let’s talk tiny :: blogtober day 20

I’ve shared two tours of my craft room, but I don’t know I’ve talked my in this space about the why behind my unconventional craft room. When we were building, there was a common theme in the comments I would get when I was asked for updates, and I would express my impatience, and my excitement to get it finished and start moving in.

“I bet you can’t wait to get into your new craft room!”

When I heard those comments. I would just smile and agree, partly because I was indeed looking forward to being in my new space, but mostly because I didn’t have the bandwidth for the questions that would inevitably come after explaining my (very deliberate, well considered) design choices. Smile and nod and keep it to small talk was my main goal in these conversations. 

The explanations came when closer friends looked at the plans, or got video walk throughs during Friday night zoom drinkies. “Um, girl, where’s your craft room?” was one of the most common questions. And I get it, I do. I have a LOT of stuff. I am constantly elbow deep in multiple projects. In town, I had a (very lovely, light filled) craft room, as well as an adjoining photo studio that more often than not became a craft-room-overflow space. My entire online identity is built around crafting and creative play – this blog, obviously, but it is just part of my digital ecosystem that has expanded to include substack, an insta (and weekly insta party), YouTube, and even a podcast, all focused on crafting and the creative process. Surely as a prolific maker and sharer, I need a fabulous, Pinterest perfect space to work on my projects and create content around them?

Indeed, I do not. Not only do I not have a craft room, but as the primary designer of our home, and final arbiter of layout and inclusions, I very deliberately chose not to add one. This is not to say I don’t have a space at all – I have a sweet little nook behind the kitchen, that in a normal person’s house would be a hallway and linen press. Instead of filling it with sheets, towels and mothballs though, I’ve kitted it out in IKEAs finest, and despite it, in theory, being the main thoroughfare from our bedroom to the laundry, my fold-down table is more up than down, and the space has well and truly become mine. It’s not large, and I have to move to the dining table or school room to cut out a garment or baste a quilt – and don’t even ask about the loom that has become a permanent fixture in our living room. But with some judicious selections of furniture, and working hard during move in week to cull, arrange, and sort (a process I started when it first became obvious we were going to be in the cabin much longer than expected), it is a delightful and surprisingly functional space. 

Because here’s the thing: even when I had a craft room, chock full of storage options and more supplies than I could poke a paintbrush at; girt, not by sea, but by a gorgeous, custom, full length built in deck on three sides of the room; even then, I tended to mostly use it as storage space and instead hauled my projects up to the dining table, a space better connected to the rest of the family.

It was this knowledge of how I use my space that inspired the current set up; a small space to work on ongoing projects, and plenty of storage, plus options to stay organised in other parts of the house when I want to craft but hang out too. There’s also the acceptance that this is just a season – my babies are growing faster than my mam heart can come to terms with. Our first baby is just about finished his first year of uni, eight hours from home. Boy2 will be off to uni (a different one, of course, because it would be too easy to live in the same place) in a bit over a year. The day is coming, quite rapidly, where I will have an empty house and an empty washing basket, and more empty rooms than I have ways to fill them. It was those days in mind, the majority of the time we will spend in this house as empty nesters, that I was designing for. One day I will have a craft room in those empty spaces. For now I have my nook, my boxes, my trolley. As Louise Tilbrook so eloquently put it, “the perfect…space is the one you have in front of you”, and I couldn’t agree more. It’s not always perfect, and sometimes I find myself pushing up against the walls, but it’s a space that is just mine and that’s enough.

Plus, a bigger craft room means bigger messes and bigger messes need more cleaning, and who has time for cleaning when there’s crafting to be done?