Those heaps on the floor...

I have so much scope for decluttering at the moment, having been ill for a long time and got used to things lying about the place.  The experience of clearing up and creating space is very satisfying, and I realise I must have been subconsciously annoyed with the mess every time I saw it, out of the corner of my eye.

Today I cleared up under my desk in the study - there was a pile of files that had been there for years!  Looking through them I found useful gardening cuttings for my design work, and a silver and opal ring I'd lost.  I have filed some of the stuff so I can use the design ideas, however it's all been pruned down.

So now there is nothing under the desk that shouldn't be there - it all has a purpose and doesn't get in the way of my feet.  Brilliant!

Mini-missions continued - guilt item

I am again following the 'mini-missions' of 365 Less Things.  I actually did today's mission today, too, which is to throw out something you felt guilty about acquiring in the first place.  In my case this is the Argos catalogue, given to me before Christmas.  I can use the net to look at Argos, so out it goes.

One thing leads to another - more paper gone!

Well, my sister came round, and we spent a happy afternoon going through my old art coursework.  I created a huge pile of stuff to throw out - things I had done as course projects that were not visually pleasing!  And a lot of bits of mount board.  (Now these last are in the bin, I wonder if I could have passed them on - better luck next time!)  As well as feeling cleaner and clearer about my room, I enjoyed seeing all the work I had put into the course.

This is what's left, which may not look tidy to anyone else, however it is a vast improvement on the previous state:

And this is Sue pointing to all the junk I got rid of!  She is a declutter expert.

NB you may recognise this area - the art box is behind this, and the pile of unfinished self-help books featured in previous posts!  I am aware I have some way to go to a decluttered house.

As a result of all this activity I feel much better about myself and have a lot more energy - it's amazing what a difference decluttering makes.  Onwards and upwards!

Grand art declutter!

My sister is coming over to help me put things away tomorrow, which has inspired me to start picking out my paintings which can be put or thrown away.  This in turn meant I had to turn out not only a pile in the study, but my Art Box in the kitchen - a nice plastic box full of sketchbooks and odd things.  As I've not been well enough to tackle this for years (OK also have not thought of it till now!) this was full of dust and sand!  I now have:
 5 watercolour sketchbooks
9 cartridge sketchbooks of varying sizes
1 oil colour pad
1 pastel pad in Ingres paper (good stuff)
3 or so pockets of loose paper
2 packets of wet palette paper
3+ pads of acrylic paper
1 pad of tracing paper (v useful for my garden design work)
1pad of graph paper

So I shouldn't need to buy any art paper for quite some time!!

Got rid of mountains of paper - sketches I didn't want, newspaper supplement about Diana POW (why did I keep?) very dirty flimsy mobile phone jacket, various bits of paper and lids of tubes and bits of cardboard, and 1 sketchbook I wasn't inspired by.  All to recycling.

Mini-missions Completed!

I have been using '365 less things' and her mini-missions for the week this week, loosely, to do some decluttering, and it has taken off!  You were meant to throw out 1 thing from a different specified place each day (see 365 Less Things' Mini-Mission Monday) I omitted the car's glove compartment as I don't keep anything there.  I ended up completely clearing a drawer and putting jumpers into it, which has reduced the amount of stuff on my chairs.  This means less stuff to sort through every morning to get things to wear.  All good stuff!