After several years of making things for the house, I realized I was spending a lot of time re-measuring the same things again and again. At the same time, as empty nesters, we found ourselves with quite a few “gently used” school supplies, including a dozen or more notebooks and binders with only three or four pages of math problems or journal entries in each. I know this isn’t quite the upcycling dream, but since the kids moved out, we have managed to re-purpose all the notebooks and binders they left behind.
I now use one of the binders to store and organize household measurements, articles clipped from magazines, craft store how-to flyers, notes and sketches from reupholstery projects, and other DIY miscellany and ephemera. In the measurements section, I have a record of all my throw pillow sizes and locations, room dimensions and characteristics, rug and window measurements, measurements for those small furniture pieces which can move from room to room, and other data I may need in the future.
In one of the old notebooks, I have started a project journal which records all the projects we work on in a given year. I log where we obtained a particular furniture piece, the fabrics and paint colors we used, and the room the project ended up in. As time goes on, I have also kept a record of how our visions for spaces have evolved as our needs have changed, the rooms projects have moved in and out of over time, and the new ways we have repainted, reupholstered, and repurposed past projects.
I am not a scrapbooker, but I do hold onto things. My Kentucky ancestors kept crop journals, noting what they planted and when, what succeeded and what failed. I guess what I am doing isn’t all that different.