Where books and crafts collide - in a bad way

There comes a day when the book shelf you kind of use as a catch all for... life... just can't take it anymore. Today is that day for bookshelf 1 of 4 in my living room. This was the very last bookshelf I put together, so it got all the random books that didn't have a place on the other shelves, and over the past several months, I started using the top shelf for my sewing stuff because my sewing machine lives on top of the bookshelf. A lot of random fabrics and yarns, etc, have made their way onto the shelf. I looked at it today, and decided I couldn't take this eyesore any longer.

 This is the stuff that I pulled from the top shelf before I snapped the above photo:

As you can see, books and crafts were stacked willy-nilly, and it made touching anything on the shelf a gamble. I did what I needed to, in order to clean a mess that had outgrown its space - I made a bigger mess. I took everything off the shelves and piled books and craft implements on the dining table and a coffee table. I wiped down the shelves, then started organizing. I set all the stuff that needed to go upstairs in one pile, and made a pile of the fabrics that I am not currently using so they could go downstairs. I decided to keep the top two shelves for crafting, and for my library books so they have somewhere to live. The next two shelves are for books I want to keep. The bottom shelf is books I plan to get rid of.

 Even though the other three bookshelves are in various stages of disaster, having this one nice and tidy makes me feel awesome. Maybe even awesome enough to tackle the other shelves in the next week...

Gabriel thinks the shelf looks awesome, too.