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Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Downsizing... Part 3

Been busy with holidays, problems with house repairs, custom orders, duties as my new position as president-elect of the gallery, and my first workshop of 2017.

I have been watching a lot of "Tiny House" episodes and today is my first day where I have time.  I had to decide "work" vs "organizing".  Since I don't have ideas for specific designs at the moment, I went with "organizing".

To repeat, I have no desire to live in a tiny house (although there are caveats to that, but I'll explain at a later time).  So yeah, not downsizing in order to live in a tiny house but it's definitely inspiring in the way of ... well, downsizing, organizing, streamlining, etc.  I think that is good no matter where you live.

Putting clean laundry away at the moment.  Do I need 10 kitchen towels?  Yes, it's awesome in so far as I don't have to do the laundry as often, but.... they take up space whether they're dirty and in the hamper or clean and in the storage drawer.  So I'm limiting certain items to the storage bins I have assigned them.



This is one of those standard size canvas boxes that fits into a wall unit.  I have four bins in that wall unit so whatever fits in one of those bins is it.

They contain:
  • Small towels (kitchen and bathroom)
  • Large towels (bath towels)
  • Pants and shorts
  • T-Shirts (my work shirts)

My nice shirts get hung up.  In my closet is an open bin each for: socks, undies, bras. Sweaters and jackets are on hooks, along with scarves, gloves hats, and purses (well, bags really, but to some women they're purses).

I am pretty good in the kitchen... I don't have a TON of cutlery or dishes.  It means I have to do the dishes a lot.  :-)

Books.  That could be considered one of my downfalls.  I have given away and sold many of my books in the past five years, but I still have a pretty healthy collection.

A lot of the jewelry books are keepers.  They're inspiration and references.

Then I've got some "thinking" books... they're the ones on philosophy, physics, neuroscience, astronomy, and psychology.  I'm not ready to part with those.

There are some cookbooks I have to leaf through before deciding if I want to keep them or not.  Same with the "self-help" books.

I have a large collection of horror books... those are going up for sale.

The jewelry magazines... sigh... I really don't want to keep them.  It'll be hard, but I must force myself.  I will start going through them and will clip out anything of interest.  The only problem with that is my "interests" change.  But as someone who could excel at hoarding (BUT WHAT IF I NEED IT SOME DAY?!), I just have to convince myself that the possibility of losing something that I'd never be able to find on the internet or in a book elsewhere is not as important as the idea of having a less cluttered living space.


3 comments:

  1. This wall unit is very attractive...I like it:). I applaud you on all your organizing activities. Pretty convinced that the more space you have, the more you fill it...and I long to have a less cluttered work area. The rest of the house has little clutter but my studio - Eeek! Went thru 18" stack of magazines this week and got it down to 9"...progress...thanks for putting into words what I'm feeling. Keep your downsizing ideas coming!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks so much for the encouragement (and for not thinking it's weird for me to document this process online). :-)

      You are COMPLETELY right about how much space you have it how much space you fill. That's one reason I only use small purses.

      What are you doing with your magazines? I'm still thinking about some of the options.

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  2. I SO identify with this! I've been using a combination of KonMari/tiny house hunters/couple other organizing books to try and get a handle on my house. (Side note: do you ever get tired of someone saying "that's really small" on that show?) Anyway, I have a TON of jewelry and bead magazines. The reason I have such a hard time getting rid of them is that there have been several times where I find something appealing long after the first perusal when I was not interested at all. You'd think with access to the web I would loosen my grip. Sigh.

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