Cleaning Up The Studio

We could have chosen to stay snug as a bug-in-a-rug in bed like Bailey this morning:

Or, we could hop to it and join in Suzanne's Make Your House A Home Challenge and do something about this messy studio shelf:

I decided to tackle the shelf; without the help of any mice or bunnies or Corgis, I might add.

Soooo...
What is on this shelf, anyway? Well, besides the obvious mish-mash of paintbrushes, there are plastic cups filled with pens and Lord knows what. Old dog show ribbons (oh yeah, 1999 I'm looking at here? Geez...) that I will do something with 'someday,' books that belong elsewhere, an empty box that was too pretty to throw out which contained Sugar Plums at Christmas from a friend (OK, stop laughing, I'm baring my soul here. ) wooden eggs to paint, a few micro canvases and little easels, some paint, you get the picture, right? Well, time to move it all and sort. Everything was taken off of the shelf and the shelf was cleaned with some Caldrea Lavender and Pine scented cleaner. I remember hearing once that a good place to start when you need to do a task is to tackle what makes you craziest first. I don't know why there are dead pens and markers in here. Throwing out a dried up marker when you go to use it would be the logical thing to do. Why do I put them back into the cup and try another? Put that on my list of things NOT to do anymore. All of the pens and markers were taken out of the plastic cups, tested, tossing the dead ones and putting the keepers on the desk where they belong, in a ceramic cup. The old ribbons I put with the dog stuff. Still need to figure out what to do with those. I sorted the paintbrushes into rounds, flats and 'other' which includes fan brushes, rakes, sculpting tools, stuff like that. A little mannequin from across the room and a little forget-me-not plant in progress added a clean looking 'something' to the shelf. The little Claude Monet doll my mom brought back for me from the J.Paul Getty Museum. Isn't he cute? Now he's got his own corner, standing watch over an easel and a gilded frame.

Ta-da! Better!

MUCH better!

Happy Monday, everyone! -CS ^..^