From Dragonfly: Three Foot Locker

What would you hold precious if all your belongings had to fit in a locker that was 3' tall by 1.5' wide? Imagine looking at all your belongings and making the decisions of what to keep with you. Would it be your cell phone? computer? For me, I would probably include my grandfather's pipe and pictures of the people I am closest with. Many would choose their sunglasses, perhaps some paper and pens. Maybe an Mp3 full of favorite tunes. Some favorite books may be held. But don't forget, all your clothing also must fit in this locker. How would you organize? How would you manage?

That's what the truth is in prison. Some prison's give inmates tall lockers and/or under the bed storage. At Carswell, we have a small locker and that's it. What we can keep outside our locker is one uniform, one towel, and our bedding (our beds made perfectly). We also can keep our dirty clothing in a bag under the bed and our shoes lined up against the back wall. So, everything else, must go in the locker. The locker has three shelves on one side and is open on the other. Inmates can not have the metal hanging bar that would normally go on the open side, so we make bars out of rolled up magazines and hang our hangers from that. Until I had a magazine bar, I used yarn pulled through the side holes a bunch of times to hold the weight of the hangers.

My locker has all my clothing, water bottle, puzzle magazines, books, cards mailed to me, handmade calendar, medication, toiletries and all hygiene products, lined paper, craft paper, yarn, embroidery string, snack food, address book, address labels, envelopes, extra batteries, book light, peanut butter & jelly, my winter cap, radio, legal documents, letters, scissors, pens and pencils, folders, crochet needles, finished crochet projects waiting for mail out, towels, wash clothes, cheese, juice cans, sprite, work calculator, my i.d., commissary bag, pictures, two reader's digests, people magazine, school books, lotion, ear plugs, utensils, 7 cup Tupperware bowl and lid... well, you get the idea.

These are the items I value while in prison. So, how do we organize all this? We make ourselves locker organizers. They are made of plastic needle point squares that fit in our inside locker door. I have one and am making a second one. I cross stitch the design onto the plastic that is about 70 holes tall and 70 holes wide. It takes about 2 1/2 to fill the entire locker door. I'm making one that is 2 pieces of plastic long. I am having fun building small, medium, and large pocket attachments out of additional pieces of plastic (cut to the sizes I want). I am long stitching the background and the accents are in burgundy. Here's a skill I never knew I would learn! I stitched my name into the top of the organizer. The other organizer I have is not as fancy, I'll start fixing it when I finish the one I started this weekend (will be done tonight or tomorrow). Small items fit well in the pockets, which allows the inside of the locker to be more organized with larger items.

Another thing I made was a can holder. Every time I would reach in my locker for something, one of my juice cans would fall out. I took some of that plastic, and designed a long can holder so that they cannot fall out (it makes the cans fit the same as a 12-pack cardboard container for the fridge, but mine fits 6 cans. It's helped a lot.

Finally, I made 3 small shelves for part of the empty side of the locker. They hang off of 2 hangers and hold my panties, socks, and bras. I'm the only person I know who has done that. A lot of people make one of their door organizers into crochet pockets for their underclothes. I like my shelves - very convenient.

I'd like to say that all this stuff makes my locker incredibly organized, but no matter how many pockets, boxes, or unique item holders I make, I still have too many items for the small locker. Nearly every time I reach into the lock, something falls. I'm not giving up on it, though. I clean the locker every weekend. I organize, organize, organize... until I no longer can find the thing I need to find (whoops...). The locker may have an area of 4.5', but to me, it's the most important 4.5' in this entire institution.