Junk galore...

For the past 5 days, I've been purging like a mad woman.  I've placed a table right outside the back door of my kitchen and I dump items out there if I'm trying to see if I miss them.  So far, nothing has been reclaimed.  I'm so far beyond the 65 items I needed to purge for the Minimalism Game this week, I've completely lost count.

And besides this trash pile above, there really hasn't been anything worth photographing.  I've tossed dried up paint, broken toys, old sheets, dried up markers, crunchy rolls of tape...seriously, JUNK!   As I purge these things, I feel a great lightening of my visual space and my mind as well.

Many items I hold onto likewise hold memories.  Lately, I've started to feel that memories, even good ones, are better when they're NOT attached to a physical item.  5 years painting for the Des Moines Metro Opera isn't upgraded by having a company mug!  A jar of hot green chili sauce that expired in 2010 doesn't make or break our New Mexico honeymoon!  And a heavy ceramic bowl made by a friend...feels too heavy now that that friendship has dissipated completely.

As for my wardrobe, which I'm also purging..I've got a strange problem.  From what I've seen, most people have tons of unworn clothes jammed into closets...or they have a shopping addiction and continually add to their wardrobe.  I have neither of those problems.  What I have instead is...I have about 4 pieces of clothing I like, the rest I tolerate.  

I'm also a clothing "under buyer" according to Gretchen Rubin.  I will stock up on art supplies even though I have plenty, but when it comes to clothes...I'd rather trim the toenails of an angry wolverine than go to a mall or other such place.  

And my kids?  Well...they have holy socks.  I've been taking so much stuff *back* to the thrift store lately, I finally "splurged" and went into the store and replaced some of our holy frocks. It took me an hour to spend $36...meanwhile, the kids happily played with every dirty little toy in the place!  That's cheap fun.

Seven, Eight, Nine...and Ten...

As the June days grow higher in number, it becomes more apparent that I have too much stuff because it's easy to find 8 of something, 9 of something 10 of something!

On the 7th day I did NOT rest.  Instead, I trashed 6 vintage Ice Capades shirts from the 70's.  They've been in a damp steamer trunk and even though they were sealed in plastic, there's mildew and rust stains on them.  I've tried washing that sort of aroma out of clothing, it just doesn't come out, even with sunning.  In the trash they went.  That leaves a 1 item deficit for the 7th.

There's an art genre that I'm just not versed at, clay.  It's in my bloodline, I appreciate the art form...I'm just not a clay person.  We all know if we're "clay or not"!  I'm not.  Time to part with some tools and supplies like this vintage letter press mold.  It's in the future Etsy sale bin.

 

Day 8...it was easy weeding through art books to find 8 "fantasy art self" books to part with.  Beadweaving?  Figure drawing?  Not my usual art adventures nor ones I dream of.  And parted with 1 of 3 papermaking books...I had two of the same book!

Day 9...9 glass supplement bottles I'd cleaned up with intentions of filling them with homemade walnut ink to sell at a Christmas Bazaar last year. Tired of keeping them, easy to replace.  I thought of the Minimalist's "20/20" rule.  If you can get it for $20 or less in 20 minutes, kiss it goodbye. 

Day 10...10 frames.  Old ugly frames at that.  The sheer "what if" supplies in my studio is overwhelming.  It's definitely buried my creativity.  The studio gets lighter and lighter as I purge, and a miracle has also occurred....there's now an AC unit IN my studio!  This will not be my 10th summer of sweating like a pig (suffering for my art) as I try to make jewelry or paint in my hot-as-the-dickens studio.  I can dejunk in comfort now...even though it is symbolic to sweat out toxins as I declutter my life!

Happy 111th birthday to our old house...it may have Google Fiber...but it's never had AC!

Three, Four, Five and Six...

The Minimalism game continues, I'm trying to keep up so I can get my 30-Day decluttering badge of honor! 

Today, I found 6 items in my studio to part with.  It's a high clutter area because I save EVERYTHING.  I parted with; Three journals with a few pages used in each, two mannequins that have been sitting in the window of my studio for years and a strange print that was given to me as a gift and I was told "If you don't like it, you can reuse the frame."  Well, NO...I don't like it...and NO, I can't reuse the frame...it's hot glued together.  BYE.

On June 5th I parted ways with 5 lbs. of marbles...you can find your marbles and still be out of your mind.

June 4th, we de-owned a giant wok and it's base.   One could throw this over a firepit and make fajitas...for 20 people.   Must go.  It gives me a flashback to the time I was almost kidnapped by gypsies, but hey, hasn't everyone??  We also parted with 2 kid-sized folding chairs that got soaked in the rains last month.  A friend at church happily accepted them, squishy seats and all.

