Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 4: Organize

Show Notes

• 
  Click here to download the Sewing Camp Toolkit. It includes our sewing spaces freebie, exercises to help you upgrade your space, and a preview of our Style Workshop.


• 
  Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 1: Explore. The first episode of this Space Camp series!


• 
  Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 2: Strategize. The second episode of this Space Camp series!


• Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 3: Audit


• The best way to store printed digital patterns


• The best method for fabric storage


• Tutorial: How to Make Rope Bowls


• Episode 101: How to Clean your Sewing Space in 15 Minutes


• 
  Podcast listeners get half off an unlimited Seamwork membership when you use this link, plus you get to keep that price as long as you’re a member!


• Tell us your idea for the next icebreakers for makers!

Podcast Transcript

Sarai
You. I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio.

Welcome back to Seamwork Radio, where we share practical ideas for building a creative process so you can sew with intention and joy.

So welcome back to Seamwork Radio Summer Sewing Camp 2023. During the months of June and July, we're embarking on a journey together to refresh our sewing spaces and then our personal style in July.

In today's episode, we're going to wrap up the last episode of refreshing our spaces, and we're going to be discussing organizing your sewing space. So this is the final step in the process, and if you need to go back and listen to the first three episodes in this series, you can do that, and they'll give you a great foundation for this last step. But you don't necessarily have to have listened to them to get a lot out of this episode today.

So we've mentioned this all throughout the series, but one of the biggest obstacles that a lot of Seamworkers we've talked to face is managing their sewing spaces. So it doesn't matter if you have a small space, a large space, or something that's in between. You probably have this issue yourself, because sewing as a hobby comes with so much stuff, and managing all that stuff in a way that makes it easy for you to sew can be a big challenge.

Last week, we worked on auditing our sewing space. So if you're following along, it's likely your sewing space is feeling a little bit chaotic right now. But this week, we're going to work on putting it all back together, getting everything organized. So we're going to launch right into the tips. You want to get us started, Haley?

Haley
Yes. So if you are following along with us, last week you sorted all of your sewing things, or at least the sewing things that you've decided to isolate for this exercise, into five piles. So that is your fabric, your patterns, your notions, your tools, and trash.

So right now you have probably five piles, hopefully four, because I'm hoping maybe you took out the trash. If not, no shame. Maybe go do that now, though.

And from here, we can't just put all of this stuff away as it is. I mean, you could, but I wouldn't recommend it. What I would like you to do now is to work on subcategorizing each of these piles. And this is going to be really personal to you, depending on your organization style and how much stuff you have.

But for instance, just to give you some examples, for fabric, you might choose to do this by weight. You might choose to do this by wovens and knits. I personally like to take an approach where I combine the two. I have a shelf for my wovens. I have a shelf for my knits, and they are categorized from heaviest at the bottom to lightest at the top.

But maybe that's not an organization style that works for you, maybe for you, you want to have it divided by wovens and knits and maybe sorting by color makes more sense for your brain and makes it easier for you to find things. This is where you need to make some decisions on what is going to be working best for you because it will be totally unique to you. And the more you can customize it to yourself, I think the more likely you are to use it and keep implementing that same organizational practice.

And then for patterns, you can do this the way that Sarai does it, by a decade and garment type. If you don't have quite as many patterns, you can just simply keep it to rolls of plotted patterns versus envelopes. But subcategorizing is going to make it a lot easier to, one, identify the storage systems that you may need that maybe you're lacking still. And two, it's going to help you to put it all away and find it again in the future.

Sarai
Yeah. For organizing my fabric, the way I have it is I separate wovens and knits. So I have one big drawer that's just for knits and then the wovens I break down by fiber type because that's just how I think when it comes to remembering what I already have and finding the right fabric for a project.

Haley
Yeah.

Sarai
And I think that's what's key. What's going to be the easiest for you to remember. It's kind of like with books. I've never really understood how some people organize their books by color, but I understand that for some people and I have a pretty visual memory, but for some people that's how I guess they remember where their books are. That wouldn't work for me.

