A Clean Slate and a Controlled Test

When you go on a diet, one of the first things they have you do is keep a journal of everything you eat. As humiliating and eye-opening as this is for dieters, that is not what I will be doing here. What I WILL be doing is a 28-day study of how my Dining Room and Kitchen transform from a workshop-viable space to ones that look like a toronado hit, then hit again before I had a chance to clean up from the first one.

I had workshops on Sunday, both morning and afternoon sessions. Since I have another session on Tuesday night, Monday is kinda of a free night to make sure I have all the cleaned stamps back at their stations, grid paper replaced, scraps replenished, and basically everything done so when I get home at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, and my first customers follow me in the door like they did last month, all I will have to do is turn on the lights and greet that cat (not necessarily in that order) for us to begin.

So tonight is a perfect night for me to start capturing the Before pictures in preparation for the daily journal of how this all falls apart so quickly. (Is a daily journal in a blog rendundant?)

Here are a few Before shots of what this place looks like for a workshop...

The Dining Room table:

The Dining Room table is where I live when I am home and not nestled into the sunken portion of the couch cushion that perfectly fits my behind. As I clean up from the workshops, this table will be the first to sustain damage in the way of stuff 'stored' there for later. This is also where I sit and play with stamps, paper and ribbon when I have time, so I guess that makes sense, in a way.

The 6-foot table:

This is the larger of the two additional tables I use for my workshops. This one, however, never actually goes away. After a workshop I fold up the folding chairs (!) and then just push the table up against the book cases. For the next month it will hold all the stamping mats (from under the grid paper) in a neat pile, and my paper cutter will come out of hiding and reside at the end of the table.



The 4-foot table:

This table will be the first thing to actually get put away when I clean up. All the stuff from the top gets set on one of the other tables, and this guy gets collapsed and stored up against the wall, along with all four folded folding chairs. Otherwise I could not walk into this room for a month without going postal.

The cat, resting up from her all-day nap:


And no, she was no help in beginning this chronicle, nor do I expect her to be any help in the future. At least we understand each other.

And last, but not least, the Kitchen table (aka: The Shopping Station):

I think I misspoke when I said the Dining Room table would take the first hit. In fact, the Kitchen will be the first fatality, because when I come in the front door in the evening, the first thing I do is toss the mail onto the Kitchen table. There it sits and piles up until the night before the next workshop, when I go through it, decide what gets recycled, what gets filed, and what should have been paid by now, thus clearing the surface so people can sit there and see the catalogs and order forms.

Amazing, but this tiny place can actually accomodate 8 women moving about for several hours. Well, okay, it holds 7 women much more comfortably than 8, but if they are good, close friends, 8 is doable.

So there you have it - the Before images that may not be seen again until this time next month. Starting Wednesday night, I will chronicle the evolution from Workshop Stations to a total mess. Let's see how long THAT takes to happen! I'll give it two days. ;-)

Update: And so it begins. Look what just arrived:

This is the box that just arrived on my door-step. It contains my most recent Demo order. Normally it would get opened, then shoved under the long table to sit until I figured out what to do with everything, but noooooo, people need to sit at that table tomorrow, so now I need to figure out where to stash it. Sigh.