How to Collect Things in a Basket

Baskets are very useful organizing tools. You can hide a lot of things in them. You can free throw doo-dads into them. You can use them as the miscellaneous files. You can even move them into another room to hide them from guests.

In the basic principles of organizing, baskets are containers. And containers are meant to be filled with things that you want to keep together because they belong together. No mish-mash. No miscellany. No maybe here now and somewhere better later.

Your baskets should be just big enough to hold the items you want to store. Any bigger and they will attract stray stuff. Any smaller and they will overflow. But what if you want to store more than one kind of thing in that basket? Compartmentalize! Divide up the basket into sections.

Add tea tins, jam jars or recyclables of any sort into the basket to divide the bigger basket into smaller groups of like items. One of my clients applied that very concept to her basket of office supplies in her craft room.


The smaller compartments within her larger basket keep her office supplies neatly grouped in small, functional sets. Her jumble of supplies is magically unjumbled.

Now, go find one of your boxes, baskets or drawers and then divide and subdivide and then divide again. It's all about creating the right-size containers for the right-size groups.

Ne'er a Lazy Day of Summer

For not having planned a holiday this summer, the fact that we had such a non-stop summer away from home has been a surprise. Just two weeks after school let out, my daughter went to Australia for two weeks with 45 other kids in the sixth- and seventh-grade Arizona delegation.

For every day of those two weeks, I was wracked with mom-guilt for sending my 10-year old on a 32-hour return trip to another continent. I worried every single day that we hadn't given her enough money, that we hadn't given her any easy way to call home in case she needed to talk, that we hadn't packed enough options for clothes in her suitcase, that we hadn't given her enough to do on the excruciatingly long airplane rides, that she would run out of memory space on the three camera cards we sent along, and, the worst of the evils, that she would get homesick. Instead, only the dreaded lack of camera memory card space struck, and the thoroughly deprived kid was forced to pare down her pics to make more space. My kid had a blast on her Aussie adventure, as did the rest of the delegation. And it's all 'Australia this' and 'Australia that' around our house now.

Just in case Australia wasn't enough with the one kid, my family logged about 2,000 road miles across Arizona and California between the beginning of July and now. We just yesterday got home from a week spent with my family at a cabin in the Sierra Nevada foothills in eastern California. Our various road travels in the past month have taken us to San Diego, Tuscon, Lake Powell, Oracle, San Diego (again), Anaheim and Arnold, in that order. Ventura is still to come over Labor Day.

School will begin again in a few days, and we are all begging for the return of more familiar routines. Early bed times, alarm clocks, homework, dance lessons, karate lessons and soccer practice will restore regularity and bring a close to our crazy-busy summer. If only the Arizona summer heat would also subside.

In between trips hither and thither, I have worked on organizing more sewing rooms and general household spaces. In the latest redo, we gave Laura's sewing loft some new vertical storage, a long-overdue sorting and a more cohesive design theme.

One side of the loft began with a folding table stacked with books and a movable black hutch recycled from an old desk. The hutch was about to fall sideways, the pattern books and magazines were not visible and the underside was crowded with assorted boxes of fabric.

The solution was to purchase a new bookcase so that Laura could display all of her books together, to join up the fabric in the boxes with the rest of the fabric stash and to sort through all of the patterns and project instructions to remove those that had lost their appeal over time.

Swapping the marble-topped sideboard from another area of the room with the relocated fabric boxes let Laura make the best use of the wall space beneath the air vent. The bookshelves are filled with Laura's quilting books and binders of sorted patterns and ideas. The overall look is far more cohesive and reflects Laura's penchant for antiques.



About 36 hours of work later (a little bit of me and a lot of Laura and her friend Kathy), and this photo above was the prize. When we showed these before and after pictures to her guild, they could hardly believe it was the same space. And this was just one wall in her newly organized sewing loft. Nice work, Laura! May the rest of your summer days be lazy.

Three-Day Weekend

How did you spend your three-day weekend? I spent my entire Memorial Day weekend sans enfants. (Merci á ma famille.) So what do you do for three days straight with no children? You organize. There are a bazillion other things I could have and wanted to do, but this was a monumental check off the checklist.

When my kids were tots, I realized quickly that there wasn't going to be nearly enough wall space in my home for all of their artwork. And after a while, the sand would fall off, the macaroni would get smashed and the paper would discolor on their precious projects. I needed a better solution to preserve their histories-in-the-making.

Thank goodness for the digital photography revolution of the late 1990s, because my solution was an outcome of technological advancement. When digital photography and the Web converged, online digital photo services began. My early shopping for an online digital photo service led me to Shutterfly. Around 2004, I began scanning my kids' school work and taking digital photos of their three-dimensional and oversize works of art. I uploaded them to Shutterfly and began creating digital photo books. Instead of overwhelming piles of paper and deteriorating artwork, we have lovely hardcover books of each child's school year accomplishments. Although I still think Shutterfly offers only about 50% of what I really want in an online photo service, the basics are there and are roughly commensurate with the amount of time I have to spend.

This past weekend, I scanned like a maniac, cataloguing hundreds of pieces of evidence proving that my son completed second grade and my daughter deserves to advance to sixth. The recycling bin outside is unmanageably full, and the works of art went on their way to the local landfill. But both kids are a year smarter for all of the weeks' worth of class work and days' worth of homework I tirelessly sorted through page by page. And all summer long, my paper clutter will be non-existent. Until school begins again in August.

Jean R.'s Grand Sewing Canyon Tour

Jean R. and I got to chatting while we were at 35th Avenue Sew n Vac. Jean had a sense of humor, and I loved how she talked so candidly about her quilting space. When I first meet people and they tell me about their organizing challenges, they often hide their embarrassment by being funny about their space. So when I asked Jean if I could share her challenges with others via my blog, Jean sent me a full-on description of her space with pictures. It was obvious that Jean has a genuine sense of humor. I just have to share it with you.

