My sewing room disappeared!

Sometime late last fall we were informed that D's 1st hubby and daughter were going to need a place to live because they were being evicted from their apartment. D & the ex-hubby moved into this apartment 17 years ago and has been the only home their daughter has ever known. Why were they being evicted??  The usual; non-payment or late-payment of rent.

To be fair, this was not entirely ex-hubby's fault.  A year ago, the local cable/internet company he worked for was sold and the new company decided to do away with the local call/help center and either move the employees to their other call centers in North Dakota or Georgia. All the employees were given the option of moving or being let go.  Ex-hubby decided he didn't want to uproot their daughter just as she was entering high school so he was let go. So he was released from work in May of 2011. But this is a College Town and August is the busiest month for landlords and utility providers. In fact almost every lease or rental agreement in town goes from Aug 1st to Jul 31st. So the company did ask him back for the summer to help facilitate the orders for the July move-out and the August move-in! But unfortunately in June he was not employed and didn't have his unemployment fully set-up yet so he got a little behind on his rent. Funny thing, when one gets behind on paying the rent it's very hard to catch-up.  He did start getting unemployment regularly, but it was too little too late. By then the wheels for their eviction were already in motion. The end result was that my sewing room became his bedroom, and my sewing room ended up being one corner of the front room. (In our house the living room is called the front room because we call the family room in the addition the living room.)

NOTE: Our house is a ranch style (very popular here in Kansas) that originally had the usual living room, kitchen, 3 bedrooms and a bath. Then sometime after it was built a family room, laundry room and a 4th bedroom were added. One of the 3 original bedrooms was my sewing room and the additional 4th was a catchall room. 

So, I lost my sewing room and I have to say that I'm not very pleased. But what am I going to do?  We can't just throw the ex-hubby and daughter out just so I can have my sewing room back. D would have my head on a pike if I so much as thought about kicking them out. So I'll have to live with the situation and make adjustments.

The biggest adjustment I'm having to make is going from a nice 12'x12' room with a closet to hang clothing projects and a door I can close to keep out the 3 cats who would insist on using my worktable as a bed (or worse, having our one UN-neutered male come in and spray). I could just leave a project on my table, close the door, and walk away.

Now I have a 6'x6' space (and that's just a guess on size) in an open room with no closet (except for the front hall closet) and no door to close off said cats. This means I've had to invest in some plastic totes to put the fabric when I'm not working on something. I still need to get smaller bins (with lids.. maybe) to put projects in progress. And I also need shelving to put the bins on, something the cats won't climb up on (yeah, good luck with that). I'm also trying to keep my area organized so I can find things. It doesn't help that in the last 3 months since ex-hubby and daughter moved in the whole house has become even more disorganized than before and my little area has become the favorite dumping ground for a whole bunch of stuff - some mine, some other people's.

I wonder if Shoji screens would work to close off my area a little bit.... don't know if the cats would try to climb them, but it would be worth a try. What's the worst that could happen?? They climb the screen and cause it to fall??? Maybe... But with any luck that would scared them enough that they wouldn't want to do it again. Worth a shot. Maybe if I can find something like this so it could be a multi-tasker. Nah!! It's just take up too much room, and I have so little to spare. I mentioned the screens to D and she thought that because the cover was fabric that the cats would claw their way through, but I don't know. Maybe......... Maybe not... But it's something to look into.

Our local Hobby Lobby store has plain screens with artificial rice paper coverings so they feel more sturdy than if they were made with real rice paper. And they stand directly on the floor - no legs - so it should (notice I said "should?") keep the cats from crawling underneath the bottom.

Oh well, I'll come up with something. In the meantime I'll have to bear with the hassle of not having my sewing room. If we owned this house and had enough money to built something, I'd put up a shed in the back yard and make it into my sewing room.  Now that would be cool!! Something to keep in mind for when we move back to Upstate NY!!