A declutterer's guilty secret
This is NOT what my fabric stash looks like.For a person who writes a column all about decluttering, I have a guilty secret.
It’s my craft cupboard. Last time I counted there were at least six unfinished projects, each in its own brown paper bag. I have boxes, bags and containers of fabrics, baskets of sewing paraphernalia and plastic buckets of things that ‘just might come in handy one day’.
(On a side note, in one plastic bucket there’s an old vinyl record of Godspell. I reclaimed it from my grandparents house hoping to record it onto a tape, back in the days when I still had a tape player. Every time I look at it I think, “I really should get rid of that,” but I just can’t bring myself to throw it out.)
Whenever I think about my craft cupboard I feel equal parts annoyed, guilty and fatigued. Annoyed because it’s such a mess, guilty because I think I really should do something about the mess, and fatigued because even starting it seems like such a lot of work.
These are the things I know I need to do: finish the unfinished projects, or give them away; get rid of the fabrics I don’t like (and there are quite a lot of them); and organise the space to be more efficient. I also need to go through the boxes of buttons, Velcro and threads, sort it out, organise it and put it away.
It’s not as if I’m trying to make more work for myself either. The fact is that if it stays the way it is at the moment, it is basically unusable. I don’t start anything any more because the whole thing is a disaster. Something needs to be done so that I can start enjoying craft again.
I have been doing something right though. At least three people have offered me fabrics over the last few months, but I’ve been realistic and said ‘no’ to them. It’s against my decluttering principles to take on more stuff that I don’t need, can’t store and won’t use in the near future.
Somehow I need to take action to sort this mess out. Maybe I need to enlist a friend to do it with me, or maybe I could write a list of jobs to do and try one a day or one a week for as long as it takes. I’ve just got to get over the fear of opening that cupboard door. Craft supplies shouldn’t be this scary!