January 2, 2010

Today was the second day of my journey to streamline and de-clutter my life which should in theory allow more time for my quilting. I can report that both yesterday and today have been successful in getting rid of more than 27 items each day. As I started digging into the clutter it occurred to me that clutter in our lives comes in many forms. Paper clutter is a huge issue for me, it seems like I can't throw anything written away without handling it several thousand times first.

Yesterday I threw away several newspapers, de-cluttered my hot pad drawer because how many hot pads does one need after all? Today I cleaned out all the out of date coupons from my coupon binder and got the new coupons for the year in it. This should be very helpful when I go to the grocery store tomorrow morning. I actually took time to organize my grocery list as well.

Today I cleaned out over 100 emails. Why did I need them you might ask? Some had important information like new addresses, phone numbers, etc. in them. I actually took time to transfer this information to the address box, phone books or areas the information belongs. Others just needed to be let go or put in a folder to save. Yes, I still have about 50 saved emails, but since I normally have over 100 this is an improvement.

For fun I worked on two miniature or art type quilts. The first was a small quilt I was finishing for my friend's dog who has gotten older and is having some health issues. I got it quilted and bound but still need to do a bit of hand work on it. The second was a miniature quilt using some blocks left over from a sunshine type project. It is blue and white paper pieced hearts and I got sashing and a border sewn on it. I think it is finished but I decided to ponder on it for a day or two. Hopefully tomorrow I will take some pictures and post them to see.

Sometimes procrastination pays off. I have been saving some stuff for my sister that I wanted to mail but couldn't get around to packaging or posting. Today I realized that my son would be seeing her son next weekend Good Lord Willing and the Creek Don't Rise. So I can send it to her for free. Julie, if you are reading this don't get your hopes up, this is not a special gift or anything.

My digging did help me on-cover a couple of projects I am really looking forward to making and they should not cost me a penny since I think I have all the materials in my quilting room stash. This is a good thing since I saw the weather tonight and for Friday they are predicting weather in the single digits in our area. It could be as high as 19-yikes! Of course I still have my Judy Niemeyer class to prepare for and I have uncovered two flat surfaces in my sewing room so it will be a lot easier to do.

The bonus of the day was I found a tutorial on blogging that hopefully I will remember tomorrow when I am fresher and have more brain power. Hope you will notice when I am able to implement some of that knowledge.