A Really Good Start

Clutter is nothing more than postponed decisions"
                                         ~Barbara Hemphill

As some of you know, 2014 was quite the year for me.  Between working months on a fundraiser for Nicole, then being gone two weeks for her surgery and returning home to have knee replacement; painting had to be put on hold.  During all this time, if something had to be taken down or put back into my studio, it was dropped off anywhere.  I even told Mr. Cottage, on numerous occasions, just take "it" down and set it in my studio.  As a result...

 

I had way too many large pieces of paper, pads, paintings, etc., that didn't have any place where I could put them, other than have them in my way all the time.  I finally bit the bullet and ordered two Alex storage drawers from IKEA .  I had wanted these for awhile, but I had no place to put them in our other house.  The drawers are large and not too deep.  So while I was recuperating from my knee surgery, Mr. Cottage assembled them for me.   Then, because I wanted to be really organized, I wanted labels for ALL the drawers in my studio.  I played around online and finally decided to order some that are discontinued.  They were from the Martha Stewart line that are adhesive and don't need to be drilled into each drawer.  I finally found some for a decent price on Ebay and ordered more than enough...

I finally put them on each drawer.  I tossed items into these drawers just to get them out of the way so I could start cleaning up this area.  Once I decide what each drawer will have in it, I'll write up the label...

Here's one of the drawers of my cello envelopes that I put my finished artwork into...

And another drawer has all my original watercolors...

Actually, all the drawers are pretty well filled up.  When I placed the order for the storage drawers, I also ordered this great cart from IKEA.  It came in gray and a beautiful aqua color, but the practical side of me said to stay with the gray...

Here's a sneak peek of my area...

I'm still far from being finished and in between, I will be working on various other projects; one of which will be painting this room.  It wasn't until Mr. Cottage and I moved in that we noticed a pink undertone to the current wall color...

This is the wool oriental rug we had in our living room at our other house.  We now have it in the large walkout room in our lower level, where my studio is also located.  So obviously, the pink undertone walls have to go...

Right now I'm leaning towards a gray.  Any thoughts, anyone?