Small Victories

Panoramic View of the Front of the Store

About a month ago, I posted part of a story about Organization Project at my friend's fabric store.  When I started helping out there, over a year ago, I couldn't walk far in any direction, but the back of the store was a frightening mess.  First of all there was the wildly out of control fake furs (nicknamed "Jim Henson's Creature Workshop"):  these come on huge bolts and had taken on a life of their own to the point that the area behind the front counter was knee-deep in acrylic fur.  Attempts to organize these on the cutting table in that region of the store were stopgap at best:  if my friend needed a specific color it was inevitably on the bottom and getting it out would result in another furry avalanche.  I can't tell you how dirty I got, how much I sneezed, or many times I lost my Bluetooth, water bottles and other things (last night I found a roll of tape that HAD to have been there over a year) in my quest to bring order to this chaos.

It was behind and below the furs, in the sweltering near-darkness, underneath a display table in the back, that I discovered the Lurex brocades.  If you picture Indiana Jones pulling glittering treasure out of a dark tomb, then you get the idea.  (BTW, I have the hat:  it was a gift from someone who said I was the only person they knew who was qualified to wear it).

 It was a remarkable time for me.  Fabrics I had only seen in finished garments emerged by the bolt, in perfect condition. I was galvanized and spent a great deal of time making sure I had extracted all of these potentially collectible textiles.




Of course, all good things come to an end.  Once I had extracted all of the treasure, I had to have a place to put it.  This required more fabric tossing, usually of bolts of polyester doubleknit, straight to the back of the store.  And thus, once again, the very back of the store became impassible.


Out of necessity, our priorities shifted.  There were many cottons, and as our region has many quilters, we spent time organizing these.  We pulled out and shelved bridal fabrics and trims that hadn't seen the light of day in years.

And This is AFTER We Did Some Organizing!

We also needed to keep the sales floor clear because there was the concern that a customer would trip over something (this remains a consideration, though perhaps less so than previously).  

So the back of the store sat.  

And sat.

And sat.

Until August, when we started looking at the costumes at the back of the store with an eye towards selling them.  Digging commenced:  fur cascaded; remnants of polyester came down in doubleknit avalanches; three-tier slips tried to take over.

...I hadn't mentioned the slips, had I?

Bridal slips have become the bane of my existence.  They are poufy, slippery, take up a LOT of room, and they were EVERYWHERE.  So along with the bolts of polyester, the slips became missiles, filling up space at the back of the store like packing peanuts.  In sections the pile was six or seven feet high.

Finally I had to do something.  The front of the store had once again cycled around to critical mass and I needed room to put more fabric away--and there was only one place left to put it.  

A chief deterrent had been the polyester fabric.  There were bolts and bolts and bolts of it, and the owner and I finally came to the agreement that I would leave the gabardines out but put the qianas away.  (For those of you who don't know, qiana is the silky fabric that disco dresses, those funky print shirts of the 70s, and the dresses in the original Battlestar Galactica were made of. The name "qiana"was randomly generated by a computers at DuPont Corproation in 1968.  

The second difficulty arose from the fact that the huge display table that occupies the back wall of the store had been so overloaded with fabric that it had broken, necessitating a Day of Carpentry.  I had to move fabric for that as well, and the resulting mess was spectacular.  But the table got fixed.     

Now I delved into the closet under the steps, yet another fearsome mess which to date I had actively avoided.  And got lost.  At one point my friend couldn't find me, and had to call me on my cell phone. I am pleased to report that I have signal in Uncle Joe's closet.   Then I called my good friend Beth and said, "Gosh, I could really use some help in the store again."  

Beth is a fantastic organizer.  She came up and gamely stacked bolts of qiana in the closet until it was stuffed (I should point out that qiana is slippery as heck and thus really a paint to stack), going so far as to clear out the closet in the front of the store so that we could store useful fabric there.  Meanwhile, I attempted to organize the remaining doubleknits and move the furs over to the newly repaired display table.

Yet at the end of that evening, even knowing that we had done a tremendous amount of work, neither Beth no I could SEE any progress.  The aisle I'd hoped to clear wasn't even visible, and there still seemed to be too many polyesters.  Even though I had relegated most of the slips to a huge barrel, the barrel was stacked on top of another and leaning at an alarming angle.  We left the store downtrodden, and were only cheered by some of David's amazing cooking.  

The next day I went in, planning to deal with the issue.  HA.  It's October.  My friend rents and sells costumes.  It was NUTS.  All I succeeded in doing was making a bigger mess.

Now I was REALLY frustrated.  I told my friend I would come Tuesday evening and just do it.  

And I did.  Four hours, twenty sneezes, three broken fingernails, and a fair amount of dirt later I managed to not only carve a path through the back, but also organize everything, including the fur.  If I go in this morning it may actually be possible to make a circuit (however circuitous) around the store for the first time in years.  

Whee!