I am on a quest. It’s become a sort of life long goal of late to get my affairs in order. Perhaps it was that awful year past and a lot of medical scares. But I think it’s much deeper than that. I am just tired of living with things all cluttered, just sort of haphazard through my life. I used to think that was a sign of being creative. But it’s not. It’s just a sign of being disorganized and out of control.
For the last ten years, I have really been removing the excess and clutter from my life. Just trying hard to watch what I bring into my life and what stays. I am not at a point of being called a minimalist, although I do admire the ability to limit your life to X amount of items or whatever. But I do find that the less that I have to take care of, the better I feel. Just lighter. Less responsibility and more contentment. I admire the tiny house movement and hope that some day I might be able to live most of the year in my dream yurt!
But that time is not here yet and I’m not exactly sure when it will arrive!
In the meanwhile, I figure I can always start to prepare and pretend that I am in my small space. And one thing that is slightly out of control is my paper and craft clutter. Er, I mean my wonderful and beloved processions. Yes, I seem to have my clothing and other areas of my life pretty tidy. Heck, even books are at an all time low in my life. (Less than 100! Maybe even like 70 or so!)
Bu papers and such are a joy to me. I love paper stuff. Memories and mementos. Things I’ve designed through the years as a graphic artist. Flyers for bluegrass shows. Scrapbook stuff… family papers… yes, those are important to me.
So I decided week or so ago, with all this rainy weather we are having, that it was time. I had a few ideas on how to deal with everything in my office, bedroom and the studio. I would start to sort it out… gathering up first all my books and stashing them in the dining room. Of course, I went through them and culled out a paper sack worth to go to the local free store. I hope someone gets a little use from them!
That picture above is my entire library now. I had two books in my room, but that is it.
They are all books I adore. Mostly reference books with a good smattering of memoirs from bluegrass musicians and homesteading folks I admire. And I was very proud of myself… I even went through the reference books and culled out a few so so ones. Things that were better covered in another book. Or two. If I’m going to have fewer books, I want them to be perfect and the very best of that subject. Something that I can read over and over and never tire of. I think I have finally achieved the perfect mix.
Next step was to set out a bunch of boxes that I borrowed from Jessy’s shipping area. I thought about it for a good while and came up with ten categories of papers. Stuff like bluegrass, homesteading, personal, scrapbooking, and family papers (genealogy). Those were easy to come up with. But as I started to sort through I made up several more categories. Like supplies… and eye candy! Eye candy are pieces I have saved through the years for stiring my creativity in graphic arts. Just things that I admired. Flyers, papers, stuff from magazines. There was quite a bit of it! Another thing I found was portfolio work. All the printed graphics that I have done through the ages for clients and thought it would be neat to keep a sample of. Boy, did I have a lot of that and it was pretty neat seeing it all in one place.
I did also set aside a box for donation and one for gifts for friends. I was surprised how I filled up both boxes rather quickly. Just things that I thought, oh, so and so would really like this, or this just needs to go away. My goal of this sort was to see exactly what I had and how much. I really wanted to gather it all in one place. My office. It just made sense. Not here and there through the house. I wanted all the paper stuff in one place. And sorted. 
I had a shelf that was perfect for boxes of paper. It was currently in the studio and just not working out well in there. So the girls helped me and we moved the two tall small bookshelves out and that big solid shelf in. It fit perfectly! And it held all my boxes! I would like to change them to those neat Ikea storage boxes very soon. I had four of them and used those for all my scrapbooking and family papers. As you can see, I need 7 more! But they are working right now. I believe I will get one more shelf that is just one row of four, up and down. To set aside that shelf. The little gray cabinet is all my drawing and illustration art supplies and I think I’ll move it under my desk or something. Right now my library is a little crowded, and that additional shelf would remedy that. All in due time!
