Is there such a thing as a too big worktable?

It may surprise you, but the answer is yes. Hear me out.

I had a giant table in the garage that never used to get used because it was *gasp* too big. It got shoved into it’s space in the back corner of the garage, took up a ton of space and stayed covered in crap and couldn’t easily be moved to a new location to actually be used anyway…so it didn’t. It just stayed covered in crap and then when I needed a flat surface, I resorted to my plastic sawhorses with a piece of scrap plywood on top that’s less than ideal and hard to move around once it’s set up and covered with the current project. So when a Kansas storm rolled in and I wanted to park my car in the garage, I couldn’t.

In my sewing room, I have one of those J-A craft tables with the big rotary mat, and it’s kind of the same way. Sometimes that table holds all the stuff I don’t have good storage solutions for and then I can’t use it when I want to cut out a project without a major reorganization that generally involves shoving crap onto the floor or whatever.

A year or so ago, I spent the entire summer working on cleaning out and creating organization in the garage. I cut down that giant table that was always relegated to the back corner, and put on a bunch of onboard storage. We’ve used that table a TON since then. It’s so handy, and it still is a huge table–3.5 ft x 6ft, instead of the full 4ft x 8ft–but it’s on good casters, has a full set of drawers on one end with full extension slides, and a shelf underneath that holds toolboxes and the shopvac. I put magnet strips on 3 sides to hold small pieces mid project so they don’t have to sit on top and get knocked off or roll away. It’s not perfect, but I’m really happy with how useful it is now.

Ever since then, I’ve been thinking about how to fix my sewing room table too. I don’t know that I want the table to be smaller, because it fits my big cutting mat perfectly, but some additional storage options would be hugely beneficial. So I’ve been looking on the internet, as you do, and have found a couple of options from Ana White that I think will make my space less cluttered and more functional.

https://www.ana-white.com/woodworking-projects/craft-table-top-modular-collection

For me, the current winner is this one, but she has others that might also be good too, depending on your space. Now I just need to gather the supplies and get to building.

In the meantime, if you have suggestions on storing PDF pattern pieces printed on regular paper and taped/glued together I’m looking for a solution, rolling them into tubes isn’t working all that well. The glued pieces come apart, and the taped pieces can’t be ironed with enough heat to get the curl out. I’d love to do the projector thing and do away with pdf printed patterns altogether, but that’s not looking like a solution I can afford at present.