Wherever you do your needlework – whether you have a workroom where all your embroidery projects develop, or you embroider in the perfect corner of your living room – unless you are a Super Organized Person, occasionally, you have to go through that stage that I call “Digging Out” before you can dig in to your next Great Needlework Undertaking.

Yesterday was a Digging Out day for me. I didn’t really mean it to be, but that’s just how things developed.

My table in my workroom was actually neat and tidy (and practically empty) when I ventured into the place yesterday morning. My plan: to spend the greater part of the day preparing fabric, working out stitch tutorials, photographing, and working up a video.

But then I opened Pandora’s Box.

Now, why Pandora even has a box in my workroom is a question I will never be able to answer. But she does – and into that box goes all those miscellaneous items – little projects that I might be working on, things I want to get to, stuff I “can’t be bothered putting away right now” and so forth. The box sits at the end of my work table, and as long as the lid is on it, my workspace looks miraculously tidy and I bask under a false sensation of organization.

But woe is me when I open The Box!

Yesterday, I opened The Box, and the whole day developed into a day of Digging Out.

The first thing that happened was that all the items in The Box got spread about on The Table. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by Stuff.

Threads starting oozing out of every corner of The Box. They coagulated into great heaps.

These are the threads I use to work up stitch tutorials, and sometimes, when I’m in a frenzy of photo-taking or video-making, I just heap the threads together, intending to sort them at the end of the session.

But then I drop them in The Box.

Eventually, by mid-afternoon, the threads started to form themselves into slightly more organized piles…

… and the table top became visible once again.

Finally, at the end of the day, when everything else was sorted out and put away, I got down to business and set up some fabric and frames.

The moral of the story: Entropy Happens.

But that slow decline into disorder that is entropy only happens because I let it happen.

So here’s a hint for organization, if you have a similar problem: if you have a “Hot Spot” where your supplies or projects tend to gather in disorder, tackle it for just five minutes at the end of every day. For me, the Hot Spot is Pandora’s Box. I know if I spend 5 minutes at the end of a work session or a work day making sure that everything in that box is actually sorted and tidy, then not only do I stay organized in other things, but in the long run, I save a lot of time and the time I do have is used more efficiently. Eventually, that 5 minute bout of organizing becomes habit, and life is much better for it.

This is my resolution this summer: to re-develop my habit of addressing Pandora’s Box at the end of each day’s work.

Do you have any tips for organizing your workspace and keeping it organized? If you do, share! We can all benefit from a good exchange of ideas on organization – after all, you never know whose life you might improve by sharing your own organizational tactics. Feel free to have your say on the subject by leaving a comment below!

And now, I’m off to make for lost time!