All change?

For far too many months it has bugged me that the table I use in my office/ workroom for packing parcels and cutting fabric is too low to do the job comfortably. It's one of those $99 trestle tables I picked up from The Reject Shop almost ten years ago as a temporary measure and has moved from room to room (and back again) in the time I've had it.

I've never really liked it (but never really disliked it enough to do anything about it) And because it's used for two jobs (three actually: it's also a general dumping ground for stuff that comes upstairs to be put away) it's always crammed underneath with packing supplies and has piles of works in progress stacked on top.

Every time I visited Ikea I used to pause and wistfully stroke the Udden console bench, believing it was the answer to my problems. How nice and sleek it would look in my office! How much packing stuff I could store underneath it! How lovely it would be to comfortably stand and cut!

But the harsh reality is I don't have enough room on my current table to pack and cut without spending time moving stuff on and off the table depending on what I need to do. And the Udden is much smaller.

I considered doing something like Posie gets Cosy has done with her worktable to bring it up to a better height But I had images of it collapsing on my foot. I browsed expensive large worktables on eBay occasionally. Then looked at my bank balance and closed the browser.

And nothing changed.

Until 99% of my Lundby stock moved out of the house. Now when someone buys something I print out the order in the office/ workroom, traipse out to the garage to get the stock, bring it back upstairs to pack it then take it back downstairs ready to go to the Post Office. I could pack in the garage but I don't feel comfortable having packing supplies out there for spiders and other creepy crawlies to potentially make homes in.

This morning I had a bit of a eureka moment while reading in my latest book the suggestion to "Pick your favorite materials, put them in a designated place and schedule 15 minutes a day when you'll work with them."

I made a collage last night on the spur of the moment. All the stuff I needed was upstairs so it was easier than using my paints, pastels or other supplies (which were downstairs). And painting would mean first finding some newspaper to spread over the dining room table as protection. Which got me thinking.

I have nowhere in the house to safely paint for class without having to move something else and worrying that I'll spill the paint and make a mess.

I have a workbench in the kitchen which I don't use as often as I used to. Which happens to be the right height for packing and cutting. At first I thought I could do a simple swap: bring the workbench upstairs and use it for packing and cutting and swap the worktable downstairs for creating. It's an old table! There's lino on the floor for easy clean up!

But the logistics of getting something that big up the stairs by myself without dismantling it and having to live with something that is pretty ugly in my office was a little too much.

So I thought further... If I left the workbench where it is and shifted the packing supplies downstairs I could at least cut down on the running around with filling orders and clear some piles of spare packing materials out of the office (I'm lucky enough to receive a constant supply of free packing peanuts and bubble wrap. Which has to go somewhere until I use it.)

Would I cut fabric downstairs or continue to cut it up here? The idea of having a table up here dedicated to my design course is an enticing one but it would still be on carpet. Which could be a problem...

I think I'll trial the idea. If it all turns to custard, I'll only have wasted an hour lugging a few things around and would have had the opportunity to do a big clean of a couple of corners of my home. I can't lose really!