When my mother worked as a full time artist making art dolls she collected a bunch of fabric, beads, and bits and bobs. When the market for that completely died, she offered me all her stuff. The only things I didn’t take were most of her tools and her clay but I did take all the fabric and the bits and the bobs.

And then they sat in my closet for several years.

Over these same years we have also been accumulating a lot of clothes and even managed to donate some clothes. But the piles were huge and they completely consumed our closet.

During our latest home reorganization effort, we decided not to put in more storage into the art studio because it would all be for storing all this craft stuff. My art stuff (the stuff I do continuously, all the time regardless of any new interests) already had more or less permanent homes in the studio and so any new storage would only serve to house all this stuff I’ve accumulated.

It’s too much stuff.

And it would have cost too much to acquire the sort of storage that I would be happy with.

And so I’ve decided to start a challenge. I’m going to use up all my stuff.

At first I thought I wanted to set a deadline for myself: use up all the stuff in a year (or two). As I’ve thought more about it today I think it makes more sense to not set a goal but to set up a system: ie, instead of saying I’ll use it all up in a year’s time, I’m going to use it all up by working on projects more or less everyday.

This shift in attitude towards the creative effort is how I’ve managed to write consistently. Sometimes I write one sentence. Sometimes I write nothing, but I’m doing research for a thing I’m writing. But the effort is consistent. I do this every night unless I’m sick or traveling (and very occasionally when I’m just SO FUCKING DONE with the day). But this way I’ve actually stuck with it for almost two years of daily writing and writing adjacent activity.

If I can apply the same framework to this crafting challenge, I think I’m more likely to be successful than setting some arbitrary deadline, which I will ultimately not meet and then feel discouraged about.

The main rule is that I will not buy more crat stuff, I have to use what I have. The only caveat I forsee needing is if I’m making something that requires a bunch of jump hoops or wire or glue or something, I’m willing to get that. Though now that I think about it, I’m ok buying more glue, but not more jump hoops or wire.

I will use what I have!

Now in service of this, I have taken every single box, bag, and pile and dropped it all into the studio. It’s a horrific mess! I’m hopeful though that once the spackle that my husband put on the walls to fill the anchor holes for various furniture we’ve had against that wall over the years dries, I will be able to at least make some walking room in there and put my easel back in there. Right now all the stuff is all over the place and it’s TOO MUCH.

I go through pendulum swings of “I have too much stuff and have to get rid of everything!” and “I love collecting stuff!” At the moment I feel like I need to get rid of everything. A common grievance in our household is that we’re constantly tripping over stuff and unable to find anything. So this is why I’m trying to downsize.

Now, you may be asking why I don’t just donate all this stuff. Well, for one thing, not all of it is really donateable. The clothing I’ve collected could be, but as I mentioned in one of my previous posts on the subject of sustainability, most donated clothes is never actually sold and ends up in a landfill. So to prevent the possibility of that happening I am choosing the certainty of using up all this stuff in creative projects.

Now, the craft stuff I definitely could have donated and it probably would have been used. There’s a creative reuse center about an hour away from me that I could have driven all this stuff to. But this is my mom’s stuff. I got it from her and I have kept it all these years so it would feel wasteful to get rid of it all. Now, to be clear my mother is still very much alive and well, so luckily these materials don’t have the baggage of grief (maybe not in the traditional sense, I’m sure she might be grieving the art career she decided not to continue, but that’s another subject for another time). But I do want to use it all. And I love a good challenge.

Wish me luck!