Welcome back to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live! I am lucky to have joined a terrific group of bloggers who give a peek into the places and spaces where they spend their time.
Today's topic is...Spring Cleaning, which is a topic I know nothing about! I mean, I do understand what cleaning is, but living for even a short time with my cleaning-obsessed grandmother who would start needling me to scrub the carpet with a toothbrush before I'd had my morning caffeine on a weekend was enough to scar me for life. She was always like that, too. When my dad was growing up, any friend of his who stopped by their house was ordered to start weeding the front yard or whatever chore came to her mind. Utter madness.
There are so, so, so many tales I could tell about summer, fall, winter, and spring cleaning where my grandmother was concerned, and the various machinations she would employ to get other people to do the work. But of them all, I think this is my number one favorite little story. When I got my first apartment in college, I didn't have furniture so I asked my grandmother if I could have the 1950s chrome table and chairs in her downstairs that nobody was using, and she said, "Oh, it's not mine. You'd have to ask your uncle if you could have it." And since my uncle could be difficult, I'm sure she thought that was the end of it. But for whatever reason, I was feeling lucky and asked him...and he agreed, much to my grandmother's surprise and dismay. She really didn't want to have to let it go so her condition was that my mom and I would have to polish it thoroughly before we took it away, with her supervising. And since this had become as much a battle of the wills as anything else, I agreed. Actual dialogue a few hours into this arduous process:
Mom: "You don't have to kill yourself, Sally."
Grandma: "Oh yes you do!" (said in the most annoying possible lilting voice)
That was 30 years ago. I still have that table and chairs. And I have to admit, the chrome still looks really good. So spring cleaning? Eh, I'm more of a twice-a-century cleaning person myself!
Now one thing I do clean in the spring is my winter sweaters! I have already gotten a start on some of them that I am not planning on wearing again until next fall. But that's just a quick run in the washing machine on cold, then hang up on my sweater drying racks for a couple days, fold, and put away. That's truly the extent of it.
But over the last few months, I have been working hard on my bead storage and organization system, and I've gotten things in pretty decent order. So I'm going to take this opportunity to show you where things stand with a tour. Step right up, folks!
First, I have two side-by-side Costco style shelving units in the main hallway of our apartment that hold my primary supply of larger beads (i.e., 5mm or larger). (This is the same type of shelving used for my College Living 2.0 Kitchen "Pantry" from this post.) Each color group has its own section with larger divided containers, smaller divided containers, and a Land o' Lakes butter container. The color groups are: Blue, Blue-Green, Green, Yellow, Red, Orange, Pink, Purple, White, Brown, Black, and Grey. As you can see, each color group is further divided into more specific colors for the large and small divided containers. I have also added some "multi size" boxes when I have the exact same bead in multiple sizes (e.g., 6mm, 8mm, 10mm).
I use the larger divided containers to hold larger beads in larger numbers. "Larger numbers" doesn't have a precise definition, but as a rule of thumb, it usually means enough beads to make a bracelet or close to it. This is the larger container for soft pink beads. I keep each type of bead in clear zipped baggies to make it easy to remove the ones I want to use all at once rather than digging loose beads out of a section. My labeling is pretty hit or miss with these beads, but some of them do have the bead size (e.g., 6mm) on the bag and some of them have information from the packing slip tucked inside the bag. I really like being able to look down at a tray and see all my beads at once. (This is described as the "horizontal" organizer type in this article from Fire Mountain Beads.)
One of my very successful decisions was to use the smaller divided containers to store beads that I have in smaller numbers...the kind of numbers where you might want to put it in your bead soup. But the problem with an undifferentiated bead soup is that it's hard to find two beads of the same kind for earrings, so I have broken up my "bead soup" in these little containers. These storage boxes are where I go first when looking for beads to make bead soup earrings. If I don't find what I want in these containers, I then pull out the larger containers above and look at those bead options. You might have seen in the previous photo that I have labeled the boxes with "2" or "3+" because I originally sorted by number as well as by color, but that's not something it's been valuable for me to maintain so I ignore that for the most part. (For details on my bead soup earring project and a discussion of my first attempt at sorting out beads for it, see this post.)
