What Happened To My Studio?

I'll post pictures, once I have everything more or less back together.

Right now, I'm still trying to restock things.  Having lost my studio and all its accumulated detritus, I've been forced to really think about what I need--which has been a good thing.  Surprisingly, I need more than I thought!  I'd hoped to keep things relatively minimalist from now on, so as to focus on specific current projects.  And, ultimately, I think that'll still happen.  We'll see.

For my (not quite a) Lincoln Home, I intend to make as much, myself, as possible.  In my spare moments, I've been daydreaming about various woodworking plans for fireplaces, wainscoting, etc.  But, nobody ever goes it alone, and I've also been--in preparation for actually getting going--purchasing from the following vendors: Sue Cook Miniatures, Les Chinoiseries, Houseworks (for strip wood) and Chrysnbon.  I'll have a better sense of what wood I'll need for the molding, once my design is finalized.

I also have a few future purchases planned, especially for tile--but I'm still working out what I'll need.

I'm also looking for design inspiration--especially for furniture--as my budget doesn't permit some of the pieces I really want.  So, instead, I'm going to learn how to make these things, myself.  And hopefully, if I succeed, sharing my newly found techniques.

Who are your favorite suppliers?

Anyway, on to my story.  As you already know, it was an eventful winter.  One of the issues we dealt with was rain.  And flooding.  And, at the end of last year, discovering that our foundation needed some pretty extreme repairs.  So much for the home inspector!  Anyway, as a result of this combination, we got lots of water--and wild animals, some very large--in our basement.  Cue destruction of property.

Ultimately, I gave up and admitted the sad truth, that it was a total loss.

After several months of (unrelated) misery, and a renewed conviction--on both mine and my husband's part--that we deserved to enjoy our lives, we set to work repairing it.  And, being mindful of creating a studio for this specific space, rather than trying to cram everything I already had, in my much, much larger studio (at our old house) into a Hobbit hole (which would be our new house), I taught myself a few organizational tips:

• Label everything.  Having lots of bins, organizers, etc only works if you can actually find what's inside.  One survivor was my storage cabinet.  It's a great idea in theory, but not so much in practice...unless you label each drawer.  Now I finally know what I have in there.  I also labeled my storage boxes.  One HUGE loss was my collection of Al Chandronnait barrels, bins and boxes, many of which aren't made anymore.  I'm still really sad about that.
• A place for everything, and everything in its place.  If there isn't room for it, you don't need it!  I have a 3-drawer Rubbermaid wheeling cart, which I LOVE, because the drawers are large enough to hold a standard-size sheet of dollhouse flooring or wallpaper.  I can lay everything out nice and flat, and keep my piles of goodies protected from dust, cats, etc.  The other drawers have been devoted to kits.
• DON'T accumulate!  It's all gone now, but I can't tell you how many hundreds of dollars I wasted on wood strips, trims, etc I never used.  I bought it thinking, this is pretty, I'll use it somewhere.  Uh huh.  So unless it's truly unique, or limited edition, stay away!  Having one of every kind of trim under the sun does not, contrary to popular belief, make completing your project easier.  Half the time, I swear, pawing through my disorganized piles slowed me down and confused me so badly that I ended up buying duplicates, anyway.
• Throw out your scraps.  You don't need them and will never use them.
• Don't try to do too many projects at the same time.
• Invest in a cork board.  You can pin your inspirational pictures, design sketches, etc on there.
• Always make room for your books.  Knowing how to create something in polymer clay is more important than having a huge pile of polymer clay handy, just in case you decide to do that project you've actually already forgotten how to do, because the class was last year and you've long ago lost your handout.
• Keep your handouts, etc organized in a binder.
• Don't ever let it get to the point where you're tripping over a sad morass of sawdust, scraps and howling cats as the printables rain down on you like snow.