Tag: decluttering

We now have a dedicated craft room!

~ Ari October ~ 1 Comment

Sparing the gritty details and drama, my dad-in-law and his girlfriend broke up. Since she and her 3 kids all moved out, a lot of room has opened up in our house. The best part is that we have been given permission to use a room with not one but TWO built-in desks! This is now officially our craft room.

These are my Before pictures, I took them before touching anything in the room.

Already looks pretty tidy right? Well… Yeah that’s an illusion. All of the clutter is hidden away into every storage compartment in the room. In every drawer, behind every cabinet door, and lurking in the closet is LOADS of unsorted miscellaneous stuff. A lot of it is trash, and the rest needs to be donated.

It’s a lot more work to declutter other people’s things than I expected. Even with absolutely no emotions involved, there is so much physical labor in pulling everything out and sorting things into donation boxes and trash bags! Not to mention the mental labor from the amount of gross stuff that needs to be touched. Yuck.

Once everything is cleared out and cleaned up, only then will I start moving our art supplies in. Then I will try my best to organize everything in a way that not only looks good but functions well too. I look forward to sharing the finished product with you all!

I do not wish to cause anyone envy, so I apologize if this post comes off as braggy. That was not intended but I suppose it’s somewhat unavoidable. I do recognize how privileged I am right now because I haven’t always been. I grew up in severe poverty and so a desk shoved into a corner is all I’ve ever been able to call my “studio” up until this point! I am just very excited and simply cannot contain it. Please allow me to share this journey with you, as I wish the same amount of luck and fortune for you as well!

Until next time, take care, and I hope you have a wonderful day!

Happily Reorganized!

~ Ari October ~ Leave a comment
My art desk, plus one cubby under the TV, for drawing and watercolor painting supplies.
My acrylic painting station, and the “overflow cabinet” in the hallway.

After I was done decluttering my supplies, I took the opportunity to give each item a new and more productive home.

I wanted to keep supplies closer to where I’d actually use them, so I grouped my drawing and watercolor stuff together as I generally do both of those at the desk. I also moved my purse from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet to make room for my acrylic supplies so they could be close to the easel!

I counted and I have a total of 14(!) sketchbooks, not counting the 4 I have fully filled. Out of those, 9 have been drawn in already. I’m only keeping the ones I’ve been most active in lately in the bedroom, I’m hoping that focusing on a few specific ones will help me fill them up faster.

With everything nicely organized, and plenty of supplies that I know I like just waiting to be used up, I think 2022 will be off to a good start 🙂

May the coming year be full of creation! Happy New Year everyone!

Everything in one place

~ Ari October ~ Leave a comment

So I decided not to make a written catalog of all of my art supplies because the idea was extremely daunting, especially after seeing the pile.

I included both my and my partner’s art supplies because we share with each other, even though some things are more mine and some things are more hers.

I ended up doing most of the decluttering as I removed things from the cabinet in the hallway. So what you see in that photo is pretty much just what was left as my “keep” pile. There were a few things though, like the Zebra Zensations mechanical colored pencils, and the 6 sheets of Canson XL watercolor paper, that went bye bye after this photo.

I decluttered all of my tempura paints (because I’m now using acrylics instead!), a Winsor and Newton Cotman travel watercolor set (I have every color in that set and more in my custom palette), several sets of Crayola crayons, and quite a few other miscellaneous little things. And that’s just the art supplies! I also donated a bunch of baby stuff that our daughter has already outgrown, some clothes that don’t suit me, and other random household items we no longer need.

This has been the biggest declutter since my first big purge back in January of 2019. Hard to believe I’ve been pursuing the minimalist lifestyle for so long now! I’m hoping the No Buy can help me do better now and in the future.

Although I’ve been fighting my hoarding tendencies over the last 3 years, I hadn’t really combatted the real root of the problem: my shopping addiction. I’ve learned to let things go when they stop serving me, but I haven’t learned to stop acquiring things in the first place. This lead me to buy things only to declutter them a week or two later!

I’m really happy with how I ended up reorganizing everything, made the whole process worth it. I’ll be back shortly with a separate post about that!