31 Things in 31 Days - Day 9: Flat Surfaces

I loooove a clean flat surface. 

Unfortunately I am the master at covering a flat surface in stuff without even noticing I've done it

Just after sharing with you my ponderings on how to approach my nemesis (the sewing room), I decided to put Nony's visibility rule into practice and focus on the easy stuff first so it's visually less overwhelming.

That means my cutting table. It always means my cutting table.

It took me almost no time at all to go from this:

To this. There's 8 minutes between shots, I'm pretty sure it took me 5 minutes to remember to go back to take the after photo. 

5 days into my 31 Days sewing room challenge I remembered to take the next progress shot.

I had some vague idea of sharing with you all the changes in the sewing room over the course of the month via the cutting table's morphology of stuff. (It turns out morphology is a real word, but I'm keeping it in anyway.) But mostly I was taking photos for me. Sometimes taking a photo will point out things you might not see otherwise. 

Did you notice that yesterday an hour later there was less? I know it's a little hard to notice with all that other stuff in the way. But I promise there is less. Less = progress.

What is the big thing that stands out in those shots?

Those vintage Singer's right? They had almost become a permanent part of that table.

Today I decided they had to be moved off the cutting table so I actually have a proper space to sort things out on for the rest of the month. It's DAY 9 already and I can't ignore this problem for the whole month.

I think I'll put the Singer's under the cutting table. The thing is there is a huge stack of boxes under there.

These boxes need to go. They've served their purpose and I'm finally ready to just get rid of them. It's taken me a while to come to terms with the fact that these boxes cause more of a problem then they solve. 

I even thought I would decoupage them and give them a new lease on life.

A project which I started using a couple of boxes that I've already emptied. But I never finished the decoupaging.

I'm not sure that first image truly illustrates the scale of the box stack. How about this?

Why, yes! I did clear off the table first, thank you for noticing. 

I emptied everything out of all but one of those boxes. 

All the fabrics went into a different box and everything else got re-homed.

I emptied the last box to sort through. This is what was in it.

And this is all that I kept from that box.

That entire stack of boxes is now GONE! Yay! 

The Singers have a new home. Mission accomplished!!

What's that?  You wanted to see a shot of a clear cutting table?

Sorry, maybe next time.