But, wow, does it feel good! I even went through all our personal papers like birth certificates and other important papers and gathered them all together in a tidy little packet. They were somewhat together, but still a little strewn in various places. Knowing that we can just grab that packet in an emergency feels a lot better.
I still have some more to sort. We have a small bedroom that is currently our “storage room”, which is our code for “we don’t know what to do with it”… to be honest, we don’t have a basement that we can store anything in, so that room is out seasonal and catch all storage space. It is a goal to get it empty and use as a guest room, but in the last four years we’ve only had two overnight guests, so there is no real rush. There are about 8 or 9 more boxes of papers in there, however. Some really old stuff… half of which is probably just trash or could be condensed down to the good stuff. That is going to be part of phase two of this big paper sort! I’m thinking maybe later in the summer when it gets all hot and sitting in the air conditioning, with a sweet tea and a box to sort would be a good afternoon.
Of course, changing out the shelves in the studio and moving stuff around, made for a bit of a mess in there. I’ve been going through a lot of the craft supplies and such and a few months ago we moved Maggie to her new office spot (which she loves!) and the studio is now all fiber and weaving supplies. The three floor looms are in there as well as the spinning wheel and all the fleeces. It is a goal of mine to begin to offer classes in fiber prep, spinning and weaving. I think that would be a lot of fun and a neat thing to offer. But, before then, the studio needs to be organized, functional and nicer! We are working towards that. 
I want the space to stay open and flexible, so that we can move looms around as needed for warping and working. And I want things to just make sense. We have a bunch of lovely tiles to lay down in this area, but we need to save up the money for backing board to lay over the wood floors, first. All in due time! It will look much nicer with a decent floor in there. 
The room is just dark, it’s hard to get around. All the paneling makes it so. However, the paneling is old, from turn of the century and beautiful. I just hate to consider painting it or something like that. Hopefully the new floor will help to lighten the area since it’s a light natural cream color. And we have hung two light colored bullentin boards up, to give us a place for goodies to pin up as well as lighten the area some. I do like having that big dark shelf out of there… it was creating a big dark spot as well. It’s much lighter now without it in there. 
By exchanging the two smaller, tall shelves with the big dark shelf, it really helped to give us a better place to store weft and materials. They tucked in nicely in this alcove area. Out of the way, but very useful. Right now, we have about a dozen fleeces cluttering up this area as we process them. They have to be washed and picked and then carded into batts. It’s a labor intensive job and we are puddling through it. Once done, it will free up a lot of space.
One of the things that I wanted to do as create a display wall of all our available rugs and weavings. I thought this big open wall would be perfect. And it would help to lighten the area as well! All we did was hang three fairly heavy duty hooks up tall on the wall. I wanted to to as little damage as possible to the paneling. As it worked out, the hooks went into the dark grooves of the paneling so that worked out perfectly! We tapped and searched for studs to put the hooks into. We knew that the rugs would be heavy! And then we bought two pieces of metal conduit pipe. They are ten feet long and only cost about $2 each. Very reasonable. I had a bit of heavy duty web strap. All I did was sew a couple pockets into the webbing to slip the poles through. I want to get one more pole to add at the bottom. The girls helped me to arrange our rugs and put up the poles. 
It’s perfect! It holds all our rugs for display! Right now I only have six left! I do have a bunch of table top runners so we put them up as well. It does brighten up the space and what is nice is that it doesn’t really take up any space. We had them all rolled up on a big shelf in the other alcove. It was such a hassle, trying to find a rug once it sold online, or when people came over to look through the rugs. There was no good place to lay them out and shop through them. Now, they are out and about, displayed and ready!
One thing that I noticed right away is that my color pallet of late is mostly blues and grays… cool colors. So I was able to effluence my shopping for more materials and I went to more warmer colors for this next group! Already, the rug wall is helping out in more ways than just one! Yeah!
All a work in progress for sure… but we are moving towards a goal and that is everything in it’s place and a place for everything! I think that is a good mantra for our lives.
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