All In One Place - Almost

I've had a Eureka moment...

It seems like one of those fleeting thoughts over the years has finally knocked hard enough to penetrate my often thick skull...

Here is the background:

4 years ago:

Move into larger house because business is really growing & taking over the townhouse.

And we are planning on starting a family at some point anyway... so why not?

3 years ago:

Production really going, have 3-5 fellow artists helping me out with making pendants.

Main clay studio located in basement, glazing area & office in extra bedroom upstairs.

2 years ago:

Major production slows down, plenty of stock built up.

Stop doing as many shows myself.

Mom gets diagnosed with Leukemia in Jan, passes in Sept.

Pregnant with Chloe late March, born in Dec.

1 year ago:

Spend most of my time figuring out this mom thing...

Decided to put Chloe into school around Sept because she seemed to be getting bored with me after a few hours, and I was getting frustrated because I had no time to get anything done with the studio or business.

Needless to say, she LOVES school and goes 5 days a week now...

I would feel guilty for not having her go to school to socialize and experience all that she is right now...

Present Time:

My Eureka Moment... Get it all into ONE PLACE!

Simplify things...

Organize things...

Everything has it's place - it is time to help find that place and get it there...

And I mean NOW!!!

Here is my bisque stock that is now in one place - one set of shelves in the basement studio:

(THANK YOU DAVE!!! My late night elf that moved this all to the basement for me when I fell asleep last night... What a great husband!!!)

This bisque stock had been in the following places at any given time

(no wonder why I was wasting brain power trying to think about where stuff was!):

1. Glaze room (in bathroom: waiting for rinsing, in bathroom: being dried, on shelf, on floor, on table, in bin, in small to be glazed cup, in baggie, and many more places...).

2. Main House (which room? sorted or not sorted yet? still in bin or in baggies?)

3. Basement (in kiln, in bin, on table, in baggie)

Now it is all in one place. I get the pieces out of the kiln and can put them into their bin.

No more lugging stuff upstairs into the house to get lost in the "to-do dimension".

This next picture is all of my glazes on a new set of shelves that I picked up from Lowes a few weeks ago, and finally got to putting up.

It took me 2 days of many trips down 2 flights of stairs to move all those pints of glaze into the basement studio.

It feels good though - all in one place!

I really wanted to paint the walls and possibly floor before doing this move.

But when I was at Lowes looking at all the paint colors, nothing moved me.

I was about 9 weeks pregnant though - and was having major issues with morning sickness (the all day kind) and being SO tired all the time.

I was overwhelmed by the colors, unsure of what I wanted to be surrounded by every day to feel energized and not irked by the color scheme. Painting to me is such an expression of emotion, I did not want to paint just to paint because I know I'd want to change it when I was feeling better...

So I will hopefully find inspiration sometime next summer when baby #2 is about 6 months old and is joining his/her sister Chloe in school...

So I've got a bunch of other stuff to move into the basement studio, but it takes time. And I told Dave I would take it easy today because I shouldn't be doing heavy lifting being pregnant and all. So I am finally able to catch up on some of my blogs...

Hope all is well!

I'm feeling a bit more energized and more like myself these days - let's hope it lasts!