Never throw anything away

I am such a hoarder. Right now I need to have a massive clear out, deal with a spot of life laundry. It's where to start that's the problem.

When my husband left 4 years ago I suddenly had two whole wardrobes and sets of drawers to myself. They're full now. Do I wear all these clothes? Course not. Do I ever get around to getting rid of a few? Nope. Now that I can't actually fit anything else in, perhaps the time has arrived...

Then we could move onto the spare room. The little den that could one day become my studio. Right now it has a bed in which is covered in boxes. These spill onto the floor and out onto the landing. Some have art supplies, some contain items I did get so far as 'clearing' out ... as far as a box in the spare room. I keep thinking I'll take them to a car boot sale. In fact, many items did get to a car boot sale. They just came back again. Trouble is it always rains on the days I pick and I never seem to sell very much. How about I just donate the lot to charity? If not now, when?

There's a large bag of clothes my son has grown out of (not counting the dozen or so boxes in the loft). I've been meaning to put them on ebay for years. Have I? No. Will I? Well... maybe... Some of them are so cute though...

Moving around the house and into the kitchen. Whoops slipped on a bit of paper there. Since when did the floor become a filing cabinet? The paperwork is beginning to resemble a horror movie. Tendrils of torn strips are creeping across my desk, climbing up to my throat... Agggrrrhhhh. And what's this? A VAT return? Oh no... not that... anything but that....

Yup, the weight of domestic responsibility has me in its evil grip... I nearly did something about it last night but I was under the weather and an hour's painting promised to soothe my troubled throat far more than a late night filing session.

Art... Ahh... Yes, now I feel better. In fact, this neatly brings me around to the original point of this post (gosh I do love procrastination). Never throw anything away. That's art I'm talking about. Those portraits that look like Quasimodo, those florals that lie limp on the page... Keep everything and use it again and again. Take this piece. It began life as an acrylic portrait in my pre-Suzi Blu course days. Then I collaged over but the paper wrinkled too much. So I added some tissue for added texture and too much colour. It sat around feeling ignored for a few weeks then a face began to take shape. However, the excess wrinkling turned my beautiful Goddess into an old hag so more collaging was necessary. Some stamping with interesting textures made a mess which became disguised with thick paint scraped on with a palette knife. I've doodled on it now. It's still a mess but I'll keep at it (in fact, I could resist a bit of a play in Photoshop...). There's nothing like a bit of practice and experimentation! Even if I end up cutting it into tiny pieces and using in another assemblage, I'll use it somewhere! I do it all the time. Some of the creations I love the most started out as something else entirely.

This is my excuse for the mess that is my house and I'm sticking to it!