Organizing Thirty Years of Music Therapy Materials

My home is full of stuff. Music Therapy stuff that I have collected, curated, and used over my career of 33 years as a music therapist. Thirty of those years were at a facility where I worked with school-aged clients in a residential and school setting, so I have lots of materials that are meant to spark the most uninterested of people into some sort of interaction. Add into that all the years of textbook purchases, intern training information, and several decades as a church musician, and I have lots of music and music therapy stuff around, and it is piling up.

Right now, my focus is on getting things from work to home. I am almost finished with that process. Once everything is home, I will be ready to organize into my piles - give, sell, toss, and keep. Fortunately, once everything is home in two weeks, I will have all sorts of time to engage in organizing, but I am starting to do some of that right now.

I am looking around my space and am trying to envision how I will need to access information and materials in the near future.

I plan on getting a non-music therapy job to support my music therapy endeavours, but I do not plan on leaving the field completely. I envision a future in a new state, doing music therapy sessions again, but that will not happen for a little while. First, I am planning on taking two months to sleep, organize, and strategize.

Right now, I am looking at the categories of materials that are surrounding me. I have manipulatives, visual aids, instruments, textbooks, sheet music, and other things. I am starting to identify each thing into one of these categories. Within the manipulatives category, I have sub-categories - games, cards, motor aids, and other. I've already sorted the visual aids into their categories - I just need to figure out where I am going to keep them. Right now, they are in boxes in the garage, but I do not want to keep them there.

Oh. My dream is a music therapy clinic where I have a large, ultra-organized storage room. I envision a room sort of like the bone room in the television show, Bones - floor to ceiling storage with back lighting and a logical organization method. That has always been my dream, but I have not been able to accomplish that dream - YET!

For now, my organization itch is telling me that my current system is not adequate. This is leading me into reorganizing my current spaces to make them more efficient! I have lists of what I have and am prioritizing what needs to stay where in order to be used. I am trying to repurpose things that can be used in new ways and places in my current home space. 

I am looking at my desk area. I want to change the view from my webcam before Creativity Camp, so I am going to switch the desk orientation. This will allow me to change up my work space and incorporate things from my work office into my home office. I am trying to figure out zones for the different projects that I am using. For example, a laminating zone where I keep my laminators, my film, and the projects that I have going on. To do that, I will need to move some shelves from the upstairs living room down to the basement. That means putting away the things on the shelves upstairs and moving things around down here. It is time to get started on this because Creativity Camp and Rhythm to Results is coming up! I want to have my desk view sorted before Camp. It is time to get going!