Here's Jean's Phoenix-area studio, in her own words:

Rapids ahead! Watch out for protruding rocks!

We will be entering the Grand Sewing Canyon after a sharp right turn. Stay close to the left side of the current so as not to be sucked into a hidden whirlpool. Very dangerous.


Treasure hunters are often trying to beach in this area. Several have gone missing recently. There is a slightly visible plateau with artifacts from 2010, the last time this area was explored. You can see Baby Lock Lodge in the forefront.


We are coming up on a lower accessible area on the right, Bernina Point. There is currently still activity in this area and a local native can still be found working at some project. Native worker appears to be stocked with at least a day’s food supply.


The high cliffs ahead house ancient manuscripts dating back to 1950.


After hiking to a high point at the top of the canyon, Rainbow Rock Park and Spool-A-Roo caverns can be seen near the area of first entry by the rapids.


Out of the canyon and home safe.

Quilt Market and What the Repair Man Said

Last weekend at Spring Quilt Market was like a whirlwind. Instead of going for the Schoolhouses, I stayed home through Saturday morning so that I could coach my daughter's soccer team in their 8am game. And then I rushed straight after the game to the airport to catch my flight just before noon. When I arrived in Salt Lake (on time!), I rushed to my hotel to drop my bags, and then I practically jogged up the hill to get from my hotel to the Salt Palace Convention Center. I made it in time to the C&T booth to host my book signing at 4. I just love it when everything goes according to plan. My sincere thanks to the 400 people last Saturday--from the ground crew at Southwest Airlines to the 73-year old shuttle driver from my hotel--who made it all happen.


I had a wonderful book signing. The C&T folks were a little worried how much I was talking to each person as they came up to get their book, but I think that most people appreciated a moment or two to share about their own organizing needs in their quilting spaces. I enjoyed meeting everyone, and I'm so glad that even the ladies at the end of the line waited so patiently for their book. Thank you.

Sunday at Quilt Market was non-stop. No time to eat. No time to sit down. I hope I made some good business contacts that may develop into future opportunities. And the highlight of my day was meeting Annie Smith in person. I have listened to Annie's podcasts for more than two years now, and it was surreal hearing her voice and seeing her face--at the same time. Annie, I am grateful for all of the hours of entertaining and educational listening.

This week, I've been following up on loose ends from Quilt Market and getting in touch with the people with whom I promised to get in touch. The quilting community is just so darn friendly and fun that this hardly feels like work.

Which brings me to what the repair man said. I called to check on the status of my sewing machine, hoping that it might be released soon from repair jail. (I hated to tell my daughter that we would have to buy a birthday present for her friend because she couldn't sew something. And, yes, that was after I suggested hand-sewing as an alternative.) Checking on my machine with its jailor, the very nice repair man and I chatted a bit. He told me that quilting is the hot, new thing. I love it. The hot, new thing. That made me feel really good.

With the sewing machine in the shop, I went for another machine instead. The bread machine is halfway through its cycle, and the house smells delicious. Anyone coming for freshly baked bread for breakfast at my house tomorrow needs to arrive early. We have to be at the soccer field by 7:30. Go Gator Girls! Win your last game of the season!

The Dollar Bin

I want to start off this post with a HUGE thank you to everyone who came to the launch party for my book. I also need to thank my husband and kids and my friend Judy for making all of the food and drinks the night before. Everyone took a recipe to make while Judy, who owns a cooking school, kept us all on task. (Judy, I promise I will take your next knife skills class.) The kids did great serving the party-goers, and I'm sure the guests appreciated knowing that the food was good because they saw the kids sneaking in a few bites.

Several of my book contributors attended the event this past weekend. I was glad to be able to formally thank them for their tremendous help with the research, ideas and photos. They are the same gals as I listed in the acknowledgements page of the book. One of those gals pinged me after the party to let me know what she found in the dollar bin at her local Target store.

These metal tins come in black or white with clear lids and measure about 3-1/2
inches across. My hope is that they are also magnetic, and I'll find out for myself when I can get to Target this week. Use them in groups to hold just about anything small, from buttons to pom-pons to googly eyes to thimbles. In groups, the matching tins help those little things look harmonious, which is pleasing to the eye. The clear lids prevent you from forgetting what's inside.

Send me pics to post and share about how you used tins like these in your sewing room.

5 Must-Have Organizing Classes

I read an awesome article last week about writing story headlines. What was so brilliant was that her whole lesson in headline-writing was ripped from Cosmo's table of contents. She grabbed me right from the start with her alluring promise of 5 tips for writing the sexiest, most stimulating headlines EVER! So when I was writing up my typical class topics to submit for the Arizona Quilters Guild traveling teacher program tonight, I decided to try all 5 of her tips. We'll see what the guild says about whether or not I hit the mark.

My toughest challenge in headlining was the same top challenge for some of my clients. UFOs. Ugh. UFOs are so much more than unfinished objects. They are objects of guilt. Objects of wishful thinking. Objects that collect dust. Objects that clutter. I had to find a way to make my UFO class sound less like detention and more like...a Cosmo article. So in quintessential Cosmo style, I titled one of my classes for AQG 10 Easy Strategies for Turning UFOs into ESPs. I'm calling ESPs entirely sewn projects.

For those of you done with your blog reading for today, I'll send you off for more fun and frolic in the makeup and beauty tips section of Cosmopolitan online. Having seen the home page with today's position of the day, I'm just not sure we know each other quite well enough yet for me to send you there. And I'll hold my questions about how they find the creative inspiration for 365 of those every year.