“A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.” – Author Phyllis McGinley
For many people, having a hobby is like taking a mini vacation. It can be relaxing or exhilarating, increases endorphins, enables you to continue gaining mastery in the subject and offers an escape from your everyday life. But with all hobbies come multiple components or pieces of equipment. How does one keep everything tidy and readily accessible?
Like with everything else in your home or office, you must create zones for your hobby. For example, if you are a jewelry designer, break everything down into preferably micro categories. Each type of bead or charm needs its own matching container, stored in a portable larger container. This enables you to take your supplies to your workstation, then bring them back to their home shelf or drawer when you’re done.
For golfers, you can have a narrow-ish, tall cabinet in the garage. This is where you would store your clubs and bag stand on the floor of the cabinet, with shelves above for boxes of balls and tees, plus your shoes and gloves. A hook for your hat inside the door will help it keep its shape and air out.
Trading cards are available for countless genres. Depending on the value of the cards, they should each have their own acid-free sleeve, then be stored according to the way you prefer them to be organized. That can be by name, date, year, particular sport, animal species, etc. You have so many choices for storage, from binders with sleeves for less-valuable cards to custom-made wooden boxes with many drawers for up to 12,000 cards.
Gardening enthusiasts need multiple shelves for much of their equipment. Keep like with like, such as all soil on one shelf, pots and containers on another, and fertilizers and insecticides together on yet another shelf. Peg boards with small hooks are perfect for smaller tools, while larger hooks, clamps and “ball slots” will not only corral your broom, rake and shovel,
but also will free up valuable floor space for other items.
For my walk-in, under-the-stairs arts and crafts closet – which also doubled as costume storage – I used one tall and one medium wired shelf unit side by side. I had a lot of shoebox-sized bins labeled with the type of art supplies in the bin, such as paintbrushes, lace, sponges and glue guns. They were stacked together in one unit. The other unit contained larger, labeled bins with items such as stencils, fabric, collage materials and acrylic paints.
At the end of the closet, I had three double-stacked bins with costume accessories and canvases. The opposite wall had a wall-mounted clothes hanger for hanging up costumes. The last wall had multiple hooks for my many hats and boas. The back of the door was a shoe organizer for jewelry and shoes.
Hobbies are a wonderful way to practice self-care, relieve stress and show off your talents as a creator or athlete, or as a way to teach others about the joys of collecting.
Los Altos Hills resident Lyn Rogers, a professional organizer, is owner and CEO of Lyn At Your Service. For more information, visit LynAtYourService.com.
