I finally shook off my perfectionism and got a group set up! We'll be able to share our goals and plans and dreams and successes and frustrations and all the things involved in creating the habitat we want to live in. And no, we do not have to go all Marie Kondo about it! This is going to be all about finding what works for what we want and need so we can not only tidy or organize or decorate but also keep it going.
The group is on Facebook. It's called Tidy Your Way. I know I really need some friends to help me get going on house stuff and keep going with it. If you'd like to get some support like that, too, come join me. I think we can make some changes and get closer to how we want our homes to be.
Some of my spaces that need work because they're stressing me out(and this isn't the worst of it, to be honest)
I've had this idea for a while. But I did the thing I'm always telling students and clients to avoid--I thought it had to be perfect before I did anything with it. So what's the thing? It's how our physical surroundings affect everything in our lives including our creativity.
I'm pretty sure I've touched on this in a few other posts, but I want to dive into this topic while also diving in to making my spaces someplace where I want to spend time. I took studio "before" pictures in the spring (I'll share those in another post) when I decided I really want to make doing this work A Thing. And then I thought I had to figure out how to do it all and organize and clean it all and get it all organized and beautiful and worthy of a full set of Instagram photos.
That's not how big projects like this work, especially not when you're trying to reset a lifetime of habits and thought patterns. Which I am trying to do because I've always been messy. It's just that when I was a kid (and by that I mean all the way through college), a couple of times a year my cousins would come over, and we'd have a huge cleaning day. They would keep me from getting too sidetracked by all the cool things I'd find that I'd forgotten about. My play room or bedroom would get cleaned and look and feel wonderful, and then my mom would feed us dinner or take us out to eat.
My cousins live 2,200 miles away now. And I live with another messy person (who is worse than I am if I do say so myself!). And I'm in dire straits. And the messy (sometimes downright dirty!) spaces around me have been affecting everything in my life for years now. But I kept trying to make cleaning and decluttering and organizing secondary. Okay, probably tertiary. Definitely not enough of a priority. I have been avoiding admitting to myself that not having spaces I love to be in, being surrounded by mess and squalor, is keeping me stuck. I'm not getting anything done because I don't like to look up, look around me, take in my surroundings. And I can't find my things when I want to do a project. It's a mess all around.
In case you're wondering, I'm not telling you this because I want sympathy. I am telling you this because I want to make big changes, and I do best when I know I have an audience checking on my progress. I'm going to launch a creative cleanup project, and I'm going to blog about it, and I"m wondering if anyone wants to do this, too? Company to share goals and successes with and get cheers and support from is a great way to do something like this. So, anyone want to get in on this making our spaces better thing?
Drop me a note in the comments or over on my Facebook page and let's create the spaces we deserve to live in. We can do this, and I think we can do it better together.
