My life was about to go into panic mode. I needed to get that room at the church building under control.

I just HAD to.

My own living room now has 54 charity quilts in it - all of which need binding, but I needed a place to put the finished ones once I get them done as I have to move them out shortly after finishing as I have to protect them from my cat, who constantly seeks new quilts to sleep on. (Once quilted, they are washed and photographed and then I don’t allow Tuq, the cat, to sleep on the washed quilts.)

So, I needed to get to the room to work on it. So, I dedicated my Thursday morning this past week to it.

I got to the church before 8 am — I left shortly after 7:40 am but there was some traffic, so I needed to find a different route. I figured it would be that way at that time of day. On Sundays, it takes about 6 minutes to get to the church building from our house.

I took some pictures when I first got there, and then I put my phone down. I didn’t want this to take all day - so I just got to work.

I had brought a bag of things from the house including a stepstool which I actually brought from the states - it’s one my mom covered with tapestry fabric years and years ago. I loved it and mom had several, so I brought it over to enjoy. It’s the perfect height for me. Inside the bag with the stepstool was a tape gun, two rolls of tape, magic marker, paper, scissors, etc.

When I got there, I started to tape up the empty boxes - which would be used to sort into - which I had leftover from Szlachetna Packages from a few years back. I sorted and counted as I went along and what seemed like ever so slowly, started to make some headway.

I decided to use the smaller boxes for the ones from Fran and others from the USA and some bigger boxes (which I had sent myself) for the ones from Ewa and her mom.

My goal was to get the totes cleared off so I could put finished charity quilts on the totes since obviously I didn’t want to stack them on the floor, and nothing left in bags just sitting around. I had a goal of organizing all the menswear as well that was sitting around. However, I changed my mind about that and will let that be a different day’s goal. Thursday was about getting the room ready for 2026 charity quilts and bringing order back to the room full of chaos.

As I sorted and subdivided, I also counted, and put that number with a magic marker on the box. I wouldn’t bet on that number as being right, but it’s close. It was to give me an idea of what’s going on.

As I worked, sorting, boxing and taping, I gradually made my way to the door of the closet standing there. I had a bit of adjusting my boxes and stuff in the room until I was done. I needed boxes that were the same size so that I could pile “high” as the room simply isn’t very large.

I used the broom and dustpan that we have at the church and swept multiple times. Finally, I was able to get to the closet again and open the door and check on the 50 or so tops that are in that area. It was reassuring to see them - and this is the year to begin to make progress on quilting those.

I had some trash and a couple of boxes to bring home to get rid of. I also brought home some bags of tops that I needed to remeasure and ones that took priority on finishing up.

Here is that group of bags and some of the trash.

All this stuff was lined up by the door to put in the van and bring home to deal with. It was warmer and more comfortable at home to measure and deal wtih these tops.

At the end, I refolded a lot of the empty bags and this is what that bag looked like.

Once I got home, I was able to go back through the bags of tops that I brought back. I think there were 8 bags. Upon measuring and trimming the ones that were too large (if they were only blocks), I was able to put 3 bags of tops back into the van - ones I really didn’t have to add to. One of my problems from before was that I had just thrown stuff into the room and I had lost track of what was ready for quilting and what wasn’t.

I took the quick and easy tops to fix and began working on them on Friday. You will be seeing them in the next week or so.

As time goes by, I will probably just bring one box at a time home from the Fran/others boxes and begin to go through them and get them to the sizes I need. I already have a lot at my house, however, so it will be a bit before I get to them.

if you are concerned about where I will put the tops, well, that problem has crossed my mind as well, so I’m considering that. Right now there are some empty plastic totes - small ones, and that one green one is empty (well, I filled it since I originally wrote this). I have one big green one under my long arm. I also have the shelf in the long arm room.

There is also room in that one cabinet behind those rolls of fabric. Once these spaces are filled with “ready to quilt” tops, well, I will deal with that problem when I get there. I’m not there yet.

I now feel ever so much better about what’s happening in that room - which is nothing at the moment. There is another cabinet if I could move the plastic bins that are in front of it, might have room inside I could store tops as I don’t remember what’s inside. But as I said, I’m not there yet. I may take another day and try to organize that fabric that is sitting around. I offered several of the ladies some of that black woolens if they want some to make skirts, ponchos or coats. I think they are thinking about it.

Thanks so much for reading this adventure.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store here!

Feel free to browse the site.

I Spent HOURS on that Storage Room…