Why Cleaning My Sewing Room Made Me Cry

Doug and I have been getting ready for our cross country move to Ohio.  It’s very exciting, and crazy busy.  The past few weeks we focused on getting the house staged for potential buyers.  Among many other things, that meant my sewing bed had to go.  (Turns out most people don’t actually want to take up an entire bedroom just so they can sew in bed…)

I left that room for last.  I told myself it was because I needed to keep all my stuff out to work on the business for as long as I could before packing it all up.  But to be completely honest, I think the real reason was more emotional than practical.

When we first moved into this home, I remember stressing out that it only had 2 bedrooms.  Where would our pack of future children sleep?  (Because, clearly there would be so many that we’d refer to them as a pack or pile or herd) But I convinced myself we’d be fine for a few years, painted the extra bedroom yellow (because yellow works for a boy or girl, obviously) and waited.

Spoiler Alert: It’s 6 years later and we still haven’t been able to have a kid.

After a year or two of desperately wishing we could have a baby, that stupid empty yellow bedroom became a symbol of all my crushed dreams.  I swear that yellow paint mocked me, and the emptiness drove me nuts.  And then one day, Doug fixed it.  He repainted the walls, slapped on some trim and filled the room with something else.  It became my studio.  In that room I learned how to oil paint, watercolor and design patterns.  I created a successful business and fell in love with a whole new world of professional sewing.  My little business took me to places I never dreamed I could have gone, and filled me full of promises of good things to come.   Sure, it wasn’t the life I wanted, but that just made finding the good parts all the more empowering.  Slowly and surely, that silly room became a symbol of triumph.

When I finally got around to packing up my studio, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that it brought tears to my eyes.  I feel like I’ve grown so much in the past 6 years and pretty much all of that growing happened in that room.  It makes me sad to think of leaving it behind-  I honestly can’t imagine what I would have done without it.

So next time someone implies that sewing is old fashioned or frivolous, you tell them they’re wrong.  Creating is empowering.  It can change lives- I know it’s certainly changed mine.