You can never have too much storage space

Hello friends and strangers,

A few days ago I had a real big scare. I tried to upload a photo to my blog and was informed gleefully by Blogger that I had run out of space. How is that possible? Me run out of space in blogland? But there's endless space in the net. Right? Right?

Oh dear folks. I've been so ignorant. Apparently I'm only allocated 1GB of free space to keep my images and stuff. What!? 1 GB? Still, 1 GB is a lot of space. I can't believe I've used it all. What on earth have I been uploading? And just to be clear, you get 1 GB per google account.

I started to panic over the thought of losing my blog. I mean I love my blog. No, really, really love. Like in love. It's my baby. First thing I do in the morning, I check that it's still breathing. Last thing I do at night, I check that it's still breathing.

Now you see the awful fear creeping all over me? Me hubs suggested I delete some unwanted images from picasa which stores my images. Okay, hold your horses. Before you gallop off to merrily delete, just know that deleting the images from picasa will delete them from your blog. So you could easily end up with a blog with no images! There's no UNDO so be careful.

Deleting the images from picasa involves checking each post and getting rid of duplicates and unwanted images. Sounds easy? It's an impossible task. Picasa doesn't tell you which images are linked to which post. After 5 minutes, I gave up. I decided giving google US$5/year for an additional 20GB of space is totally worth it. Yes, Google sells space too. I bet you thought they just sell searches.

Today I received notification my extra space has come in and to my utter delight, I have 27 GB which means an additonal 7 GB! How did that happen? Wow, now I have all these space, I'm no longer feeling like I have to be nervous about uploading many images.

Coincidentally, I wanted to write a post about how I store my sewing supplies. For the past 2 weeks, I had been trying to tidy up my sewing supplies. It started with me moving a chest of drawers from my sewing table to the floor. Just 1 move and I ended up spending the whole day moving stuff from the drawers to elsewhere. You understand I'm not de-cluttering because I "need" the stuff.

This was the elsewhere some of my stuff had to go to. I re-discovered this DIY stacked boxes which I bought from Ikea 12 years ago.

Here are my frequently used sewing machine needles and sewing needles. The ones I rarely use are kept in some other boxes.

I have a lot of wooden rings for my one-ring wonder bags. On the right are my ink.

Despite a limited storage space in my home, I have the inability to junk some of my stuff especially when I've had them for years and never used them. These handy needle? I was attracted by the name. Thought they would come in handy. Turned out I couldn't find any use for them. But I keep hanging on to them thinking one day, they would come in handy. Do you own these as well?

I personally feel this is one of my best ideas for storage. See I have floating sewing machine needles which have not been used enough times to be thrown away. I used to just chuck them aside and each time I needed to use them, I had to squint just to see the size of the needles. What a waste of time! I just stick white batting to the box and the numbers represent the sizes. See how HANDY it is?

This mooncake box is now home to my bobbins. I like to create little compartments.

My sewing machine thread used to be in 1 giant shoe box but it got too unmanageable. I had other storage methods for my sewing machine thread in the past but they all failed. This current method works as I can find the colour I want easily. They stack up too so it saves on space. What I would really like is to store the bobbin with the corresponding top thread. I tried it once using sticks and styrofoam. It lasted until the styrofoam gave way.

My embroidery thread is a complete utter mess. I wound them in cardboard and put them in the little cubicles. The cookie container keeps the unopened thread.

These 2 mooncake boxes are home to my zippers. I'm afraid to say there's no better way to store zippers than using a rubber band to tie them by sizes. The ones in the blue box are my continuous zippers which I buy by the yard. If you think I have a lot of zippers, I do use them up pretty fast.

These 2 recently acquired mooncake boxes have been put to good use. The pink one is for my velcro. See how useful the compartments are? I'm not a velcro person. They stick. I prefer other closure methods. But they're good to have around because you don't want to run out to the shops everytime you need something. The deep red box has no compartments but I've made my own. These are good for my sewing notions. Notice the heart key? I wonder why I kept it?

This hat box is perfect for my rope and string. I keep straps on the cover of the hat box. I have no idea why I own so much rope and strings.

I used to buy a lot of these $2 boxes but the novelty has worn off. Also, I really dislike the "liver spots" which appear on the inside. This one keeps my elastic. For someone who doesn't use elastic, I sure own a lot. Mostly inherited stuff and a couple of impulse buys.

These are at best 20% of my sewing supplies. I'm quite a hoarder and not very tidy. If you have any ideas for storage to help keep me sane, do let me know.

Wow, this post is image heavy again. Looks like I'm already squandering my 27GB. But this time, I made sure to delete the uploaded images I don't use! See you soon. Have a great weekend.