Conflict and Clutter

There has been conflict this week. Only in my head I should add, wrestling with thoughts of what ‘I should’ be doing (says whom?) vs what ‘I want’ to be doing. I’m pleased to say the wanting has mostly won.

Starting with this little Substack space. Having written over the past couple of weeks about dressmaking and sustainability I was starting to feel I ‘should’ be writing about something more directly art related this week, before you all get bored, decide this wasn’t what you signed up for and hit the unsubscribe button. But the truth is I have not been making any art lately. I’m trying not to overthink why that might be (although I have some suspicions and will report back on that another time), but I have come to realise that being creative and artistic filters through all aspects of life and is not necessarily just about making pictures, so I’m not too worried... yet! Instead, I’ve baked cakes, caught up with some of the huge pile of repair jobs and mostly just pottered about.

Enjoying home grown raspberries on breakfast every morning

Our British summer has also decided to arrive this week, and whilst it is too hot to be out doing much in the garden or allotment, other than pick my abundant crop of raspberries each morning and do a little bit of watering, I find that the appearance of the sun energises me and makes me want to sort things out, clear out cupboards and get rid of the clutter that seems to accumulate by stealth. We all accumulate stuff as we move through our lives – things we don’t use, things we don’t need and even things we don’t even recognise. Stuff that takes up space, but not only physical space in our homes and studios but space in our heads too. Whilst for some clutter can seem inspiring, it can become the weight that drowns us. And I was starting to feel that water rise.

‘The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak” Hans Hoffman

One of the problems I always have when having a good clear out is what to actually do with all the stuff. I hate just throwing things away, adding to landfill. Sometimes just having to make the decision what to do with everything feels too much, but if I’m in the mood I make piles of things… stuff to go to the charity shop, stuff that can be recycled, stuff that might be mended or upcycled and given a new lease of life, stuff to give away etc although soon all the different piles become so overwhelming I give up and ram it all back in the cupboards to be dealt with another time. Does that sound familiar or is it just me? But this week instead of all the things I thought I ‘should’ be doing I decided I wanted to seriously deal with the accumulation of a lifetime of possessions. I have a birthday coming up soon and my advancing years are making me aware that I don’t want to be leaving all the detritus of my life for our children to sort out … I rather like the idea of Swedish ‘Death Cleaning’. So I am starting small and hope to tackle a little each week. I now have a clear desk and the excess items have been dealt with.

A mere fraction of my collection of notebooks!

Well…mostly. I have a proliferation of old notebooks, diaries and bullet journals which I hang onto. They are not only filled with various appointments and ‘to do’ lists like the hairdresser or dentist, but they are also home to collections of thoughts and quotations, doodles and drawings, old postcards, cuttings from newspapers or magazines, lists of books or places I want to visit and things I want to do. So no, I haven’t dealt with them other than to collect them all together in one place… it’s a start I suppose. I kid myself that maybe someone might like to read them in years to come when I am long gone. I might still have all my old notebooks but I have passed on many months’ worth of Gardening magazines to someone else who wants them this week, so I consider that a win.

I have also cleared some of the mending that has accumulated at the end of our kitchen table, having sat there so long it was starting to look like a permanent installation. A pair of jeans from youngest son have been repaired along a seam that was starting to give way and I have darned the holes in a ski hat that I knitted for eldest son many years ago. I don’t think he’ll be going skiing anytime soon but his wife asked if I could fix it because she liked the hat. It makes me feel good that they want to mend things rather than throw them away even if it is me that does the mending.

Before… and after

I have also mended a little doll I was given a year or so ago. Having helped an elderly neighbour get to grips with her sewing machine she wanted to repay me and gave me a topsy turvey upside down doll that she thought my grandchildren might like. It had Little Red Riding Hood at one end and a grandma and wolf at the other. But it needed a bit of attention. Grandma’s bonnet was coming apart and the elastic had perished, most of the wolf’s features had come astray, and his ears were starting to fray. It was in a sorry state, but it amused the grandchildren anyway and I never got around to fixing it.  But a couple of weeks ago one of my granddaughters, with the directness of a four year old told me I needed to mend the face, so this week I have re-sewn the elastic on the bonnet and completely reconstructed the wolf’s face. Although I’m now worried it looks a bit scary in rather a weird way! I have yet to try it out on the children.

And today when I thought I should be doing something useful in the garden, I decided I wanted to sit and write this instead even though I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to actually write about. And that has been my week really, lots of laundry done while I can dry it outside; trying to learn some very basic Greek so I can maybe one day read to my bilingual grandchildren in their mother’s language; appointments with Mum to get ready for her Pacemaker operation next week and calling to reassure her each day that she can eat because today is not the day of the op; a haircut for me and a celebration of twenty years of marriage. Gosh, where did those years go?

And finally there was a bit of art too, as I hosted another Paint and Sip one afternoon this week. Although, as it was a corporate event held at the Cambridge Science Park rather than an evening in the pub, we enjoyed ice cream rather than wine as everyone painted a fabulous ‘colourful cow’. It was all rather civilised and a lovely way to spend a couple of hours at the end of the afternoon.

‘Colourful Cows’

Now today I really ‘should’ stop writing and go to try to make some inroads with the mess in my studio, which might actually result in me being able to make some more art… but is that what I want to do? Time will tell.

I’ll leave you with one of the scribbled quotations I found in one of my many notebooks, nothing to do with anything but it made me smile. I’m not sure why I wrote it down unless maybe I am aspiring to be a diplomat. Who knows?

“A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in a way that makes you look forward to the trip”

Have a good week. Next week I’ll be back another year older, maybe with some art but maybe not.