Making Sense Out of Jewelry

How many times have you fished through your jewelry box to find the other missing earring? Or forgotten you actually owned a piece of jewelry? I can now see at a glance all the jewelry I possess.

The last Darfur rally was the source of my inspiration. I stood next to the Temple Micah Administrator, a very savvy lady, as I waved my “Honk for Darfur” sign. We started talking about household clutter and somehow got onto an idea of hers to use a pegboard with hooks to organize jewelry.

I had recently been thinking I needed to do something to organize what little jewelry I had, having depended on a small jewelry box I had gotten in Japan 25 years ago and the little boxes that jewelry often comes in.

After mulling over the pegboard idea for a week or so, I decided to try my approach to this, a piece of lined black velvet with multi-color ribbons I found remnants at G Street, making the cost minimal. I chose ribbon colors that I liked a lot. Horsehair braid seemed just the right thing to use for earrings.

As I put my worldly possessions out on the dining room table, I discovered a number of things I had entirely forgotten about.

I had to baste every seam because this was the slippery velvet that slides all over otherwise. At 2:00 a.m. this morning I finally had to quit sewing ribbons on and go to bed. This morning saw the finished product.

One of the nice things about this design is the fact that I can simply take it off the door and roll it up if I go out of town. As my husband pointed out, however, a burglar could easily do the same thing.

Oh well, there’s nothing really valuable in the whole lot. And I’d rather be reminded of my choices than to have to scrounge for them in the old jewelry box.

There are probably much better ways to do this, even things like this already custom-designed. But I’ll bet there’s not another that looks just like mine!