Not much point to showing this mess, but here it is. This will one day be my studio, if I can ever manage to get it organized. I've been putting it off in favor of painting, but I think I'll try to do something with it soon. I can't seem to find anything--fancy that.

I'm embarrassed to say that probably two thirds of everything we moved from our last place went in here. I had no idea that most of our junk was merely my junk. I'm planning on doing some major culling when this massive organization project starts.

And it HAS started. I only wish I could have taken photos of the process. It took a total of five and a half days to get this room unpacked, organized and mostly finished. The first two eight hour days made almost no dent in the mess. But by the third day things were at least starting to look like I was doing something.

The room is about fifteen feet long (Remember? It's the room over the billiards room.) so I decided to divide it into two parts. On this end are my closets, my work table, ironing board, computer station, and several bookshelves. All my costume books, masquerade videos and presentation tapes will be on these shelves. Not only will that make them more handy, it frees up space on the overly crowded bookshelves in the hallway.

The small closet on the left houses a number of hanging costumes, and the one on the right is filled with shelves that contain every manner of junk--paints, adhesives, rhinestones, feathers, patterns--bits that will eventually be used for future creations. The curtains were an absolute necessity. Even when it's well organized, those shelves look messy, and they don't stay organized for long. It's just too eclectic a collection of stuff. It never looks pretty.

This half of the room is the work area. It's small, but everything is very accessible and easy to maneuver around.

This is the wide open rehearsal area. There's a great deal of lovely space here that I can use for practicing presentations, laying out fabric, dancing--whatever. The walls are neutral so that fabric colors will appear more true. Also because I have so much colorful crap already that painting the walls probably would have blinded people.

This wall was intentionally left blank so that I could take photos of the mannequins in costume without a window in the way. The decorative wall-hanging between Woody and Mannique is easily removed to create an unbroken background. You can see that the shelves on the upper walls are already in use and are pretty much filled. About all that's left to do is to remove that table on the right, and to put large mirrors on both side walls. Can't have a costume studio without big mirrors.

I'll bet you're wondering where that mass of stuff went. It can't have all gone into those closets, can it?

No. It can't have. Some of it's in the upstairs hall. This pile is all stuff that goes elsewhere in the house. I just have to put it away. It's a bit difficult to negotiate the hallway at the moment. The armoire in particular is causing some difficulties due to its size. My office downstairs is its eventual destination, but that's also still filled with stuff. That may be next on the agenda, actually. I think it's about time we finished unpacking. Besides, I can't start doing massage again until I have an office.

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