This is one of my neatest boxes, holding my soft, warm-toned pink "bead soup" beads. Some of my boxes will have several different kinds of beads in each section of the container, but I am careful when I create that kind of roommate situation that I can easily tell the beads apart. The lower left section of this container is a good example of a roommate situation.
The third type of container on these shelving units is the true bead soup for each color grouping; this is the one with all my singleton pink beads. These containers used to be a lot fuller before I made a bunch of monochromatic bead soup necklaces on Chinese knotting cord. I think I have made at least one for each color grouping except the black and grey. With my pink bead soup, I made one in cooler, brighter shades of pink/magenta and another one in warmer, softer shades of pink/peach, for example. I have further diminished this bead soup by pulling most of the basic beads (simple round beads, rondelles, disks, cubes, etc. in plain colors at 8mm or smaller) out for a purpose I'll explain later in this post. That leaves the not-as-basic beads in the soup container: large beads, unusually shaped beads, beads that aren't drilled through the center (like drops), patterned beads, and so on. It's a fairly motley crew but is a good place to look when I need a single interesting bead as the focal on a necklace or bracelet...or for a dangle to hang on my seed bead wrap necklace.
I have another Costco style shelving unit for storing my smaller beads (seed beads, bugle beads, and other small beads at 4mm or under). (The bottom shelf contains all my two-hole beads, which are organized only by type right now because I don't have a huge number of them and haven't really started using them to know more specifically how I want to organize them.) My small beads do not have quite as much standardization in their storage as the larger beads, but I am still having a lot of success at quickly putting my hands on the beads I want. Each of these cardboard boxes contains the small beads for one of the color families.
Here's my cardboard box holding all my small pink beads. I have subdivided them into various upcycled containers: the ubiquitous Land o' Lakes butter containers, spice bottles, and flat lunch meat containers for the most part. The specific subdivisions vary for each color category based on what beads I have and how many of them. One thing I've figured out for myself is that it helps to separate not only by type of bead but also between the pricier and less pricey beads in a category. For example, here the "FP/Stone" container has my fire polished, gemstone, and nicer glass bicones/crystals while the "Small" container has my less expensive beads. I also usually separate out the pricier Toho and Miyuki seed beads from the less expensive ones. Where I have more beads than will fit in one container, I also can divide them up by more specific color groupings; for pink, I have the warm-tone pink seed beads in one container and the cool-tone ones in another.
Within each container, beads are kept in clear zipper bags and pretty much crammed in however they'll fit. The top left shows my "Small" container with bags put in side by side; the bottom left shows my "SB Warm" container with bags layered on top of each other. It's not a see-everything-at-a-glance storage solution like the "horizontal" orientation I have with my larger bead storage, but so far it's working for me to dump out the bags and rifle through them for what I want. When I have a larger volume of one kind of seed bead, I have placed them in old spice bottles that go directly into the cardboard box.
This brings me to my latest experiment, which has been a HUGE success for me. When I started making my eclectic memory wire bracelets, I quickly became overwhelmed with managing all the different kinds of beads I'd use in the project. Not so much picking them out or keeping them separated on my bead mat, but putting them back in the specific containers where they belong when I was done with the bracelet. So then I had the idea to create bead mixes in various colors so that instead of pulling and putting away a couple dozen (or more) different containers of beads for each project, I'd only need a few. I put each bead mix in a labeled jar and placed them in two boxes like this. (I also did four metallic mixes that I have set off to the side with other metallic beads.)