June 3rd, we decided to sell 3 wooden director's chairs that were in the basement collecting dust.  We never use them.  There are 6 chairs and a bench outside to sit on...plenty of seating especially since we aren't party people.

The catch on the chairs was that I washed the fabric parts to "freshen them up" before selling them.  They were red, and I washed them (in hot) with my husband's faded jeans.  Not only are the jeans skin tight now, but they're also PINK.   He's such a good sport to think that it's funny and still be willing to wear them!  <3

Two things...

Day 2 of the 30-day Minimalism Game, and I've found two lovelies to part with.

Don't ask me why I have SO many dental tools...beyond "they were my dad's"...I don't have a good reason.  Why did my dad have dental tools?  He was a million things EXCEPT a dentist.  Come to think of it, I once saw him file a sharp tooth down with a Dremel tool...his own tooth!

Well, in honor of spending 2.5 hours with a dental hygienist today getting my teeth "deep cleaned", I've decided on day 2 of the game, this just needs to go away.  Where?  I'm not sure!  Recycle it?  Slyly drop it to the bottom of the next thrift store donation box?

Some would say to use it as a clay tool, and I will show them some of the questionable pottery I made in middle school.  I'm not sure how the pottery gene skipped me since there are many talented potters in my lineage. 

Second, I believe this button doesn't "fit" me anymore!  I used to think of myself as super low maintenance.  Despite my INFJness and artistic intensity, my occasional sauciness and tendencies toward "wanderlust"...I think I'm pretty easy to get along with...right?!

Maybe "low maintenance" is how I ended up in the dentist's chair for 2.5 hours...yes?

Anyway,  I plan to leave this someplace as a gift to a stranger...maybe in the bathroom of my chiropractor's office?  Maybe I'll deposit it amongst the books at the library?  Or in the make-up aisle at the grocery store?

Those are my discards for the day.  Tomorrow I find a trio of something or other to go away...I feel like going BIG tomorrow...

One thing...

It's been a mighty lonnnnnng time!  Of all the things I could say about what has been going on in  the past "forever" since I've blogged...I'm going to start at the beginning.  Sometimes beginnings double as endings.

 

One.  Today being June 1st, I've joined a little game instigated by The Minimalists called the 30-day Minimalism Game.  The first day you get rid of one thing, the second day two things, and so on until 30 things go on June 30th.  That will be a total of 465 things.  And yes, I used a calculator to tediously figure that out.

This large white one is a 2 foot tall, 3D 1st birthday prop I made for my kiddos.  They're all past one now!  So, I've symbolically made it my first discard for my "one thing on June 1st" and have posted it for free on the Kansas City freecycle.org.  Tomorrow, I find two things to discard...

In addition to this game, I've been reading Joshua Becker's "The More of Less" and following an online course geared at decluttering your home one room at a time, and most importantly, finding your "WHY" for doing it.

I've been taking loads to the thrift store lately and NOT going inside to shop.  I've been imagining that I'm buying a vintage Airstream (an idea I fantasize about often) and I have to take only what's necessary.

This beginning is an end to having more than I need and being buried alive under things that even if they hold a memory of a special time or person, are weighing down my life.  I've been asking myself hard questions and trying to decide...

Why do I have all this stuff?  What art forms do I love and what materials should I keep or get rid of?  What would it take to have more time with my kids as opposed to standing over the sink doing dishes?  How would we move should we need to?  What do I really want........?

 How do I get here?

Big, deep stuff, you know?!

A short term "WHY" is...I'm decluttering to make room for art making.  I'm clearing surfaces to work on, getting rid of materials I've kept for "just in case" or "maybe I could..." projects.  Most of the stuff is simply recycling!  Paper tubes, tin cans, cardboard...do I really want to work with trash?  Not THAT kind.

I know what I like, I've liked it forever and I keep going back to it.  It calls me from the sidewalk to "pick it up and cherish it".  It catches my eye.  It's here to stay...and sure it's a pretty color, but mostly I love it because it reminds me of how this world and the stuff in it is temporary and will disintegrate....will rust away...

12 years ago...

One of the greatest tragedies in this world as I know it...is that my children never met their Grandpa Bill, and that he will never meet them. They would have SO enjoyed each other.  My dad never lost his childlike playfulness.  He loved acting silly and "performing" for random kids to make them laugh, and they would often get in trouble with their mommies for it!

But in his absence, there's a certain little chubby boy with a space between his teeth and a gleam in his eye...genes don't lie.  And every time he's a little ornery, I can say I know where it's from.

I'm not fond of posting pictures of my children on the internet, facebook or any other such place...but this one is just too sweet.  We went to the cemetery to visit dad yesterday and the first thing I noticed was the sea of dead, yet colorful, man-made flowers.

