I’ve finally finished organising everything. Here’s the before photo, with the after photo on the right (more text after the pics):

As you can see, everything’s much much better. There’s still stuff in bags and boxes to sort out, but for the most part it’s pretty tidy.

Clockwise from bottom left of the right pic: my plastic drawers, which house various bits and pieces, including threads and scrap fabrics. The black thing on the left is a piece of MDF (wood), which sits ontop of four of my storage boxes. The MDF is secured to the desk with gaffa tape, but it’s pretty sturdy and even if knocked, shouldn’t do much damage. On it sits my boxes of scrap papers and cardboards. Then there’s the desk against the wall, which has my shadow puppet patterns; pens, scissors, etc; an autographed pic of Rygel from Farscape (for ‘morale’); my glues and rods; pins and other small tools. On the wall I’ve put up a couple of shadow puppets, one of which is a dud for a commission; the thing that is gleaming from the light is actually a laminated print-out of my logo.

Under that desk, it looks pretty chaotic, but actually it’s all about angles. To the left, hidden by the MDF, is some drawers, and to the right, a cupboard. In the alcove of the desk, I’ve set another storage box, and ontop of it rests some foam and a bag of fabric. It only looks chaotic. And yay, you can see my brand new stool! It’s a swivel chair, but the chair itself won’t move on the floor, something I didn’t want in case I rammed into something on the tiled floor.

To the right, and mostly out of shot: a little alcove between the two desks houses a whole bunch of ’stuff’ - ie. things I need to sort out. Ontop of the desk is a whole bunch of puppets, toys, stands, and other things that just need to be kept out of the way. The shelf below that is storage area for tools and machinery, including my sewing machine, laminating machine, hand-drill, etc. Below that is a shelf full of more stuff to sort out.

Everything’s so much easier to get to now, and I’m looking forward to breaking it all in. I haven’t yet, but now that it’s all tidy I can get started on the many (many) video tutorials that I’ve been meaning to do. All I have to figure out is where to put the camera, and I’ve got a few ideas of how to go about it. I’m also happy to say that the way the MDF is set up, I can easily remove and replace storage boxes when necessary; meaning everything is useable and no area is permanently defined.

… Not entirely related, our pets have some random sleep habits. Not unusual at all, but it’s fun to see how things transpire over time. We have one dog and one cat (the cat is older and has been with us longer), with about 4 or 5 official animal beds around the house. We have one fairly large bed for the dog, then a smaller one (I’ll explain that in a minute), plus two cat beds. A beanbag that my sister had ended up in the lounge and the cat worked out how to sleep on it, so that’s one too. The large dog bed ends up being taken over by the cat, and hence the other smaller dog bed. - There’s also a dog mat. Half of the beds are in the lounge, whilst the other half recently moved into our back ‘family’ room, due to them being in the way of a family dinner in the lounge.

What’s curious is the game of musical chairs being played. Since we moved my work area, we had to shift a futon couch that was in the way. That has ended up in the lounge, and the cat loves it. It’s a new bed! But the dog, not one to be left out, has been using it that way too. But the fun doesn’t end there: the dog, after several years of watching the cat climb onto the bean bag, has now figured out how to sleep there himself. (Without adding any paw print indentations I might add!) Naturally, the dog fits tightly into the cat beds, and the cat curls into the large dog beds.

There are a number of mats and old blankets too, which continue to make musical cat beds interesting. If the dog’s not moved it, the cat’s under it. At night, before I go to sleep, I always take a gander at where they’ve ended up and snap a shot or two of some funny faces or placements.

My favourite new thing though, is that I ended up getting rid of an old tiny couch - a secondhand item from a local theatre company - that had been cluttering up my room. We were about to ‘tip’ it, but seeing that the animals like it, I donated it to their collection and dumped it outside where there’s hardly a comfortable thing for them to sit on. This new addition joins my horrid orange chair - believe it or not, but an actual puppet from a show in 2003 - and the animals now take turns with that too. … Er, well, just the couch, but you get the idea.

Anyway, it all leads up to this: I’m not the only crazy one around here. … I’d share all of my pics, but I’m sure they’re not as enjoyable to anyone else but my family and I. Let’s face it, what’s new or interesting about pets being weird? … But it does make me smile, and now the pets can sit with me whilst I work in my new workshop area.