Here's how I did it. I went to all the bead organizers you've seen in this post - from the larger containers to the singleton bead soup to the seed bead butter dishes - and started making bead mixes with beads of one color group in a range of sizes from 11/0 seed beads to 8mm or even 10mm beads. Basic beads from my singleton bead soup was an easy selection. I grabbed the odd beads from the small containers for earrings also - if I had 5 of the same bead, I'd grab one, leaving 2 sets of 2 for earrings. If I had a good number of the same bead, I'd grab a few/several. I added a generous amount of each of my least expensive seed beads, bugle beads, and "small" beads and a smaller amount of my Toho seed beads. (I didn't add any of the fire polished glass or gemstone beads to this mix because I tend to use them for different projects than this and I don't have a lot of any one kind.) For my larger beads (5mm and up) from the larger containers, I focused primarily on my less expensive glass and wood beads, adding more of the ones I had the most of in my stash and less of the others.
There was no particular ratio of beads I was trying to achieve with this. In fact, the first time through, I was a little too light-handed with the larger beads; as I started making bracelets, my supply of larger beads in the mixes diminished faster than the small ones. But that was no problem; I just went back to my storage and pulled more larger beads into the mixes as I noticed they were being used up. As I've added new small beads and seed beads to my stash, I've poured some of them into their color's bead mix. And now when I only have a few beads left from a larger supply, I will often put some or all of them into a bead mix (sometimes I want to save some for my smaller containers for bead soup earrings and other times not). So each jar is a bead mix that is constantly changing, and that works for me since my eclectic memory wire bracelets do not follow a particular pattern of beads - I can just use the bead mix as a buffet to pick and choose from as desired.
So now if I want to make an eclectic memory wire bracelet to match a skirt I have with a pink, aqua, light green, and violet color palette, I can just pull these four bead mix jars and start creating. (To be fair, I will also almost always use at least one and usually all four metallic colors as well as one or a couple neutrals.) I will spoon/pour out some of each jar onto my bead mat (keeping the four colors separate) and pick out what I want to use. When my bracelet is done, I scoop the beads back into their jars and put them away in their storage box (which is right next to my beading table). I can make a bracelet with literally several dozen different beads but only have to pull and return a few jars! This has been a real game-changer for me because putting away the leftover beads after finishing a project is the least fun part of making jewelry and I will procrastinate about it terribly if there are a lot of different beads to deal with. But using this bead mix method, I can clean up my bead mat after a memory wire bracelet project in just a couple minutes. And come on, aren't these bead mixes delicious to look at??
Here is the Costco style shelving unit just behind my beading table (I can reach everything from my chair), and you can see the bead mixes in the cardboard boxes underneath the bottom shelf. I can pull the box forward, grab or return the jars, then push the box back under the shelf. The boxes on the bottom shelf contain my beading wire, chain, and craft wire. The next shelf up has my bracelet beading board for making stretch bracelets on the left and my bulk metal spacer beads in spice bottles at the right (labeled with the size in mm). That's also where the glass pearls and rhinestone spacer beads from my birthday beads are currently hanging out (the rest have been integrated into the other storage). Note that I even have a little spacer bead soup butter dish for my singleton metallic beads.
Here are the top two shelves of that unit, also reachable from my chair. (Well, there are containers on the back row of the top shelf that I can't reach while seated, but I've arranged it so that the ones I use most are at the front row where I can reach.) The top shelf has my findings: ear wires, jump rings, eye/head pins, clamshells, clasps, etc. The mess on the left side of the second shelf is my out-of-control supply of charms! That area needs some more organization for sure, but at least they are now all in that one cardboard box so I know where to start digging. (I haven't figured out yet what organization scheme makes sense for them.) The right side of the second shelf has some general supplies I use often: bead stoppers, GS Hypo glue, scissors, etc.
To the left of my beading table, and also within reach, is this cool cubby/bookshelf thingy that my husband ordered and put together. Here I have spacer beads and bead caps organized "horizontally" in small divided containers as well as some stuff I just like to have immediately to hand: jump rings, chain, lobster clasps, gold and silver 20 gauge German style wire. And then there's the odd and sundry 4mm white pearl beads in a jar, black glass round and crystals in various sizes, a stack of seed bead holders to keep them organized on your mat when beading, a gazillion plastic bottle caps that I use to hold paper beads as I go throw the rolling, gluing, and glazing process, etc.