Have you ever seen a "fake flower graveyard" at a cemetery?   On the Triumph Bonneville in the picture below, my dad and I rode through a cemetery and he took me back to see the "flower graveyard".  It was a mammoth mountain of disintegrating plastic and silk which has stuck in my memory to this day.  (Of course, I wanted to dig in it!)  The idea tickles my artistic funny bone and makes me think deeply...(what else is new?)

 

I see the flowers as more of an offering to God with our prayers for the deceased and it seems more fitting to offer something God-made. We brought colorful zinnias and a delicious edible herb from our yard...and they'll turn brown and fall over and perish, that's reality. 

But unlike a plastic rose that will get tossed in the trash heap, real zinnias and dill will die and drop seeds into the ground.  In the spring they will sprout up, and even though they will get mowed down before they get a chance, they're there nonetheless!

Maybe next time I visit I will transplant a MINT plant by dad's headstone, they'll never get rid of that!  The gift that keeps on givin'...and such a lovely scent when you mow over it.

Miss you dad.  Requiescat in pace.

Work in Progress...

When I was 15, I picked up a paint brush and went to work...and didn't stop for 18 years.  Now and then I paint a little something here and there, but no longer do I sling gallons of paint at scenery each day and I hardly ever sit and watch miles of paint dry with a cup of coffee in my multi-colored, speckled hands.  (I kept the coffee, the rest went bye bye)

With my new (but not surprising) love of rusted and dyed fabrics, I now find myself in strange, uncharted territory.  It's a place I've only seen in books, or on denim shirts back in the 1970's....it's Embroidery Land! 

Where I could paint in my sleep, (and have actually fallen asleep while painting!) I can feel my brain starting to sizzle and smoke while reading sewing directions and figuring out stitches.   But I'm obsessed with it, I love it...

I've dabbled in French knots before, but only once!!!  I quickly ran back to my paintbrush.  Sometimes we run back to what we know, but then at some point it becomes boring and exhausted.  At least for a time...

I feel I've abandoned everything I know well in pursuit of something I know very little about.  I feel like I can't "say what I want to say" with paint alone.  And while my brain runs in complicated circles, my art likes to be simple and uncluttered.

It's widely known that I have a "thing" for the desert.  After pondering what to do with all these dyed and rusted fabrics I've been crafting and piling up, it became obvious that I should take those desert scenes that float through my mind and make them "real".  When I look out my window and see house, house, house, apartment, squirrel eating my tomatoes......what I really want to see is the desert, the sky, some mountains, end of list.

Who knows where this needle and thread will lead me?




Random Tellulahness:
So I downloaded this app for my fancy shmancy phone that is supposed to remind me to drink water.  It has alarms you can set that go off throughout the day.  Mine makes exotic bird noises when I'm supposed to sip water.  It's broken...it doesn't work.  I heard the birds and picked up my coffee and took a sip.  These apps are useless!

Walnut Ink...and erosion bundle extracted...

Walnut Ink.  So expensive at the art store, and so easy to make.  These walnuts have been sitting in a bucket on my back porch since last year.  They were moldy but that was no match for boiling water.

There was no complicated recipe or precise directions, I just boiled them like taters!  But for much, much longer until the outside disintegrated off the nut.  Then, I broke them apart and added more water and let it simmer for about 5 hours.  Strained the juice, added some vodka and clove oil to deter bacterial growth, and now I'll use it to dye fabric and watercolor paper.

And then there's THIS.  It took me a while to dig it up, and when I found it I didn't even recognize it...my compost bundle!

After giving it a quick hose down, I see that the fabric truly is eroded.  It's worn, rusted and a bit slimy!

Poor centipedes will have to relocate.

I've suspended the treasure from the clothes line in hopes that it will dry out before I tear into it this Saturday.  It's already rained on it, but I see some upper 90 degree days coming, that should do the trick.

It's like an alien cocoon...

I don't even remember what's inside...

Life's a garden, dig it...

Here comes the heat....here comes the garden.  The great healer, calendula....

Ant hill in the dill...

Egyptian walking onion...

It was bittersweet having to pull off the flowers from my blueberry bushes....but I know it will pay off next year when they're bigger and full of berries.  Had to leave just a few though!!

Broccoli I started from seed...even if the little green caterpillars leave me just one head, it was worth it!

A bundle unveiled...

Bundles of treasure are still hiding out in various locations around my yard, but being an impatient sort, I had to rush-process one to satisfy my curiosity.  

This bundle was an embroidered, square linen tablecloth that I snagged at my favorite thrift store for a whopping 99 cents.

The rust was obviously from metal...wire and safety pins....but the black and green marks were made with red onion skins reacting to vinegar.

The pink and purple marks are from some fuchsia flowers from my mother's day plant...

I'll reuse the safety pins on another bundle...and use the fabric my book projects. 

You just never know what you'll discover inside...