Mail was good to me last week.
Two hand-made cards arrived to celebrate my birthday - the one in front from our very own Karen. And the package from my sister contained a book from my Amazon wish list
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| along with a very sweet note! |
Thanks to the Memorial Day holiday falling just right this year, I actually had my birthday off. Sarah gave me the gift of her time and came over to help me start cleaning my craft room. It's a big job and is going to take a lot more time than we had together, but a solid start was made that resulted in this:
Yes, we "found" my craft table under piles of stuff! It is now set up and ready for me to play. Which will be my goal before the week is out. To actually go play. And then clean up the mess when I am done so it will be ready to play the next opportunity I get!
For those of you who have done serious craft space purging and decluttering... how do you decide what stays and what goes? I can be ruthless with my clothing, jewelry, kitchen stuff... but when it comes to my craft supplies I freeze. Everything has multiple potential uses. I can't get rid of anything. (Says the woman who before Monday had FOUR Fiskars 12" trimmers! I did thin that down to two - gave one to Sarah and put one in the donate pile). But I don't have room to store it all which is why so much ends up in residence on my table and then I have no space to play and create. I seriously need an intervention! Any thoughts????
4 comments:
How lucky to have your birthday off - maybe you can start that as a new tradition ... very pretty cards. Happy belated birthday.
Thoughts of horror to purging craft supplies - I know too well that need to do. I try to be generous except when it comes to my scrapping stash, then "giving" away supplies can make me into a stingy person. It's one of the reasons I have banned myself from buying any new supplies (that's SOOOO hard too). You have a nice friend in Sarah who gifts her time & assistance. Your crafting area does look inviting.
Good to see you! Your crafting space looks great, and I love that hanging cupboard. I've gotten rid of perhaps 2/3 of my paper. I looked back over what I had used in the last couple years, and realized I almost never used the 12X12 patterned paper, and stuck primarily with Papertrey Ink cardstock. I found good homes for all of it. I have a harder time with my stamps, although I have purged many older ones, especially the cling stamps which I rarely used. It's an ongoing process. I'm in the process of categorizing all my stamp sets in Evernote which ought to help me narrow down which ones I could give away. I don't have anywhere near as much digital stuff as you do, but I really cleaned that out last year and organized it all by category: seasons, birthday, Christmas, etc. I still spend way too much time looking for just the right thing in my digital supplies. I do believe Ali Edwards is right: the less stuff I have, the easier it is to make a decision about what to use, and therefore, more gets done.
I did a major clean-out last year. It was pretty easy because I just thought about what I actually use. ALL of the stickers went because I never use stickers. I only kept stamp sets I thought I might use in scrapbooking. I already have about a thousand cards---after I gave away about a thousand. Thus I got rid of ALL card making stamp sets. I got rid of all the larger stamp pads and just kept the smaller ones. Once I got started, I was ruthless. It helped that I had a good place to donate everything to. I haven't missed a thing---even after a year. Now as far as those trimmers---I think I still have four! I've always been on the hunt for the perfect trimmer. Still haven't found it, but I'm done trying!
First of all, a very happy belated birthday! It's so nice to have the day off and spend time with someone you love.
Just recently I started to declutter my studio. There was just too much stuff that I once bought thinking I would use it, but by now has become more of a burden that takes up space. I used to keep every little scrap of paper, but this time I actually became ruthless. In a little town nearby there's a thrift store for everything crafty and there I am donating all the things I don't need or want anymore. Piles of scrapbook paper, kits, punches, embellishments. Once I started being ruthless it became easier and has been very freeing. I am very very glad that I decided to get rid of quite some stuff.
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