On Order

I've been on a cleaning kick lately... not the usual like the bathrooms and kitchen but the BIG stuff... the GARAGE and the JUNK drawers.  Stuff that hasn't been touched in years.  I took on the garage last week on a day off (took two days to complete.)  Peter came home to me in full-on "git 'er done" mode so he had no choice but to help out.  After we dug through stuff and sorted and tossed away lots of junk, we got huge shelves from Home Depot for storing the "keepers."  I ended up taking a load to Good Will and we took all the old paint to the recycling place.  Peter likes the new/improved space... he especially enjoys having more room to work on his (three) motorcycles and I like having more room for getting in and out of my car.  We've always been able to get both cars and the motorcycles in the garage... so I suppose it wasn't THAT bad... but now there is a bit more order in the former chaos.

Garage, after

I regularly straighten the beady place... I want to call it a studio but resist calling my space that, due to my inability to say I'm an artist (did I just write that?) and artist's have studios.   I'm not the best at picking up after every project (is anyone good at this?) but I do enjoy organizing the space when the mood strikes.  I love getting all the tiny beads separated and back in their tubular homes.  My little shovels and triangle thingies remind of doll accessaries and Monopoly game pieces.  They're tiny and feel cool in my fingers as I move the bitty instruments over the velvet pad in the beading tray, sorting, moving, sorting, tossing.  The beads grab onto the velvet and they all line right up, like first graders on their way to recess (there's always a straggler.)  It's been a while since I've taken charge of my beads.  Having several trays worth of leftovers,  last week I started to create some order out of chaos.  Then I got ideas about moving things around.  There were unused bookcases from the newly cleaned garage that needed a home, so I brought one into the beady space... I don't know if it will stay.  The ordering is still in progress... embarrassing as it is, here's before:

Beady Place, before

Now all this begs the question... what about order in my life?  Where are those places that need to be dug out and de-junked?  Work has been stressful.  Enough said.  Remember that Calgon-Take-Me-Away commercial?  I feel that beads and the creative process take me away... to a Zen place... a peaceful, creative, inspiring place!  I think better when I've taken time to bead... it's like exercise that way (except I don't like exercising until AFTER the work out)... I like, no LOVE the whole beady process... finding beads, figuring out patterns, and colors, colors, colors... love, love, love.  This week I shall bead every night!!  For fitness!  For the possibility of order in the midst of chaos...