And finally, here is the twin cubby/bookshelf that is in the hallway next to the larger containers from the start of this post. Here's where I keep all my weird and special beads that don't fit well into the color-first organization scheme I use for them. I've got lampwork beads, big stone and glass beads, various bead mixes, shaped beads (mushrooms, fruit, rabbits...), alphabet beads, etc. One of the cubbies has a bunch of the Land o' Lake butter containers where I have separated out my pendants/focals by color.
The right two cubbies on the second shelf and the entire bottom shelf have subscription bead boxes, which I've organized by color palette. That has been a game-changer as well! Before, I might remember that there was a bead box with a light blue and white color palette that would work well for something I had in mind, but it was extremely awkward for me to go through all my boxes looking for the right one. I had them organized by brand (Curated, Bargain, or Dollar Bead Box) and sorta organized by month/year of the box, which was not helpful. Now I can go straight to the stack labeled "Blue" and find that light blue and white box right away. And hey, while I'm there, I might see another box in a blue color palette that interests me as well.
Thanks for joining me for a rather laborious tour of my idiosyncratically organized bead storage system with re-used butter containers, Amazon boxes, and spice/salsa/pickles/etc. bottles within my overall College Living 2.0 aesthetic. You know, I'd been thinking I'd cover those brown cardboard boxes with decoupage paper but after doing 1.5 of them for my home office, I realized that I don't like dealing with all that glue. So I've been considering a contact paper box decoration scheme instead. Of course the fastest approach would be to simply buy some pretty boxes but I'm not sure I have it in me to give up quite so soon on the idea of upcycling what I have instead of buying something new. Luckily, on a scale of 0 to 100, the amount my husband cares about how they look is -5.
Next month's topic is My Favorite Birthday...and of course the most honest answer is "my next one" because post-50, I'm very happy to celebrate making it another year. But I'll have to give some thought to birthdays past and see what comes to mind.
In the meantime, visit these lovely bloggers as they share about spring cleaning:
Bettye at Fashion Schlub
Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Em at Dust and Doghair
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Leslie at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After
Where do you fall on the cleaning spectrum? Love it? Hate it? Do it and try not to think about it? Do you do any special cleaning tasks in the spring? Have you done any organizing in your place over the winter? Do you have any preferences for organizing craft supplies? Do you like to re-use things for organizing or do you like to purchase organizing/storage materials...or both? Do you procrastinate about putting things away at the end of a project like I do?
Blogs I link up with are listed here.
What a story! I don't love to clean but I like things to be neat so I am more of an organizer than a cleaner and I do not like clutter. I enjoy organizing my closet a lot. What a collection of beads! It is amazing and I love that you have a way to make it work for you!
www.chezmireillefashiontravelmom.com
Your brain is incredible in it's organizational skills, Sally. I'm in awe of how you do this. I'm like you with spring cleaning even though I don't have a traumatic story like yours (it is kinda funny and good for you for still keeping the table). I have my buttons somewhat organized like you do but I have far less.
And another aspect that we are similar is I wouldn't buy the pretty things to store them in either...well, maybe I'd look for some thrifting, but otherwise you could spend a fortune.
XOOX Jodie
Wow, you are so organized. And I bet this is the way your grandmother's cleaning 'gene' manifests itself in you!! Love all the shapes, sizes and subtle differences in shades of the pink beads. And your cataloging system for labeling the containers. How wonderful that you can reach everything from your beading chair and table. You certainly make lovely pieces.
The little dinette is precious. And a keepsake with a great story behind it. My daughters could tell some tales about me and cleaning similar to yours about your grandmother. Although the toothbrushes were generally only relegated for cleaning hard-to-read places in the bathroom. Their horror stories revolve around cleaning our window blinds.