I'm cleaning and reorganizing the garage. Two month-long projects are at completion and I have another sorting project to do in the next few weeks, and the weather's still warm enough to work in an unheated garage, so this is the time that was foreordained.

One of my goals is to better organize my materials storage. Since my studio is only so big I tend to store a lot of materials in "studio annex." Over the years it's kind of moved to wherever there was room—larger unsold artwork in this corner, smaller stuff in bins over here, stained glass on these shelves, tools for class in that area. And then there are boxes of books that don't fit in our "library," Christmas decorations, and a bunch of other stuff all mixed in.

A few larger items have gone out via freecycle this weekend and more will go to local thrift stores. But part of what triggered this reorganization is the influx of video tapes I had no storage area for. We had two large boxes invisibly labeled "for Jua" and then Juergen, one of the guys at my co-op, decided I needed to have his box of tapes as well. So, yesterday, two of the three boxes were unpacked and the tapes housed (once room had been made for them). That still leaves me with another unpacked box, a stack inside the house that's about 30" high, and a bag of audio cassettes I just got today from a friend that need homes. My goal is to get them all in one place, but that may not happen at this point.

Part of my preparation for this cleanout/reorganize was to watch the first season of "Hoarders." Interesting show! And if I weren't utilizing the video tapes for artwork I definitely wouldn't be taking more tapes into the collection. Luckily I haven't needed to break out the snow shovel to shift any of my stuff. That's when you know things have really gotten bad.