Dickinson College Humanities Program in Norwich

Today, for the entirety of the three and a half hours I volunteered at Strangers’ Hall, I organized craft cabinets. Why may you ask? For some odd reason, I thoroughly enjoy organizing (even though oftentimes my own room isn’t so) and when they asked me if I wanted to do this task, I sprung to it. With a cold coming on though, perhaps sorting through pipe cleaners and bits of paper wasn’t the best thing for me.

My boss briefly explained where the things were located and what she wanted done. Organizing some cabinets and writing lists of supplies seemed easy and mindless enough. Boy was I wrong. Since the museum is very much involved with children’s activities, they have massive supplies of random objects. They had enough paper and pens to last them a few years and yet they had only one measly box of crayons and about 15 children’s scissors. Clearly, nobody had sorted through their craft supplies in quite some time, so I set to work.

The supplies, activity guides and materials were all over the place with no sense of organization. I managed to make one cabinet only for supplies, one only for the activity sheets and the other for extra supplies such as pens, scissors, glue, etc. Even just that small task made a huge difference. Then I had to sort through everything…what a nightmare!

They tried to have separate bins for each activity with supplies in it, ready to go. Of course, that was not the case when I sorted through them. Many were filled with trash, lacking in supplies or instruction sheets and had no order to them at all. I tidied them all up and made a list of supplies that were needed. I even alphabetized the bins in the cabinet for easy reference. So maybe I’m a little “OCD.”

I then moved on to make some order of the huge supply cabinet. Nothing was labeled or in any order. I’ve realized over time that most people really won’t take the time to search through boxes or things to find something, unless it is labeled for their convenience. There were the usual supplies of paper, yarn, fabric and then the unusual supplies such as baby socks, nutmeg and floor tiles. After the cabinet was labeled and organized, I thought that my tasks were done, but then I turned around.

I noticed on the floor of the supply room that there were piles of random papers and objects that looked like they might have been for crafts. Guess what, I was right. Now I had a whole other pile of things to sort through that weren’t in any bins. I found more activities for the activity bins, useless scraps of paper, and other random activities that might possibly be used in the future. Once again, I sorted and organized, found places for these objects and left a pile of miscellaneous items that I had no clue about for the curator. Whew!

What I thought was going to be a day of mindless work turned into a day of organizing genius. I had no idea (and I think the museum workers as well too) of the amount of craft items and activities the museum had in possession now that it was all organized and labeled. I can understand why things get like this in a place like a museum, especially after a busy holiday, but it is just incredible just how unorganized it can get. At least I’ll be leaving in a few months so I won’t have to be there to organize it when it gets cluttered up again. I think I would cry if I saw it in disrepair again so soon.

Hours logged: 3 1/2
Total hours: 15 (technically I’m done, but I’m going to keep volunteering there anyways)