{Don't Judge the Junk}

This is a post that I hesitate to share and am actually a little embarrassed by.  I would love for y'all to think that my home is perfectly decorated, and I'm June Cleaver come to life.  But I like to keep it real on this blog, so I'm going to tell it like it is.  Before I start, though, I have a rule that you must adhere to if you plan on continuing to read this post...

Now that we have that out of the way, I have a few confessions.  I am not a great housekeeper.  I hate many household chores, and I can ALWAYS find something I would rather do than clean.  My husband is not a great housekeeper either, so add us together and you have a recipe for household disaster.  The problem is that even though I hate to clean, I love having a clean house.  A disorganized house aggravates me and riddles me with guilt because I know I should do better.  I only have so much time when I get home from work in the afternoons.  And in that little time, I have to exercise, blog, answer emails, craft, clean, eat, relax, get ready for the next day, sometimes do schoolwork--the list goes on and on.  (I have no idea what I will do when I ever finally have kids.  I've been waiting on that for a while, though, and I probably will continue to wait for a while.  You can read more about that here.)  Obviously, there's not always time to do everything I need to do in the afternoon, so I usually end up doing what makes me happiest: crafting and blogging.  Not cleaning.  Are you starting to get where I'm going with this?  If not, here is an example.  Remember our rule!

This is my craft room.  My lovely sister helped me organize this room a while back.  Obviously, it didn't exactly stay the way it was when she left.  I think the biggest problem besides my natural "messiness" is that I live in a somewhat small house, and many rooms have little storage.  And, of course, I'm on a limited budget when it comes to decorating.  These are problems I'm sure many of you have as well.  You may even have a room like this.

This is the corner of the room where crafting is supposed to occur.  But as you can see, zero crafting is happening because there just isn't room for it.  There are supplies and just plain junk all over the place!

And no unorganized, messy room would be complete without a piece of unused exercise equipment, so there's a treadmill in the room...covered with stuff.  And that, my bloggy friends, is my showpiece of a craft room!  Even though I'm messy and unorganized, I am the type of person who loves to be surrounded by pretty things.  Pretty things make me happy.  So this room does NOT make me happy!  First, it's definitely not pretty.  And, second, it's just a MESS!  Luckily, I decided to do something to change this.  I decided to makeover the whole room.  These are the goals I have in mind:

1. Get rid of unnecessary junk.  Why do I think I need to keep every book I've every read or a plastic lid because I could possibly make something out of it?!
2. Paint the walls a fresh, soothing color.  There's nothing wrong with the color on the walls, but I want something light and airy.
3. Bring in storage for the many craft supplies I have.  I can't get rid of all my craft supplies, but they can't be all over the floor either.
4. Add pretty things to the room that inspire me and make me smile.  What better room to fill with inspiration than the room where I create, right? 

So with these goals in mind, I have gotten a lot done in the room.  It's not finished, but it looks so much better.  If you followed the Creative Bloggers Got Talent competition, my last project was actually from the "new" craft room.  (But that was done in a rush, so it's changed some already.)  That little corner and your votes helped me earn second place, by the way, and I do really appreciate your support!  Over the next few weeks, I am going to share my craft room transformation with you.  I plan on showing you all the different budget-friendly projects I worked on for the room.  And in the end, I will have THE BIG REVEAL!  I'm looking forward to the reveal because I probably just lost all my bloggy street cred by revealing that this mess of a room was actually in my house...  :)