Sometimes You Just Have to Use a Big Garbage Bag

I just read this amazing blog post Remove the Deadwood, Let the New Growth Begin and it spoke to my soul so perfectly and articulately that it brought tears to my eyes.  I'm not a waterworks facility, I have only cried at one of my children's birth...so tears for me, big deal.  So I want you to go read it...right now, then come back...

Wasn't his word picture fabulous?  I know it was for me.  The other day I was blessed to receive some second hand furniture: a bookshelf, a small side desk/table, and a computer chair.  Now I try not to take everything people offer to me for free, my home is not the dump.  However, I knew that I needed a few pieces of furniture to organize our stuff a little more, things we need/enjoy but were homeless in our house and created clutter.

So when I woke up the next morning my mind was full of thoughts of how to organize and make use of my new treasures.  The area I was planning on organizing was my crafting space.  This space is well loved and well used...the proof is in the threads on the floor, the scraps of fabric partying on my ironing board and the bags of notions still in limbo of use and put away.  Yet, the disarray of supplies was beginning to mess with my ability to work.  I was spending too much time trying to find things than I was sewing and creating.  Nothing crushes creativity like a disorganized mess--by disorganized, I mean you actually don't know where something is, not that everything is lined up like the shelves at the fabric shop.

I knew it was time to clean, to pass things on and make room for new ideas.  Yet, within all of us lurks a hoarder, the desire to hang on to the past for just a little longer.  In middle school I had hundreds of movie stubs cluttering my dresser top...I just didn't want to throw away the reminder of time spent with friends.  In high school, I kept every assignment, for all my classes, for four years because I wanted to remember every grade, every job well done, every word of praise from a teacher.  In College I kept all my clothes, the ones that fit and the ones that didn't because money was tight and I might not make it to the laundromat every week.  You get the point.

Now that I'm a mother, living in a small space with 5 kids and Husband I've given up on keeping all the little trinkets my kids bring home.  It isn't that the stuff doesn't have value to me, but that I know that more stuff will come and take the place of the things I've tossed.  Still, the memory hoarder in me has a hard time letting my craft stuff go.  Yet I knew that was exactly what I was going to have to do.  I was going to have to get rid of projects unfinished, fabric never used, supplies untouched and my stomach clenched at the prospect.

So that's what I did.  I tossed projects I've never finished.  I gave away fabric I hadn't used and I made space.  Space for new growth, space for new projects and space for my family to use more effectively.

I'm not 100% done with my organization but it looks much better.  I can actually find things again.  Because I got rid of fabric I'll never use, projects I'll never finish I also have more room for new fabric which is good because I just bought some :)

What about you?  Have you been cleaning and organizing?  Have you found how freeing it can be to let go of the overgrowth and embrace what you truly love?  It's been a while so let's chat!