I have many bad habits but, there’s one bad habit which I really hate. And, it involves something that I dearly love; my crafts. The habit, which I hate so much, is that I’ll start something and once I’ve completed enough to visualize what it will really look like upon completion I get bored with it. So, what do I do? I end up putting that project aside and starting another project. Thus, I end up with multiple WIP’s (Works In Progress) all over my living room-my favored room to do my crafting.

Are you in the same situation as I? Do you find that your WIP’s are taking over your house? If so, you may feel that, as a craft person, this is your lot in life and you (and anyone visiting your home) will just have to deal with the craft clutter. This is not so but, then you may have some questions like, ‘what’s a person to do to break this habit?’ Right? Or, ‘Is there a solution or is there hope?’ Well, thankfully, I can say that the answer to all the questions is YES. And, one solution is easier than you might think. It might take a bit of work but, the solution is simple. Of course, there are many solutions (including the ‘unthinkable’-tossing it all out and relinquishing your treasured time with your crafts). But, I’m just going to cover one simple solution.

When my crafting started to take over my home, I knew that I had to get control of my crafts. More importantly, I needed to get control of myself and my bad habits. So, I started by getting one large box for each craft. One box was designated for painting supplies, one for fiber arts (of course, this ended up taking up more than one box), one for cake decorating supplies (yes, it had become a bad habit to come in from cake decorating class and just drop my tool box, books and everything I’d brought home from class-except the cake) and one box for miscellaneous crafts. Then, I started to organize and clean my living room by sorting everything in the room. Oh, you can’t imagine some of the things that I found buried that weren’t craft related…but, that’s another story!

Once all of my crafts were neatly nestled in the appropriate boxes, I transferred each box into my craft room. I’ve left one WIP out, in the living room, to complete before scrambling through my WIP box to find another to complete. And, I’ve also determined that I wouldn’t go to the craft store for more supplies unless I have something special pop up that needs a new craft supply for. But, I worry about that issue when it occurs.

Is this a permanent solution? Maybe and maybe not! If I can be persistent and stick to the plan of not starting something until I’ve completed another; and not starting something totally new until all of my WIP’s are done, then I’ll be cured. But, I do know that if things do start to get ‘out of control’ again, all I need to do is find a few large boxes.