So it's just about how your brain works and what's going to make you most likely to remember what you have and how you might use it.

Haley
Totally. I love that you organize by fiber. I don't know why I wouldn't have considered doing that, but that makes a lot of sense.

Sarai
Yeah, well, I just seem to I feel like when I have a pattern—so I have like a drawer that has silks and I have a drawer that has rayons and they can be kind of similar and used for similar projects. But when I'm thinking about when I pick out a design I want to make and I want to know if I have a fabric that goes with it, I can look through those two drawers and find something that's probably in the right weight and it's just easy to remember what I have that way.

Haley
Yeah, that's cool. I feel like organizing, by weight, I definitely stumble across things in my stash that I maybe wouldn't have thought of, where I'm like, oh, I know I need a lightweight woven fabric. And sometimes the thing I end up pulling out from my stash is not what I initially went in looking for, which is kind of fun. But this is a place where you really get to customize and have fun.

Sarai
Yeah. I also have a miscellaneous drawer, which you might want to consider organizing or working that into your organizational plan as well. Sometimes you don't know what something is, or you might know what the fiber content is, but it's so different from everything else you own, you might want to keep it separate. Or it's like a specialty fabric that would only be used in very specific projects.

Haley
Yeah, I have a specialty drawer, and what's in there is, like, some random kind of brocade, an embroidered fabric, and then a velvet fabric that I want to not have rolled up into a tight wad.

All right, so you have subcategorized your four piles. Now it is time to start figuring out where it all goes. We need homes for all of our beloved things, and this can be a little bit overwhelming. This might be a time where you need to kind of pause and consider your storage.

But right now, what I'd like you to focus on is just who's living with who, and when it comes to organization something I did not make this up, but it is a saying that I repeat to myself often is you want to store things with its coworkers or its cousins. So let me think of some examples of that.

So your rotary cutter, you would want to keep it with all of the rest of your sewing or your cutting tools, because those are its coworkers, the things it also works with. An example of, like, I know this is, like, a really non-sewing example, but it's something I did recently.

I have, like, a little tennis ball that I used for my feet. I have a foot cramp, and I was like, I never know where I put it. I can never remember. And then the other day, I was like, I'm going to put it in my sock drawer. Like, what am I doing? It needs to be with its coworkers.

Sarai
That's so funny, because I remember one time I was having some hip pain or something at work, and I was like, oh, I wish I had my lacrosse ball to work out this kink. And you're like, “I have a tennis ball.” And you gave it to me.

Haley
I am like a Mary Poppins type.

Sarai
You are?

Haley
Do you need Tylenol? I got you. You need a tennis ball. I believe in having, like, a well stocked desk and car and handbag. It's just who I am.

Sarai
The other day, we were shooting some YouTube videos, and I was like, does anybody have Tylenol? Because I have a headache, and for medical reasons, I can't take Ibuprofen. And, Haley, you were like, I have Ibuprofen. I have Tylenol. What kind you need? How much you need?

Haley
I'm like, really a girl’s girl in that way.

But yes, moving back to figuring out where it all goes, cousins and coworkers, is just something that maybe you'll find equally helpful to in your life. And when you're putting back together your sewing room, another thing that I would like you to refer back to while you're doing this is the approach that you came up with earlier for are you a minimalist? Are you a maximalist? Do you like your things out in the open? Do you want them stored away?

Revisit all of that work that you did earlier in the series to help you inform some of the decisions you're making now and also refer back to your dream space statement because that might help guide you as you make some of these decisions as well.

Sarai
All right, so we talked about some of the basics here and organizing your five piles and then figuring out where it all goes.

The next step is to start putting things into vessels. So these vessels don't have to be anything fancy. You don't have to go out and buy a bunch of matching organizational boxes at The Container Store. They can take a lot of different forms.

So, for example, you can take your buttons and put them into some vintage tea tins. For example. I love tea tins. Like I always keep my tea tins after I finish a batch of tea so that I can put stuff in them.

