Decluttering for the New Year; Creative Goals

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The start of the New Year has been a good time to get organised and so far in our decluttering process, we have reflected on our achievements (or lack of them) for the last 12 months and we have considered which crafts get us excited and which ones we need to leave behind. From here we have been able to determine which craft supplies we need to create the artwork that most excites us. This allows us to move out everything else, giving us space to store our supplies with some order. Now we are ready to look ahead.

Regardless of where we are on our creative paths right now, there is always somewhere we have come from and where we are heading. To help us get to where we want to be it helps to have an idea of there that is and what it may look like. Goal setting and creating action plans to get there is a huge topic and we won’t even attempt to cover it here.

My suggestion to you is to keep your artistic goals simple; outline how we are going to set aside time to allow our creativity to develop, have a broad idea about which projects we may want to start, and leave the rest to our creative muse. A mind map is one of my favourite tools for creating simple plans where we can use simple headings for each branch.

Here is mine for 2012. The main branches are:

– Time
– Supplies
– Techniques
– Projects

Use a mindmap to outline your crafting goals for the year ahead

From each branch I will outline a few points for each one. And it doesn’t need to be boring but also don’t get too caught up in making it look pretty; we are getting the bones of a plan out there so we can see it and think about it and add (or prune) to it over the coming 12 months.

So what are you waiting for?!? Get sorting, get inspired and start creating!

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Filed Under: Mixed Media Inspiration Tagged With: , , , ,

Decluttering for the New Year; Where to keep everything?

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With our decluttering process, we have reviewed our achievements, decided which crafts to focus on and sorted out our craft supplies.

Now we have only things we will use in our crafting area, we can consider where to put them. As we put items into new places, make sure you label the drawers and containers; this may seem a little over-the-top at first but will help you keep your area tidy in the long run. Labelling will also reduce the “open every drawer until I find it” problem.

clearnig our craft clutter

We want to consider how often we use our different groups of supplies. We want to keep the items we use most often close at hand. This may be on the desk in containers or in boxes that can be moved closer when being used and stacked away when not needed.

For supply storage, once the smaller areas have been sorted we will have created some space. Then we can take a step back and consider combining items that are similar or will now fit into a new area [reference materials storage articles]. Boxes with lids that can be stacked are great if you don’t have a lot of space (or have completely filled it!). The boxes can be labelled on the side you can see so you don’t need to go through each one when looking for one item.

Sorting colours into boxes

There are all sort of ways to store your crafting supplies materials and tools. Be brave and try a few different ides to see which ones work for you.

For further reading, try these links:

Happy decluttering! (Then the creativity can begin!)

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Filed Under: Mixed Media Inspiration Tagged With: , ,