April 2024 – 9:00 am

First kick-off huddle or the “this is what I’m going to attempt to do for 24 hours” starter huddle.  A decent amount of people present.  We share our projects and mine remains the usual same, cleaning something.

So I’m tackling the “Studio”, the combined space for my jewelry making, Marty’s painting, and the 3D printers.

Eventually we want this space to be very inviting and that we WANT to come into to do things.  So, we want to paint the room to get rid of the deadening grey the entire house was painted in for the apparent re-model before we bought the place.  And then re-design the space to make it more workable.

This will require us to go through what’s in there to see what we want to get rid of.  A lot is craft kits which I will be loathe to let go of, but I said to Marty, maybe we can DO these each weekend from here on to do creative stuff.  Which makes me feel better.

This will require pulling apart the shelves to take out of the room which makes me slightly ill.  Okay, a lot ill.  Bleh.  I hate this kind of stuff so much and I get very anxious when I have to make these kinds of decisions (in terms of getting rid of something, or how to organize something).

Here’s what the Studio looks like at the beginning:

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12:00 pm

Went for a walk and then had lunch.

Marty and I started attacking the room, pulling out all these unused craft kits and there were LOTS of them.  Most of which I will probably get rid of.  Which made me very sad.  This was a big struggle for me and I spent a lot of time staring aimlessly at the shelves.

I was really into buying craft kits.  But I never did them.  There was something about the potentiality sitting on the shelf and the idea of the results, but getting started and the middle part (the actual work) always seemed somewhat intolerable.  I’d open one up and see how much work was involved, even if seemed “simple” and pretty much give up right away.  It always felt overwhelming.  Something about the “containedness” of a structured kit, maybe.  I’m not better with overall projects, even if birthed from my own mind and/or direction, such as a crochet project I download, gather up the separate supplies for, etc.  It takes me forever to finish something.

Also much of these kits were very “kitschy”, not much like things I would like to have around the house or even that I’d give away to folks.  So that does help.  But it still feels like killing potentiality.  So I had several bags of kits with still more to go through half way through the work.  I will try posting them for free on Nextdoor first but if we don’t get any bites, we’ll send to Goodwill or some such.  The problem is the paints and glues are all probably dried out, but the main components are there with instructions and such.  Some I had to put in ziploc bags after hunting down the parts.

I tried to be more “firm” in regards to “Would you REALLY do this?” and make those decisions to get rid of things when I’d be like, “Well, I COULD do it, maybe at some point, sorta?” and waffle really badly about it.

So here is the update, but it feels messier than the “before”!

4:00 pm

So tired, all stirred up by this process, so figured it was time to finish for now.  Have many bags of kits with STILL more to go.  Sigh.  Bags of kits, bags of crochet and knitting kits, these big binders of those cards you could sign up for month to month that were on various topics and this set was “Great Gifts in 30 Minutes” – 4 massive binders.  I doubt anyone will go for this stuff on Nextdoor (and I did post the binders already) but we’ll see.  Again, I don’t know if these are going to get taken at all, and then dunno if they’d be suitable for Goodwill, but then the only option is the landfill trash and I hate that.  Not just the idea of these going to trash and unused but adding to the landfill itself, which I try to do very little of.  Sigh.

                   

There are a lot of supplies and equipment I need to get rid of too, or maybe not.  I have a giant chest of drawers (the upright tall brown one with drawer by the door) filled with essential oils and soap/lotion/perfume making supplies.  It’s all pretty old, and essential oils do age, so I don’t know about that.  Grrr.

5:00 pm

Check-in and later chatting with folks in the room.  My husband always knows when something is going on in me (the curses of living with a therapist and with someone for a very long time) and we talked about the losses of potentiality in regards to having to choose what to let go of.  And also mortality suddenly being right up in my grill.  All this stuff that I won’t get to do, due to time left or just change in interest and such.

I worked on trying to sort my google/youtube/email accounts, for which I have these giant spreadsheets, because I have so many and I need to track them and start condensing and getting rid of them.  But I was very stuck on it.  Almost frozen about it.

I get this paralytic overwhelm very often.  Had it trying to work through the studio, have it trying to sort out and organize my stuff when basically having everything so disorganized makes me freeze and not be able to do stuff because it’s all so chaotic.  I try to take on these huge projects 10 minutes at a time (per suggestions, and even set a timer) but find very quickly that doesn’t even get me into the actual sorting itself because I am torn in all different directions on where to start.  But it HAS to be done, because I can’t get anywhere with all this disorganization swirling around me.

A life in process….

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Next steps…

• Continue to go through items and try to make firm choices.
• Figure out what to DO with all the kits.  Try to give away, and then Goodwill?
• Maybe find some boxes to put loose stuff in for pulling kept stuff off shelves.
• Dismantle shelves, or at least pull apart the stacked units.
• Definitely got to pick a color.  Folks saw the swatches on the wall.  We don’t really like any of them. (well, I like the nice rose on the top row last on the left, but he doesn’t so that’s out)
• Paint prep!  And paint! (both take forever…)
• Then install workbenches.
• Reinstall the shelves we are keeping, install shelves above the workbenches and upper walls.
• Repopulate the shelves, replace the 3D printers into new homes, etc.
• Final clean up.
• Flop down on floor and sleep.