Why a Clean Workspace Prevents Project Disasters

I hate making projects and messing up. As a matter of fact, I hate any type of mess up in the blog kitchen because I feel like I should know better. Believe it or not, I recently messed up in the blog kitchen. Join me for a chuckle as I tell my tale! 😳

Taylor was working on a project with White Melt & Pour soap and I decided that I would use some of the Transparent Melt & Pour soap to make samples for shipping. I pulled out Oatmeal, Milk & Honey Fragrance and the finely ground Oatmeal (Oat Flour) so I could make a Oatmeal, Milk & Honey soap. I melted two pounds of the Transparent Melt & Pour soap and then moved everything to the workspace Taylor has just vacated. (Can you see the problem yet?)

Using a brand new pipette, I opened the bottle of fragrance on my left and added 9 mL of fragrance to my melted soap. I stirred the soap and bent down to smell the soap. I couldn’t smell any Oatmeal, Milk & Honey! All I could smell was Taylor’s soap on the other side of the kitchen! I grabbed the bottle thinking that someone had played a trick on me and substituted the fragrance with plain oil. Once I read the label, I realized I had used Taylor’s bottle of Rosalie, instead of my bottle of Oatmeal, Milk & Honey. I looked around my workspace and saw to my growing horror, I had put my ingredients on the right side and moved Taylor’s ingredients to the left! Quickly, I walked over to our color drawer and grabbed the bottle of premixed Purple Raspberry dye. I took it back to the workspace and added a few drops of color to the soap. I now had a pink soap scented with Rosalie, when I didn’t want that at all! 😡

I was ready to sweep the whole problem under a rug and forget about it. As I was grumbling about the my mistake, Taylor chuckled as she walked over to view my pretty pink soap. After looking at the soap and then back at me, she told me, “Wouldn’t that make a great blog? I mean, you made a mistake and you’re annoyed about it. You were able to fix it though! We both also learned that working in a messy workspace with multiple people will increase the chances for failure or messed up projects.” I had to take a mental step back and realize that Taylor was right. Even though I had made a mistake, I still was able to fix it. I also learned that sharing work space, either with another person or another project, is a bad idea. Now I can look at the situation and laugh because it is funny, even if I didn’t think so at the time.

As a result, I made a “Clean Workspace” checklist that I decided to share with you, so you don’t do what I did! While this list isn’t long, it gives me satisfaction to check off each line.

Andee’s Clean Workspace Checklist:
☐ Clean and put scale away.
☐ Put away all ingredients in their proper places.
☐ Take all dirtied containers and equipment to the sink. Wash by hand or place in dishwasher. Dishwasher must be started.
☐ Wipe off all countertops.
☐ Wash floor of any spills were made.

This check list has been helping me save my own sanity lately. Not that I have much sanity left anyway. My pharmacist tells me his last order for sanity was backordered with an unknown arrival date. What’s a gal to do without sanity?

I’m wondering if you have ever made a mistake by accidentally combining projects or forgetting ingredients? Have you been able to laugh at your mistakes later? I’d love to hear your stories.