good news was that everything fit in the drawers.

When I turned my attention to it today, I was afraid I was going to have to empty and reorganize the drawers. But once I took a close look, I saw that I had put everything away in an organized fashion. (High five to my brain-dead self!) I just needed to put words to the categories I’d instinctively come up with. For example, I had a drawer with multiple balls of two specific yarns. And I had a drawer with luxury yarn it it and another with more run-of-mill yarn that I would still be happy to use. I had a couple of drawers with project bags and I did evaluate those works-in-progress (WIPs), choosing to keep some and unravel others. I do still have one WIP drawer to go through.

Once I came up with categories for all ten drawers, I turned my attention to labeling them. At the house, each drawer had label clipped on to it. (You can see them in the post linked above—I used elfa label holders that are no longer sold.) I had kept the labels, so I took them out and re-used the ones I could. (On four out of ten drawers.) The other drawers were new categories and I couldn’t match the font for the new labels. I had used a retro font way back in 2008 to create those labels and now, many computers, later I no longer have access to the font.

I decided to let it be easy and make hand-written labels for the six new categories. I used black Post-it® notes and a white gel pen to easily make relatively attractive labels. At some point, I may choose to up my label game but for now these work great.

Here’s a photo of the labeled drawers.

And here’s a close-up of the labels, in case you’re interested.

It’s a relief to have this little task done. I like knowing that I should be able to easily find what I’m looking for when I’m looking to get creative, rather than hunting for it. And it was fun to rediscover some great yarn and also some great works in progress!

Tagged with: 15 minutes, january 2025 tiny projects, knitting, needle felting, organizing, tiny projects, yarn

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