This past week’s focus has been on part one of preparing the house to show. Both my husband and I have been busy doing some serious deep cleaning, purging and misc. small job’s around the house to make it all shiny and ready to go on the market. In some ways it doesn’t feel real yet, a lot of what we are doing could be chalked up to a really major fall cleaning and it’s small detail work that’s not all that visible on the surface but it will make a difference in showing. On Friday the realtor came by to check things out, collect a key and discuss how the showings will work and this defiantly made the whole move seem more real! This coming week is part two of getting the house ready which means more purging and then organizing the stuff that needs to go into neat areas and getting the stuff that we can out.
Today I had a cancellation in my schedule and I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather so I decided to take advantage of it and stay home. It was the perfect day to do a BIG PURGE of the ART and CRAFT SUPPLIES! The husband’s been out of the house all day and I’ve had a movie marathon while sorting piles and piles of stuff. I’m not done and might be staying up late to finish the fabric and yarn stash but I plan to get through all of the craft stuff TODAY! I’ve got a really large pile so far and there’s sure to be more before I’m done! I’ve toyed with the idea of trying to sell some of it at a flea market we are selling at in early October but I think with so much going on I’m just going to donate a big part of it and give some things to friends. If you live in the DC metro area and want to know what I’ve got leave a comment or shoot me an email.
It feels FANTASTIC. I was skeptical when I started this morning, I wasn’t sure I was in the right frame of mind to do this today but I feel so free and liberated. If I don’t LOVE it, it’s going. I mean, I’m finally getting rid of things I’ve moved about 4 times already (from MD to KY to GA back to MD), it’s about time don’t you think? I have sooooo many types of craft and art supplies that go all the way back to when I worked in an art supply store in college. Here’s what my stash includes and my strategy is to get rid of some things in all the categories because I still dabble in all the them and these are the creative outlets that will stick with me in the future as well.
Categories of Craft and Art Collections in my Stash::
Knitting (the yarn stash includes both knitting and weaving yarns!!)
Textile arts (dyes, chemicals and fixatives for dying yarns and fabrics of various kinds, also recently have accumulated various rusted metal objects for natural dying and I still have a large stash of onion skins even though I did one batch of natural dying with them recently)
Weaving *OK, I haven’t really woven in 6 years! (except a small bit on my table loom) but I still have tools etc I’m not ready to part with. Will I ever weave again? I hope so!
Sewing (patterns, embroidery supplies, fabric, thread and other tools and supplies)
Paper crafts (glues, papers galore, brads, stamps, paper punches, cutters etc) *Did I ever mention here I use to have a small greeting card line when I lived in GA? I still make holiday cards and do other paper crafting quite frequently.
Fine art (paints, pastels, boards and canvases, markers, colored pencils, sketchbooks and various specialty papers)
Is there anything I don’t have? It feels like it but I suppose if I did clay or more 3-d art it might be worse. At least my loom (which is FOR SALE) is dis-assembled and got rid of basket making supplies after our last move.
The remainder of this week is CRUNCH time for getting the house ready to show. Mainly this means more purging and then organizing all the stuff we are getting rid of into neat categories of DONATIONS, FOR SALE and TRASH (which needs to go to the dump this week). I’ve also got some fall yard cleanup to do and it looks like the weather should be pretty nice for this.
Related articles
- Stash Bash and a Studio Sneak Peek (kimwerker.com)
- Open House: How Often Do You Purge? (casasugar.com)