A Tidy Place (aka CRAFT! aka I clean up the rubbish tip that is my dressing table)

I am not a tidy housewife. Mr S is a very tidy housewife and is very good at putting things away.
Example #1
On his bedside table there is a bedside lamp and an alarm clock. That's it.
On my bedside table there is (now) a bedside lamp, my iphone alarm clock dock thingo, three books and a pair of headphones. This is exceptionally tidy for me. It used to be a bedside lamp, iphone thingo, five books, a glass of water, headphones, lipgloss, my wallet... you get the picture. Little Lady of the house is mobile and quite good and taking things off my bedside table.

Example #2
Mr S has no clothes left out. As in, they're all put away. Always.
I have several outfits close to hand. There's a beautiful chair I made when I was 33 weeks pregnant with Millie that is usually covered in clean washing or clothes I'm just going to wear the next day anyway.


Example #3
On his day at home with Millie Mr S manages to clean the whole house. I don't know how.
On most of my days at home with Millie we wind up sitting on the floor surrounded by forty thousand plastic toys capable of rendering a grown adult (me) to a whimpering child by walking over them.

But I digress.
I think I'm starting to nest or something already. It's really weird and I don't like how it makes me feel.
That's a lie. I totally love it. I MUST CRAFT. I MUST MAKE THINGS FOR THE HOUSE. I MUST TIDY THE PLASTIC CUPBOARD.
(I really must just take a Bex and a good lie down.)

We'd just moved our new bed in to our bedroom so change was in the air. I saw my rubbish tip dressing table last week and I couldn't stand the sight of it any longer. When Millie went to sleep I set to cleaning out the top two drawers (scarves! Swimwear! Gymwear! Gloves! Hiking heat packs!) to put the gigantic box of perfume bottles and various jewellery boxes in. So they could be close to hand, but not THAT close to hand.
Naturally, Millie woke up 20 minutes after she went to sleep. No matter. We can clean together, child! Hooray! What's that? The world is ending unless I pick you up? Oh...
Never mind! I can clean with you on my hip! Actually, no I can't. We will return.

Millie proceeds to not be asleep for the rest of the day, so in fits and starts I turn the radio up loudly (Let's dance Millie!) and force myself to throw things out or find a new home for them. I am tensing up just typing about that - I hate it more than game meats.

In a rare moment of 'I think Millie might be asleep! Quick! To the craft room!' I found two old photo frames in Mr S' man cave, and covered the backing boards with my new PVA glue and furnishing fabric that I made the chair, canvases and matching doona cover out of. There are no photos of this because I was crafting at the speed of light. Turns out Millie was not asleep, merely lying there contemplating how long before I would free her from the prison-like confines of her (Huon Pine) cot and (tastefully decorated) room.

I wrapped ribbon across one board, securing with PVA glue. I did not have any thumbtacks in the house, and my staple gun would have sent death-like metal spikes through to the front. I honestly didn't think the PVA glue would hold. The other board I took outside and hammered two nails close to the top of them. By this stage Millie had been awake for about 6 hours and unhappy for about 5.5 of them, so it was good stress relief for me to escape by myself and hammer something...

Then, I had these.

Left - brooches, Right - necklaces.

Brooches - this was the one with ribbon affixed.
Super handy to display most of my brooches, and easy to get
on and off.

Necklaces. The nails should have been closer to the top, but I'm happy with this.
(It's not actually crooked, it's my professional photography.)

My nana-esque dressing table tray.
L-R Back row - Hairties, perfumes.
L-R Front row - hair pins, my daily watch and earrings, Myrtle the mouse.

My word! Look at how tidy and uncluttered that is!

 Once I had the frames on the wall I realised I wanted a nice way to display my favourite perfumes (of which I found I had duplicates, so I need to use them all up) and have a space for hairties and bobby pins. I also wanted a nice place to put my watch and daily earrings.

A friend gave me the tray years ago, and I had the glass bowls leftover from holding candles at my wedding, so it was a nice way to have my favourite things on display, but feel like they're organised.

I know. I don't know what came over me either, except that I bloody love it. And we'll be fixing the cracked mirror shortly too.

How do you organise your dressing area? Nana-esque or something else quite funky?

NB: There are whole days where Millie and I sit on the floor and there's no frustrations whatsoever. This was an anomaly of a day, where instead of her lovely 2hrsx2 daily there was 20 minutes sleep over 12 hours. Had I had a crystal ball there's no way I would have attempted this. But I'm so glad I did. I love going in to my bedroom now.