Glaze Kitchen ReOrg

While cleaning out her basement in anticipation of an energy audit, my friend Barb Loken, of Loken Pottery came upon two sets of shelves with a particularly Maine history: they were used to store product in a shoe factory. Barb had no use for these shelves but couldn't bear to just have them hauled off, so she offered them to me, and even delivered them.

My new old shelves. Thanks, Barb!

I knew just where I would put them: in the shed that houses my glaze kitchen, which has been steadily filling up with stuff since its inauguration seven years ago. I've done a few drag-n-toss days since then - otherwise it would be a completely unusable space, given my husband's packrat tendencies - but the arrival of these two marvelous storage shelves has inspired me to do a full clean out and reorganization. No more climbing over stuff when I need to mix glazes! No more lifting two or three bins to get to the one that I need! (Or, you know, a lot less of that.) I'm sort of embarrassed that the photo above is the "after" photo: "What must it have looked like before?" you might ask. Trust me, this is a lot better. The shoe shelves themselves proved better suited to get the various bins, boxes, and bottles off the floor than to hold glaze materials, but they made it possible to render the lab at least somewhat orderly.

Now that the clean up is done, it's time to mix glazes. Not my favorite job, but I am almost looking forward to it, in order to fine-tune to arrangement.