organizing thoughts

You know, the comment on my previous post about my office/craft room got me thinking about practicality, and how that word means different things to different people.

Poor John, I hope he doesn't think that I don't appreciate his well thought out and thoughtful ideas! I do, I promise! It's jsut that you inadvertantly hit on something that has been a bit of a thorn in my side for a while now...

Specifically, the reccomendation to ignore Blueprint for a while in favor of researching craft storage in craft magazines. This statement tells me right off that John and I aren't really on the same page when it comes to craft magazines. Or maybe he hasn't seen Blueprint?

Why are there so few places that take both how something looks and how it functions into consideration? I think this is why I responded so strongly to Blueprint layouts, Martha Stewart's own personal brand of anal crazy, and to Adorn's gorgeous and practical layouts.
With the exeption of Adorn, and possibly Craft magzine, craft magazines do not fit with my own sense of aesthetics, not to mention the extreme amount of ugly chaff you have to sort through to find the one bit of wheat-potential. I've already tried and rejected the "go to Michaels and by a cheap piece of ugly molded plastic that won't quite fit for the space and probably won't fit your supplies anyway" approach.

Too many places go for plastic everything, with no thought to design. I'd like to work in a room with some sense of elegance, not a room covered in clear and white plastic crap. Or worse, brightly colored plastic crap. Organization TV shows also never seem to take into consideration how people function in a specific space. Dump stuff into a shitload of ugly rubbermaid containers and cover the whole shebang with a curtain. Well, curtains are wickedly impractial coverings-they get dirty and dusty and look sloppy. And for me, hiding everything in a plastic bin is far from useful. There's no good way of accessing your supplies, short of knocking a towering stack over.

Design sites and magazines are even worse. The first suggestion is to throw away your stuff (apartmenttherapy.com commenters are horrible in this respect). Gee, thanks. That's already been done. It's not clutter; it's supplies, dude. Bet you don't have a pantry either

The second suggestion is usually quite pretty and wildly impractical, ignoring how crafting items need to be stored both for ease of use and for maintaining integrity of the item. The comment on the previous post suggested using a wine bottle display to store yarn, which is a gorgeous and creative idea. But alas, it's more appropriate for a window display than actual everyday use. (a large footprint for very little yarn; you'd need to store yarn as skiens, not as balls, knocking out all yarns that come in balls and any yarns that you've already balled up on the winder as "ready to go"; can't keep your dye lots together easily; yarn shouldn't be stored out in the open air like that as dyes are prone to fading with UV light, it exposes the fiber to potential moth and bug infestation, not to mention dust and the cats. )

but a non-fiber person wouldn't know all that. And again, poor John, I don't mean to slag him for trying to help. It's a great visual idea, and exceptionally creative reuse. It's just impractical for a fiber collection.

So now I need to go look at the reqirements of my supplies, then head off in search of the pieces that make the cut. I think the tall worktable will be the most problematic.