It isn’t often that a maker has the opportunity to shape their space from scratch. Frequently we have a project we want to work on and bring it into the space we either live or work. Even when designing a new space we face a set of limitations, room size, access to power and lights.

Like many of my maker friends, I’ll adapt what I’m working on to fit the constraints I have around the space that is available to me. Any table I start a project at will soon overflow with that project AND my lunch AND laptop AND mail and keys AND 20 minutes later a cup of ccoffee

Knowing I might not finish a project the day I start on it, I’m tempted to leave it out or it might not ever get finished, because I’ve got a lot to take care of in a given day, my work bench fills up with the routine things, bills, left over coffee kid art work… frequently a more pressing project comes along which gets triaged to the top of the table and my work area begins to resemble an archaeologists dig.

A traditional approach to my solution would be to clear the tables off entirely, organize supplies onto shelves and files and look at ways to make my work fit into my space OR I could pick one project I’ve enjoyed working on and picture all the steps I went through in creating analyze the placement of my furniture, the materials and tools I used and think about how I might reorganize to make the creation process more streamline and enjoyable.

The links enclosed here are to accompany the workshop I’m giving at the Portland Mini Maker Faire at OMSI on September 12th, 2014, resources and space ideas can be found on the Pinterest board here. Shoot me an email if you’d like to add to this board, I’d love to see what other people have to share. I’m also enclosing a link to the power point presentation here.