Monday, March 24, 2008

no more boxes

in my living room! Yeah! It has taken 2 months and lots of intermediate steps but we finally got the last of the boxes out of the living room. Not that we don't still have boxes (mostly books now) but they are not piled up in the living room. I can see now how depressing that was for me. I feel like shouting every time I walk through the living room--it is so wonderful!

I was planning to spend the morning replacing the elements in my kiln today with the help of a friend--but at the last minute she had to change our get-together to next Thursday. I have an accumulation of bowls to fire--but really no rush to do so. Some of them are for the Empty Bowls project of the guild which will be held in May. Others are just for playing around with glazes. The studio is working very well for us. It is a pleasant place to be in. Kenny functions very independently there--we are still working on improving his easel set-up but he manages with it as it is. I am beginning to remember where I put things in the studio--takes a while and sometimes lots of searching.

This move has been so arduous that I have a HUGE repulsion against saving anything that I don't have an immediate use for--which is very much against this family's standard-operating-procedure. I got an email from Sarah Susanka's "The Not So Big Life" that really fits the situation:
"The questions we need to ask ourselves today are: 'When do we know we have enough?' and 'What could we do with our lives if we weren't so focused on acquiring more?' Or in my case, 'What could I do with my life if I weren't spending so much time searching for where I put it?'

2 comments:

Ron said...

Hi Gay, I have been thinking about you a lot lately and I'm glad to hear things are going well. Congrats on getting rid of the boxes in the living room. Sarah and I cleaned out the room where her jewelry studio is on Saturday. It had become a catch all during construction and also a place where Perry, our old Lab, slept. It was so wonderful to get rid of stuff and get it back in order.
Hope you get your kiln worked out so you can get those pots fired.

chaetoons said...

Ahem !!! My problem exactly. Can never bear to throw things away as sometime in the future, i just know it will be needed.
What's worse is going to a thrift store where all these little odds n ends are priced right -- and -- buying something that might work for some future project as yet undetermined.
Good luck with your new resolution!
Hugs
Chae