"Stuff"

Simplifying, down-sizing, organizing or de-cluttering. What ever you call it, that's what I'm doing. We want to switch the guest room (my son's old bedroom) with my home studio (my daughter's old bedroom.) The home studio is much bigger than the guest room and now that I have the studio at the Transit Building I no longer use the room. (But I'm still not ready to give up the home studio. I have paints, drawing supplies, weaving supplies and looms and I'm not ready to give those up either. Who knows, I might use them. Just because I haven't used them in the last five years doesn't mean anything, unless the cast of "Clean House" is involved.)

Now artists are pack rats. Everything is a potential art supply and it is so hard to throw anything away. (Being an art teacher never helped either. Art budgets were never big enough and I was also hoarding materials for my students.) But for my own sanity it is time to simplify my life. (Plus it wouldn't be fair to my children to have to dispose of all this "stuff" when the time comes.)

This past week I have taken time off from inventory and the studio and started to clean out the home studio. My friend in SC told me "never move"! She just went through a major move from GA to SC. A year ago she cleaned out her house, put things in storage and staged her house to sell. When it came time to move I'm sure she didn't have nearly the amount of "stuff" that I have but she still was worn out from clearing it all out.

I can definitely relate. The picture is my front room with "the stuff" from the studio. Now this is only two thirds of the stuff. The other third is in the garage awaiting springtime when it will be put out at a garage sale (and there still is a little bit in the studio.) There is no furniture in there. The furniture is spread out to other parts of the house.

I also threw out a ton of "stuff." Luckily we have a nice garbage service that takes it all.

My cleaning goes in waves. This is wave one. Wave two comes when I start to set up the new home studio. I'll have to take a long hard look at everything and decide if I really need it or not.

The pictures don't even include the four bookcases, entertainment unit, table with a very large doll house on it, drawing table, refrigerator and corner computer table. Where did I put it all?

Well, it's out of there now and it's not going back!!! (At least not all of it.)