When I was in school I always thought of September as the beginning of the year, much more so than January. Even though I've been out of school for lets be real - decades I still think of it that way. This year I decided I was going to start "the new year" with a whole new scrapbooking area and I've been working away at getting that just the way I want it. I've been working at it so much that I've really slipped behind on my blogging and worse - reading my friends (new & old) blogs. Hopefully this week I'll be better at doing that.
One of our back bedrooms (actually both of them) has a very deep cupboard and years ago we decided to change them so we could also use them for a bit of storage (other than clothes). In the room that is now my scrapbooking room/lair/studio area J moved the clothes rod higher and more forward and then installed another removable one further down and behind these he installed shelves for me to keep my yarns, magazines, tools, patterns, etc on/in. Well its pretty well gotten out of control and as I needed some space for scrapbooking stuff in there I decided to attack that part of the cupboard. I think where knitting magazines and patterns are concerned I am definitely a bit of a pack rat. I keep them forever - I even have patterns of my Mum's and she passed away in 1976.
I always thought there was no way I could get rid of a knitting pattern or magazine or even yarn samples - it just didn't seem right after all they were reference material (anyway - that was my excuse). About a week and a half ago I realized that I hadn't even looked at them in years and at my age would never make even 98% of the knitting projects in them so I bit the bullet and took 12 magazines out of the cupboard. I sat down & started going through them one by one and when I saw a pattern I really truly liked and might make or an article that I thought was important I tore them out and put the magazine aside. Soon I was through all 12 magazines and had a very tiny pile of torn out pages. This went on for days and by the end of Sunday I had a pile of 60 of them to put out in the recycle bins for Tuesday morning.
The first 60 to go.
We actually had to start a 3rd blue box (recycle bin) for the week as there just wasn't enough room in the other 2 what with newspapers, cans, water bottles, etc. I kept going though and by Monday night I'd added 24 more magazines to the box for a total of 84 magazines gone. This wasn't even 1/3rd of what I had in that cupboard. I was on a tear and it's kept up this week. I just keep thinking of what else I could use that space for. Right now I've decided that I'm not getting rid of my Knitters magazines - at least for now - but pretty well all the other magazines (Sandra, Interweave Knits, Knit 'n Style, Vogue Knitting and even Family Circle's special knitting issues) will be going. I'm still undecided about some of my Mum's patterns - some of them go well back into the 50's or even 40's. I think it's all about they were my Mum's.
Some of the shelving J put in for me years ago - ignore that cottage cheese container on the upper shelf - I have to go through it and sort the stuff in it - I know some of it is J's stuff from when he was in Lions. Can't wait to see it all neatly re-arranged.
The stack of empty magazine holders. Yes I know this picture was taken the wrong way & won't come out right when I import it even though I did rotate it.
This week's stack of 90 magazines and 12 catalogues/newsletters. And there's still 3 more days to go before recycle pickup. Wonder how many more I can get rid of.
I hope after this week I'll be able to start in on re-organizing the shelves and making room for more of my scrapbooking supplies/books etc. and then I'll really feel at home in the room and will have really made progress on my word for the year of organize.
