by Ethan Johnson
August 26, 2007

It only took for-freakin'-ever, but we finally cleared out our infamous "crap" room and created a "crop" room.

I didn't go the HGTV route and take lots of before and after photos, but trust me, the "before" room was best forgotten about quickly and forever. An entire room of assorted [crud] has been reduced to a much more manageable pile, like so:

I [heart] Craigslist. That's all I'm sayin'. Well, that, and I [heart] our city dump.

We went Ikea bonkers. What can ya say? We shopped around, and for our purposes they had the most items on our list for less, while maintaining some semblance of quality. To their credit, at least all of their stuff comes with instructions, unlike a cabinet I bought for our bathroom at Linens N Things recently. Ugh.

We worked out our floor plan on paper first, then cleared the room out to the bare walls, and loaded in the new stuff. Here's how the room started to come together before the paint crew arrived:

Yes, the white side is the gender-neutral side, whereas the pink side is for teh ladiez. I was showing one of my male friends the crop room, and I was beating up on the scrapbooking industry's annoying habit of making bright pink tools. Want to get guys interested in your craft? Tools, baby. And neutral (to masculine) colors. Just sayin'.

HGTV used to have a show that featured an "inspiration room" that cost some ungodly amount, and then a designer was called in to imitate the general idea on a much smaller budget. That is so us. Case in point: I saw a photo spread of someone's crop room/office that featured expensive leaning shelves, such as found at Crate and Barrel. Ikea aped the design in dark grey metal for $20. Good enough for us.

Thanks to my exercise and weight loss activities, I was finally able to justify a POANG chair and ottoman from Ikea. It is tested up to 250 lbs, and since I was right there on the nose, I rewarded myself with this funky furn. I got leather (such as it is) mostly to test out whether our dogs will absolutely destroy it, which in turn saves us a fortune on a leather sectional, or if we will finally discover a dog-safe solution. Spare me the lectures about leather. I think the Castro district is in line way ahead of me. Anyway, this is a great "oasis" spot to sit and read, or stew over layout ideas. Or nap, as that chair is wont to inspire.

Here's the combo again against the backdrop of our soothing, inspiring wall color. I was hoping to go much whiter with forensic amounts of blue tint, but this was the compromise that Mar and I reached. I can live with it.

Here's the crop table back in action, as well as the nearly stuffed shelving unit. I stacked our plastic storage [stuff] in the corner, which got it off of the a-frame shelves.

Note: When I leave blog comments praising someone's good idea, and say "that is happening for real," I'm not lying. Case in point: Amber at the My Aim is True blog hung what she called "art lines" in her craft room. I praised the idea, and promptly stole it. Unfortunately, our room is laid out kind of awkward, and stringing them wall to wall was not an option. I came up with a workable solution: Mount one end pointing into the center of the room and string the line to the nearest wall from there. We're not hanging sides of beef up there, so they won't be stressed too badly. I'm looking forward to featuring more art and photos on them, but give me a break, huh? We've spent so much time designing and filling out our creative space that we haven't had much time to, you know, use it. Expect that to change in short order.

For those of you who are considering carving out a creative space of your own (especially after checking out Amber's photos), here are some points to ponder:

• Accept this fact before it destroys you: You will never, ever, have enough storage space. Or worktop space. Prepare for profound disappointment, and yet satisfaction that you have the space carved out at all.
• Any creative pursuit is messy. See the above point. The trick is to control the chaos. We're still trying to wrangle our mess, but at least it is confined to an enclosed space without rendering the work space useless. Huge improvement over our pointless crap room.
• Have a plan. And part of that plan is a theme. Since one of our favorite local stores is the Scrap Bucket, I consciously stuck with the theme of "scrap basket". We used baskets wherever possible for storage. Plus, the baskets lift down to provide easy access to [whatever], and can be neatly put back - even if the contents are anything but.
• Try to tie colors together as much as possible. My POANG chair is a stretch, but the beige carpet and ceiling help provide some basis for the brown. The wall color ties in to the sheers over the window, which ties to the tabletop (when visible). And so on. Scrapbooking in particular results in a veritable color explosion all over the room, but try to tie the "big rocks" together to provide a sense of continuity and/or unity.
• Commit to keeping this space "sovereign". If it is supposed to be for scrapbooking, don't store your bicycle in there, and pots and pans, and so on. If the room suffers from "scope creep" weed out the encroaching items and put them somewhere else. Or get rid of them altogether as warranted. Any creative pursuit requires the necessary space to practice it, but there also needs to be breathing room so as not to feel overwhelmed or cramped due to excess clutter. If you're serious enough about your hobby/craft to carve out a dedicated space for it, then commit to it completely. If not, you have a lot more work to do before making a permanent space.

I read somewhere that "clutter is a series of unmade decisions." Oh, how true. Looking back at the larger "crap pile", a huge amount of that was plain old trash, followed closely by stuff that was never put away correctly, followed by stuff that we weren't going to use ever again but fit the Craigslist demographic quite nicely - namely free for the taking, or cheaply priced to move. It took weeks, if not months, but I stuck with chipping away at the room every day, and then Marlena and I undertook the Final Assault that made the scrap room possible.

My mother looooves a site called FlyLady, who talks about CHAOS - Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. We had a crushing affliction. Naturally, now that we have cleared the space and made the commitment to a lovely guest bedroom and a separate crop room, we had our first weekend guest in a lonnnnnng time, and reservations are pouring in for "crop nights". I'd say our efforts paid off.

The house still has a ways to go before being remotely close to our "dream" home, but having houseguests and friends over, and finally having the space to enjoy creative pursuits? That's dreamy enough for me. <EM>