Today, I am decluttering my part of the craft room – our middle bedroom of three. Note that this is after I already went through massive amounts of stuff earlier in the year. We are lucky to have a craft thrift store in town, so it was easy to donate items in good condition before the pandemic.
The hobbies I have supplies and tools for are sewing, polymer clay, beading (for jewelry), knitting, leather working, card making and other paper crafts. Oh, and paper making, journals, and storage for sentimental papers. I’m also taking up painting with acrylics.
So this is the starting point. There is a lot that goes into deciding what to keep and what to get rid of. It seems to have a kind of entropy – some of it has been there for a while.
And that is where the change can come in. The realization that there is a habit, a worn path, that doesn’t serve me.
Scrapbooking paper that I used to create the covers of homemade books and journals – I could do that again. I made and used some journals and gave some away. But am I really interested in that, or do I just wish I was?
I’ve had a bunch of fabric for a while. Some of it I had specific plans for at one time. It is so very easy to be in the store and get excited by all the different fabrics, prints, and sewing patterns. More excited than I find time for when I am back at home, and somehow, I end up at the fabric store again, looking at patterns and fabric.
And that is where the change can come in. The realization that there is a habit, a worn path, that doesn’t serve me. It just brings more stuff into my house that doesn’t make me happy.
Interrupting that worn path is one way to help me simplify my life. Another is figuring out why the search is so much more fun than the actual work of creation, at least in some instances. That questioning, that understanding, is very important to help my life be more serene.
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