After putting the job off as long as humanly possible, it is time to clean and reorganize my craft room. Every craft supply and tool found an organized storage space with the exception of my embroidery hoops. I kept moving them place to place during the decluttering project. It didn’t help matters that I added several big and hard to store machine embroidery hoops to the mix when I got a sewing and embroidery machine for my birthday.
Her name is Bernadette. She can sew everything from chiffon to leather and has so many settings and features it is like flying a rocket ship. Cool, I always wanted to be an astronaut!
I sat and looked around the room trying to find a place for more storage. After quite a bit of time (I may have also been streaming Netflix) I found it – blank wall space under a shelf. Great!
One of the things I like about cleaning, decluttering, and organizing a creative space is rediscovering supplies (fancy talk for I forgot I had that!) I almost always end up using the found objects to make storage and organizers for the item I uncovered that don’t have a good store bought solution including this one.
When someone asks why we started composting, my husband and I say it’s because we had to because all we had for garden was clay and zero topsoil. We sang the condo blues over how very little would grow in that pretending to be soil, researched how to amend it, and experimented with composting in a DIY compost bin.
I made our first compost bin by drilling a bazillion holes in a black plastic trash can. We loaded it up with food scraps and paper from our paper shredder and in about a year we had compost! We added the homemade compost to our soil and after awhile our tan clay soil started to turn black with nutrients. I practically dance the first time I dug a hole and found an earthworm – it is another indicator that the soil is improving!
We take our composting very seriously. Why do you ask?
And we’ve been composting ever since.
Columbus has many visit this type of business, stamp a passport, and collect a prize trails. We have a local coffee trail, craft brewery trail, a local small business trail, and a delicious donut trail among others. I recently learned about a cool one in Dublin, Ohio – The Fairy Door Trail. Dublin goes completely nuts for all things Irish, Celtic, and St. Patrick’s Day. So it makes sense that they start a new trail by putting new fairy doors in their local small businesses in March for St Patrick’s Day just in case a leprechaun would like to use it. Which is mighty thoughtful.
I fell into an Internet fairy door rabbit hole after that and wanted to add another fairy door to my house just in case a fairy, gnome, leprechaun, or hopefully - a Borrower - would use it. I loved the Borrower books and movies as a kid and I often think a Borrow probably borrowed that thing I can’t find (which is way more fun than acknowledging I misplaced it.) If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can read The Complete Adventures of the Borrowers series here. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links for your convenience)
It’s National Craft Month so why not make an indoor fairy door (or the mythical sprite of your choice) to celebrate?
Let’s make stuff!
Some of the things they don’t tell you about trying to reduce your household trash with zero waste living is that it depends a lot on where and how you want to live. Most of the year’s worth of garbage in jar folks have access to big fill your own container stores, year round farm markets, or huge gardens where they can grow almost everything they need. Not all of us are that lucky, would rather not drive all over the place, or crunched the numbers and found some the prices in those shops sky high. *raises hand*
But’s not to say that zero waste is impossible! Instead try the more realistic goal of concentrating on reducing your household waste than making it absolute zero. By focusing on reusing, the Rule of Half, recycling, reducing, and composting (when the bin isn’t frozen shut) my family has reduced our weekly household waste to approximately one grocery store size shopping bag (ish. We reuse any packaging, dog food, etc. bags for garbage which means the size varies) a week. We average a 3/4 full recycling bin every two weeks. We also give ourselves a break if our output is more than that because we have seasons and that can determine what we can do and how we do it.
To give you some realistic ways to reduce your household waste (and possibly save some money doing it) I made a list of the zero waste practices, tips, and tricks I do in a normal week to give you some ideas and jump start your thinking machines to find a zero waste solution that works for you!
So personally, I think it is best to decorate with the not so fickle recycled variety and make quick and easy bottle Christmas gnome decorations! Although, just like the Irish leprechaun, Danish gnomes don’t go away after the holiday and you can decorate with gnomes all year round if you like.
This is a very forgiving Christmas craft project because the way you make your gnome is only limited to your imagination and what craft supplies you have on hand or want to use for this project.
I found a set of headphones with a microphone I forgot I had in that random box of cords you’re supposed to have when you hit 30. The foam ear covers where deteriorated but the microphone windscreen was fine. What good luck I thought! I don’t have to by a new pair! I used them for my next Zoom meeting.
Of which, the last half an hour was the longest of my life because the bare headphones hurt my ears. OW!
I went into my craft studio, gathered materials, popped on an audiobook (I use Audible. You can Try Audible and Get Two FREE Audiobooks here,) and started to play. In the end I had new cute and comfortable ear covers for my headphones. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience.)
Let’ do this!
I plunked a bolt of skeleton print fabric on the store’s cutting table.
Fabric cutting lady: what are you making?
Me: A skirt
Fabric cutting lady: Oh! Are you getting ready for Halloween early?
Me: No. Just making something fun to wear for every day.
Fabric cutting lady: (Gives me a blank stare because she doesn’t know what to do with this information and says nothing. This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten this response from her about one of my weirdo projects.)
That doesn’t matter because I made a cute, twirly dirndl skirt that has pockets!
Save this sewing idea to your Pinterest boards for later! Share it with your friends!
And you know what?
You can make one too!
When I have to go out and about on a necessary errand to two, I'm required to wear a cloth face mask.
As always, I try to batch my errands to save gas (eco friendlier and all) and most importantly, time.
Which means, I usually take off my mask by the ear loops when I get back into the car. Then I hunt to find where it shifted around while I was driving to my next stop when it is time to put the mask back on again (always using the ear loops as recommended!) I need a better way to keep track of my cloth face mask in between the short times I remove it and need to put it back on again.
I took my inspiration from the floating sunglasses strap similar to this one I use when I’m at a water park or pool to keep my sunglasses from sinking if they are accidentally knocked off my face. In no time at all I a cloth face mask lanyard. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links for your convenience.)
Well, actually I made 3. Two handmade face mask lanyards and one cloth face mask chain because it is such a quick and easy project to do.
Let’s make stuff!
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I don’t drink a lot of soda but every once and awhile a pop can will cross my path. Once I finish the beverage I have two choices:
1. Recycle the can in the recycling bin.
2. Recycle the can into a cute necklace.
Today I am going with Option 2 because it will make a much more entertaining tutorial than Option 1 and it will give me a chance to answer I often get: How do you smooth the edges of a cut aluminum can?
It’s easy! Let’s get started.
I had a quick little caulking project I needed to do and didn’t bother changing into paint clothes because I didn’t think I’d get messy.
Which of course meant I got several big smears of caulk on one of my few pairs of good jeans.
It. Never. Fails. Why won’t I learn?
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Can these jeans be saved? Yes they can! It is very easy to remove caulk spills from clothing. here’s how.
