I've come to a point of frustration when trying to locate items that I just know should be there....somewhere. Last summer I convinced my youngest son to switch rooms with me, giving me the bigger room to use for my workroom. I shouldn't complain, actually, because I was once located in the corner of my bedroom. As space required to work increased, the opportunity to expand finally lent itself when Carrie moved away to college. I got her room to set up as my studio. However, after 10 years in this room, my efficiency-abilities in utilizing space had reached a point of saturation, as well. As I was about to embark on a dream of finally having a bigger room, more floor space and more closet space, I just had no clue as to how much work would be involved.

First, we packed up my son's room, moving everything out, and got it cleaned and painted. Then, came the hard part of moving my studio items into the "new" workroom. I thought this might be an opportunity to discard and clean. However, since I decided to tackle the larger task of purging on a later date and focus on the move, the chaos of the whole process was beginning to cause irriation amongst the natives. Instead, I tried to speed up the move by being mindful of where things were being located, making an effort to at least categorize during the process. Despite the efforts, though, and apparently due to an apparent creeping age factor, I have found that I am finding certain items difficult to locate. My husband kept asking me as I crawled into bed after a long day of painting, moving etc., if I thought all of the work was worth it. My answer was always "yes," reminding him that we must have chaos before there is order.

But, where is my stuff? In my old-room, I could put my hands on something immediately (or at least after digging somewhat), but now I stand in the closet proclaiming, "I KNOW you're in here!!!" Do I regret the move, you ask? No, because I'm grateful for all of the extra spread-it-all-out-room. I feel badly sometimes about displacing Grant from his room, but, so far, he is managing quite well by marking his territory with clothes strewn on the floor, unorganized papers, and, of course, the unmade bed that he finds a comfort, since it is, after all, his to call his own.

I suppose that change is to be accepted as part of life, but where's my stuff? I suppose the bigger lesson is that, no matter how much space I get to call my own, there will always be a level of disorganization. On the other hand, the room is not there to look pretty, but to house all of my art stuff that I find very important to create my art. And the most important thing is that I have a space that is bigger than the corner. Now, to find time....the one thing that's really hard to locate!