The Organizing Journey Day 17

Day 17 – I Refuse to Quit

Yes, I did skip two days.  I’m feeling overwhelmed.  Not by organizing.  I can’t even GET to organizing.  Just overwhelmed with other commitments.

These piles and boxes are taunting me.  I feel like my living space is getting smaller and smaller.  Ah well, hopefully soon.

So as tempting as it is/was to stop pretending I’m on an organizing journey, I won’t go there.  I refuse.  I will find the time to do this even if it’s Mount Olympus in front of me.  Maybe if I piled all my boxes and my piles into one heap, it WOULD be as big as Mount Olympus… seriously, I have a lot of stuff.  And it’s not stupid stuff.  Well, there’s a certain amount of stupid stuff, but I anticipate ridding myself of that as soon as I really get started.  No, the stuff I have is necessary and useful.  It’s just NOT organized.  I have dressers with empty drawers.  Cabinets with empty shelves.  Storage containers with no contents.  It’s because in my hectic life, I want everything at my fingertips.  So nothing ever gets put away.  The solution will be a compromise.  Putting things away, but leaving them in my sight.  You’ll see.

Here’s an example of something I started.  These are my spices (on the right).  Having my spices with all the labels facing me is totally what I need.  I can’t be digging through a cupboard, rotating each bottle trying to look at the label.  This is so me! 

But as you can see, I have only done half my spices.  I probably did this a year ago… and still have not taken a couple of hours to complete the job.  My inner critic is calling me a loser.  Which reminds me of one of my favorite songs.  Loser by Beck  Which, if I’d KNOWN the title… well, okay, so I only heard the song on the radio and never saw the title written anywhere.  For years I thought he was saying “I’m a lizard, baby, so why don’t you kill me.”  Apparently I’m not the only one because the first comment on that video… Meaghan, I love you!

I, too, was younger when I got the lyrics wrong… but probably old enough to know better.  Ha!

Okay, back to organizing (and not calling myself a loser… seriously… I have to quit that kind of thinking).

As you are my witness, I will finish my organizing!

I did get some time in the studio today.  I have two half-finished pendants and one that’s in queue for patina.  Then I annealed a piece of silver again, because I’m trying to figure out why I’m having such issues annealing silver.  Copper I can do fine… silver.. .oh my gosh, I make it HARDER than when I started.  Ack!

I’ll show you the goods after the stones are set and the pieces are polished.  I’m trying to get some new work into the gallery before Thursday.

I’ll get a better photo of my newest “skinny drawers” (in the studio), but for now let me show you what’s in a couple of them.  These are bits and pieces that have no current home, and some have no purpose.  But I was tired of seeing them on my work table every day so I put them into these drawers.  We’ll go through them (y’know, organizing them) later on, but for now it keeps the clutter off my work surface.

 

I see a lot of half-finished projects in there.

And here’s something I have to deal with.  Not just this (in the photo)… things like this. 

There are LOTS of things like this.  Items that have no purpose, but I feel like I should keep them in case I need them someday or because they have sentimental value.  Well, not sentimental value, really… more like, effort value.  Something I worked on for a certain length of time so even if I have no purpose for it, I feel bad throwing it away.  Maybe I can make one big treasure box and put ALL the things that fit into this category into the box and then I’ll put it in storage and 20 years from now it’ll be fun to go through, but in the meantime it’ll be out of the way.

While I generally want things that are visually pleasing, sometimes I opt for functional until a more aesthetic options rolls around.  It dawned on me today that I hate ear bud cords.  And every time I want to use my earbuds, I have to untangle them.  Which makes no sense to me ‘cause all I do when I’m done is lay them down.  But whatever.

So I googled “earbud storage” or something like that and ended up on a Pinterest board, that took me to this post, with the brilliant idea to glue two clothes pins together (here they are in my vise with E6000 between them)…

… to become this perfectly practical tool.  One clip end holds the pin jack, the other clip end holds the ear buds, and the cord wraps around the two clips together.

Thanks for all the wonderful comments and feedback.  It’s great hearing from you all and finding out that I’m not alone in this journey.  :-)  Share your tips, tricks, ideas and experiences too, in the comments section.

To see the beginning of this journey, click here.