You can take your cone thread and put it in a shoe box. You can take your patterns and put them in a file box, which is not very expensive. You can use your desk drawers and you can get an ottoman with storage. Or maybe you already have an ottoman that has storage. I find that to be really helpful because it's both storage and a piece of furniture that you can sit on. I really like that.

And by the way, we have articles and a podcast episode about the best ways to store patterns and fabrics, so we'll link to that in the show notes as well because we have a lot of good tips in there.

But the important thing is that you find some vessels where the things will fit in that fit your overall vision for your space. So for some people that might mean going out and buying some matching baskets or whatever you need, or you might need one or two things, but it might also mean just repurposing stuff you already have.

I love keeping—actually, it's kind of funny because I use old shoeboxes for things all the time. And I just bought a new pair of Birkenstocks for the summer and I had this shoebox sitting here in my office on the floor. And it was just like being played with by the cats. And I couldn't bring myself to throw it away because I use shoeboxes so often for organization. Then I realized, you know what, I have enough shoeboxes right now, and this is just trash that's sitting on my floor. But if you do have a use for them, they are very useful. They're very sturdy, and they are the perfect size and they're stackable, so they are a really good option. And they make great drawer organizers for deeper drawers, too.

Haley
What I really like about this system of first subcategorizing and then figuring out what's going to live together and then putting things into vessels is that you're not like jumping the gun and going and buying a bunch of new boxes from IKEA. You're really analyzing what you have before you make any big moves.

Sarai
Absolutely. We mentioned this on another one of the previous episodes in this series, but that's an issue that I've definitely had, is just getting stuff to organize my other stuff and then realizing it's the wrong thing. And I do find it really helpful to use what you already have first and then maybe upgrade it if it doesn't look good. You don't like the way everything's mismatched, maybe. At least you know exactly what you need. By that point. You're not just buying a bunch of stuff because it looks good. But it doesn't actually have a functional purpose for you.

Haley
Yeah, and maybe in some scenarios, like for me, if something is tucked away in a closet, I don't necessarily mind if it's mismatched, but if it's going to be out on open shelving, then it would bother me. So you can kind of pick and choose your battles.

Sarai
Another thing you can think about is projects you can sew that will help to organize your stuff. This is tricky because I don't know about you, but I often say, I'm going to sew some baskets, I'm going to sew some boxes, I'm going to sew some totes to organize my things. And then maybe two years later, I realize I'm never going to get around to that. So that's tricky. But if you are looking for a quick and easy project and you have some fabric and you have the time to make some organizational stuff, that can be really fun way to use up your fabric scraps, too.

Haley
I have two words: rope bowls.

Sarai
Rope bowls are great for that.

Haley
I can always bring myself to make a rope bowl. It is like the most addictive project ever. And if you've never made one, we actually have a YouTube video on how to make them. And they're so, so much fun. And all you need is thread, which I imagine you already have. You probably found a bunch when you were cleaning everything out. And some cotton rope, which you can get fairly cheaply.

Sarai
Yeah, that's a good one. I think sewing sturdy baskets is something that I would like to find more time to do because they're just so useful in so many different contexts and a great way to use up fabric.

Haley
Yeah, I've seen tutorials where people use really heavyweight felt or vinyl things that you don't have to sew. And then they assemble the boxes or baskets with just, like, snaps or rivets or something.

Sarai
Okay, that would be kind of cool. Or you could do eyelets and, like, lace it up on the sides.

Haley
Really cool. Look at us, being creative.

Sarai
Lots of ideas. Too many ideas, not enough time. That's kind of the story of all of our lives, right?

So the point is vessels. Things in vessels. This is the next step.

And then finally, before we end, the last thing I'd like you guys to do is to set up some kind of cleaning ritual, because keeping your space organized is really the key to maintaining your dream sewing space.

