Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Pottery Barn has good intentions

Ah, organizing. As you may know, I find organizing so pleasing that I've used the hard sciences to determine that it is 50% of the fun of crafing.

So, it follows then, that I would love a crafting room. It would be so dreamy to have a whole room that would be beautiful and light with dedicated space for each of my 95 (is it up to 95 now?) hobbies. Nooks for my yarn. Shelves for my fabric. Slots for my collection of cardstock. A place for my boxes of (impeccably organized) unmounted rubber stamps. Places for scissors, needles, threads, inks, rulers, glues, paints...the list, I am a little ashamed to say, goes on and on.

So, it's like Pottery Barn divined my dream and thought they'd make it come true. Match made in heaven, right? Here's the hip and casual lifestyle they themselves have convinced me I want, married with the organizing I've convinced myself I do. Just one problem.


This is weak. Weak!

Let's start with that hanging cabinet/shelf with the dowels and the corkboard on the doors. Do they honestly think a real crafter would find this useful? Look at it. It has three dowels for wrapping paper or ribbon or whatever, and a little shelf above it that looks tiny. I'm willing to be wrong, but this appears to be virtually useless for the hard-core crafter. Nay, even the medium-core crafter would have issues with this. Oh, wait. I just looked more closely at it, and there are little chalkboards on the other side of the doors. So, that makes it worth THREE. HUNDRED. DOLLARS. What?! (Yeah, they're charging $299 US for that thing. And, I'm no dummy. That's really like $300.)

So let's move on to that middle island table. Do you see how they have all of their supplies shoved over to one side of the table top? You mean to tell me that shit is not gonna fall right off the side in about half a second? And do you see how there are more rolls of wrapping paper in the side of that island? Don't you want all your rolls of paper in one place - not some in the 300-dollar cabinet and some under the table? Isn't that part of the reason one organizes - to have everything in one place?

Argh. I could continue. I could talk about the discomfort that my back already feels thinking about sitting on that barstool while I craft. I could talk about how ridiculous it is that I have so much stuff. But, I'll just leave you with my sense that someday, somewhere, somehow, someone will devise a craft room so perfect I shall go in it and never leave. And that, my friends, will be heaven. (Well, all my friends would have to be there. And my dog. And my family. But, you get the idea.)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice job on the Pottery Barn deconstruction. Just as I was wishing I had all that stuff, I read your comments and realized that... it kind of sucks. Not completely. Just a little. Thanks for that - it's always better to want one less thing. Not that I don't want a crafting room. I do. Here's the thing. I have an extra room. The one my sister lives in half the time. It could be a crafting room IF I WOULD GET OFF MY ASS AND TURN IT INTO ONE. Who feels stupid now? Hmmm... In 2 min, I went from wanting something, to not wanting it, to wanting something else, to feeling stupid. I'm going to have that glass of wine (not kidding - it is after 4pm).

Anonymous said...

I believe you are capable of designing a very kick-ass crafting room yourself! Why wait for someone else to do it - they'd probably screw it up anyway! Plus, you have such definite ideas about what you DO NOT want...so half of the work is already done.

Kristy said...

I'm with you on all of those points. I wondered about two things in particular: How useful is that butcher paper roll holder thingy in front of the window? and in the back on the right? Is that more wrapping paper???

Let's create a perfect crafty room. Where do we begin?

Anonymous said...

I'll tell you, i think the most important thing you need in a craft room: shelves. all diff'rnt kinda sized shelves. so you can store stuff and organize it all up in neat rows and bins and boxes and easily see it and get at it all. Mmmm shelves...mmmm pretty rows and baskets and organizing systems...

Unfortunately for The PB, everyone sells shelves.

oh yeah, the other thing you need is a good chair--with a back and with wheels--so you can get at all the organized stuff stored on all of your fabulous shelves... (I know what they were going for with a waist-high table, but I don't know who sold them the barstool idea--that is ridiculous.)