Making Space...

I've decided to spend more time purging craft items.  And hubs joined in with a few items from his study. This time I've gone through my paper crafting supplies and just general craft supplies.  This category is both easy and hard.   It's easy because I was able to identify some supplies that I bought on sale once upon a time, but have never used.  My normal MO would be to tell myself "I might still use it someday", but the decluttering me says, "Stop kidding yourself!  You haven't used it in years, let someone else have a shot at it."  At the moment, this kind of self-talk is easy.  I'm listening to the voice that says, "Let it go!"   

The hard part is that there still is a lot of stuff that makes no sense to me at the moment to let go of, so while there's a measurable amount of bits and pieces leaving, the containers these things in are nowhere near empty, so I'm not really changing the space this stuff takes up.  Not yet, anyway.  I need to think on this.  In a future home, it may be worthwhile to reconfigure my containers and consolidate perhaps, but as I'm trying to declutter right now, consolidating and rethinking my storage doesn't make sense to spend much time on, so that makes this a bit hard.  At this point, I just have no idea if a next home will have space for this stuff, or what that space will look like.  

For now I think I will just trust that letting go of stuff is progress regardless of whether or not I'm downsizing a significant number of containers of craft stuff at this point.  

Here is this week's haul:

As usual, if I counted every single item, there'd be far more than the count is when I sometimes count groups of items, but I'm claiming 80 items gone this week.

Vee asked last week:  "Are you releasing items just to be getting them gone or are you taking a careful look at it? ... It is interesting to see each person's style."

The answer is a bit of both.  I'm not striving for minimalism at this point, not because the idea doesn't appeal to me, but that's not very realistic.  And I don't want to spend money needlessly replacing things I think I really might use when I have the time or inclination.  On the other hand, I've had things for many years that I've hung onto for that exact reason, and when I admit I'm still not using these things, it's very freeing to let them go.   It's freeing to release myself from the expectation that I will (or must) use the thing, and to release myself from the guilt over money spent on something I never used.  Sure, I still spent the money on it, but if I make it available to someone else to use, the money spent is much less guilt inducing.

So...  while yes, the goal is to get things gone - for various reasons, I am trying to apply some thought.  That said, sometimes I do just say to something I'm waffling over, "You're outta here!"  And there is a weird relief when that happens.

In some future posts, I'll try to share some resources that I'm finding helpful as I sort through a lifetime of stuff.  Different things help me on different days, or when sorting through different things.

I'm going to spend a bit more time on crafty stuff for another day or so, so more may show up next week.  Or maybe not.  Each week is a surprise.  😉

Making Space Week 39:  326 things gone!