You can do all this work, get everything set up the way you want, put in all this planning effort, and then find that you're just not keeping it the way you had envisioned, because you can't bring yourself to take those 15 minutes to do a little bit of cleaning.

And I speak from experience in this, because this is the part that I struggle with, but having a ritual around it is key for me. Making sure at the end of every sewing session I take the five minutes to put things away makes all the difference in the world. It makes me much more likely to come back to it because I know that it's just not overwhelming. I look at it, and I think, okay, I can do this. Time to get started, instead of, oh, geez, look at this mess, I don't want to deal with it right now.

So very important. I personally like to just take five minutes, put all my tools away at the end. That's the main thing that does it for me. You might have a longer one. We have a podcast episode, which is Episode 101, which is how to clean your sewing space in 15 minutes, which has a lot of really great tips for doing cleaning in a short amount of time, which, for me, that's really key.

This came into my mind just last night because I knew Haley was coming over here to podcast, and I had been doing a lot of sewing, so my office was just kind of a mess. Like, there was just sewing stuff everywhere. It was after dinner, so you guys know how it is in the evening after dinner. You've had a long day. I'd been out in the garden doing a bunch of manual labor, too, and I was like, oh, gosh, I have to clean that room.

And then I stopped, and I thought, you know what? It's probably going to take me, like, five minutes to put all that stuff away. I bet I could even set a timer and be done in five minutes. And sure enough, it was done in about five minutes. It was just putting a few things away, really.

So I think we can build up things like that in our mind, so we don't necessarily need to.

Haley
I think you could even implement a timer method while you're working through this process that we outlined these last four weeks as a way to just kind of limit yourself. I know for me, it can be really easy to go overboard when I embark on projects like this. So you don't have to overthink it. You don't have to do something that's going to take you days upon days. I believe in you, and I know you can do it.

Sarai
Yeah, and I think we might talk about that when we talk about the Style Workshop starting next week, because I think that's key there, too. There are a lot of exercises contained in that program, and it's very easy to get sucked into each one and spend a whole lot of time doing it and then not finish. So I think it's really key to give yourself a bit of a time limit and just go with the answers that come to mind to some of the questions that we'll pose to you in the Style Workshop.

So look forward to that because that's going to be really fun starting next week.

All right, so to recap for today, we covered the very last step in revamping your sewing space. So if you haven't listened to the first three episodes, highly recommend that as well. By this episode, you should have created five piles of all of your things, including the trash that you hopefully took out.

And in this episode, we talked about subcategorizing some of those piles so that things are easier to find. And you know how you want to keep things organized in your space. And then figuring out where it all goes, storing, like with like, putting things into vessels and they don't have to be expensive or fancy vessels or even something new to you.

And then finally set up a cleaning ritual so you can take those between five and 15 minutes to keep your space organized on an ongoing basis, not just once.

Next week, we are going to talk about core style as we go through the Style Workshop, which I'm super jazzed about. I think it's going to be really, really fun.

And don't forget to snag all your free Camp Goodies by visiting Seamwork.com/go/sewingcamp if you haven't done it already. Camp runs all of June and July, so be sure to grab those freebies while you can.

If you liked this episode, please leave us a review. We would love to hear from you. And it's a great way to let others know about the podcast. It's how a lot of other people discover the podcast. So if you think other people might like it too, go ahead and leave us a review. We would appreciate it so much.

We've had some questions lately about how to leave a review on Spotify. Some people have had trouble with that. If you are having trouble leaving a review on Spotify, I haven't checked it out, so I don't know exactly what the process is.

I understand that there is a way to leave a rating or review on Spotify, so if you cannot find it, you can also leave a review on another platform, even if it's one you don't normally use, like Apple podcasts. Something like that. If you'd still like to leave us a review and can't figure out how to do it on the platform that you currently use, leaving one on Apple Podcasts is pretty easy. You can just search for the podcast there and leave a review real quick and we'd appreciate it very, very much.

That does it for this series. And we will launch into the next four weeks of summer sewing camp with the Style Workshop starting next week. I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio.