It's All About Organization

As any stitcher knows, so much of stitching revolves around organizing. Organizing your threads; organizing your patterns; organizing your beads; organizing your unfinished projects; organizing your finished projects.... The list goes on and on.

I've followed with much interest fellow bloggers who, in their quest to find the perfect system, are constantly organizing their stitching projects as a way of managing their stitching life. I'm fascinated by their ongoing determination to organize their projects by designer, season, technique, size - or anything else you can think of.

I'm particularly intrigued by the "rotation" method: rotating through your stash of unfinished projects so you get a little bit done on each project in its turn. I also love the idea of stitching by season: working on the appropriate designs, season by season, or holiday by holiday. Gosh, I wish I were that efficient!

My own method seems to be: "What am I in the mood to stitch now?" Which works most of the time, but sometimes I get stuck in that uncomfortable dithery place, where I simply can't decide WHICH project I'm in the mood for. (It's like trying to drive a car while stuck in neutral -- you spin your wheels, but don't GO anywhere, and just end up getting totally frustrated.)

I should also mention that as a designer, I classify my projects into two groups: 1) the WORK group (my own designs), and 2) the FUN group (other designers' stuff). While I'm constantly yearning to stitch on the fun stuff, I always guilty about stitching on it, because I have so much "WORK" stuff to stitch. (Yeah, Yeah... It's a tough life, but someone has to do it.) And since I have constantly changing deadlines, I am constantly re-prioritizing my project list, somewhat like a card dealer constantly shuffling his card deck!

Anyway, back to the organization theme... I've decided to try a slightly different approach to managing my stitching projects (the WORK ones). I'm going to try using the "Tickler Tree" that I've made (see above photo). I had one of those card holder thingys.... which I never remember to put cards in, but is too cute to throw out. So the other day, INSPIRATION STRUCK. I thought, "Hey, what if I made tiny cards with my projects on them, and put them on the card holder?" That way, I can rearrange them by priority and best of all, see at a glance which projects I need to get finished first.

Brilliant! So now I've got my Tickler Tree sitting primly in my office, quietly reminding me of all the projects I have to WORK on..... Time will tell if it's a good idea, or just something else to organize.....