Cleaning!

I must apologize for being somewhat MIA on the crafty project postings. I have a part-time job I'm working a few days a week now, and my other major project over the last month has been cleaning the heck out of my living room.

For the first time in years, I now can truly say my living room is presentable. Usually I felt I needed to apologize for it when people come over.

Right now you can sit on the couch without (gasp!) moving a whole bunch of crafty crap. My craft stuff is organized in a way that makes sense and I am working through using stuff up.

I live in a small apartment and junk piles up fast here...it has literally taken me months to get my living room back to this state.

 

How did I do it? Getting rid of stuff! Quite a few things found new homes via craigslist, Planet Aid and other donation bins, Jyoti's neighborhood yard sale, and also gifts to my friends' closets :)

It turned out my biggest clutter nemesis was papers--I am taking out a huge bag of them to recycle each week. Why on earth was I saving work papers from 6 years (and several jobs) ago? They weren't interesting and I certainly never looked at them.

I also used the help of a few Feng Shui books that finally made me feel it was ok to part with some of this stuff:

    

I haven't painted my door red or anything (I'm pretty sure my complex would object to that, although this door has never seen a new coat of paint!) but the books were really helpful about putting the clutter items in perspective.

I still don't have the heart to take down my collage wall...

Or to completely trash my magazine collection...

But there is definitely room to breathe now!