Recluttering frustration
Today, I’m frustrated about… well, a lot of things, really, but I don’t want to share all of them with my internet readership and in any case, I think a lot of it is just a hungover feeling from having run that 11K yesterday, and not accomplishing much of anything today.
But one of the things that is frustrating me comes from the other thing I did yesterday, which was to complete the move of my stuff from my studio into my apartment. Over the years, the stuff in the studio had piled up, and since starting the move out, I got saddled with lots of extra computer parts, books, art materials, old sketchbooks, old sketches on loose sheets of paper, toys and figurines, furniture… put all of it together and my apartment is as cluttered as it was a year ago, when that was a major source of frustration and embarrassment for me. If not worse.
Some of it will sort itself out. I’ve got a potential taker for the old Suske & Wiske books that Jeroen took to the studio a few years ago and didn’t want back. There’s a whole lot of other stuff that isn’t mine, including some items that I have to take back to the studio because they’re Jelena’s or belong to the company renting the place out. Those can be returned to their owners or thrown out if they don’t want them. Original art can be sold, as can surplus books (the consolidation also caused my CD collection to overflow, so I’m now eyeing it with a view to selling most of my CDs). A lot of the paper can be discarded and the consumable art materials can be consumed. I’d really like to have more time to do that.
But I’ll still have my work cut out dealing with the extra clutter. Time to head for The Unclutterer for tips. Though after a year of trying, there’s not that much left to learn as far as the general principles are concerned. I try to practice the one-in-one-out rule, with mixed success. I limit the amount of stuff that I buy and try to discourage people from giving me stuff other than consumables. I have considered and rejected the One Year Rule on the basis that I often go back to using stuff that I haven’t used in over a year, especially art supplies. And I’ve become a lot more dilligent about getting paper and other junk out of the house immediately than I was a year ago.
I’ve learned one thing two things from getting all this stuff back from the studio. One is that I’ve made some really poor book purchasing decisions - or at least someone did; there were about a dozen books that none of us thought belonged to them. The other is that I’ve bought far too many pencils over the years; my desk is overflowing with them.