The Way We Use Our Spaces

Recently I've been wondering whether we really still have too much stuff or whether some of the cluttered feeling in our house comes more from a misuse of our available space and a lack of storage where it's needed.

Hubby, when he's home, spends most of his time between his workshop and his office off the lounge. Which to be honest is a bit of an eyesore with not enough storage space.(see pic below) . 

Did I say, ' a bit of an eyesore?'

I spend my daytime hours when I'm at home either at my desk, which is also in the lounge, or in the kitchen, laundry, or garden. Our current office spaces don't have any real storage. Hubby has a few drawers, otherwise everything's all over his desk and I have files stuck in boxes in a cupboard off the lounge that are a pain to get into when you need something in a hurry and a few art supplies stashed in a drawer in the spare room.

The picture below is of the office space we built for me in a corner of the dining room just after we moved here. Hubby built my desk for me. It had lots of positives like great lighting, lots of space and close to the kitchen for working while keeping an eye on things cooking but unfortunately the cold draft from people going in and out the back door (out of sight to the right of this picture) and the constant disturbances from everyone coming and going decided the fate of this office space. So I ended up moving into a dark, out of the way corner of the lounge for the last year or so. 

Looks great but has too much through traffic and cold drafts in winter.

Another problem has been a lack of linen storage. The previous owners of our house had removed the linen cupboard from the hallway and extended the bathroom into the space. They had then created a cupboard in a corner of the dining room, I suppose to replace the missing linen cupboard, but it's in a really silly place and the door opens over the doorway into the lounge. Blocking traffic flow through and around the main hub of the house. It turns out that they must have built the whole wall between the lounge and dining area as it doesn't show on the original house plans at all and after removing the wallpaper from the wall you can see that that whole section of wall has all new wall linings. Effectively they took an open plan house and partitioned it all off. 

Our problems; 

• We had a cluttered lounge filled with office stuff and overflow from my daughter's room. 
• A large master bedroom space with more floor space and storage than we needed and all the best but unused light.
• My daughter's room with not enough closet space or floor space to play and so her things were spilling into other areas of our house. 
• We also had no linen cupboard as the people that lived here before us thought it was a good idea to take it out and extend the bathroom and then partition up the lounge and dining areas and squeeze a cupboard into a random corner. 
• No proper storage for office related things and a messy office just by the front door and my desk in a dark corner.

Our solutions;

• Hubby and I decided to swap bedrooms with our daughter. We gave up the master bedroom to her as she has far more need of the storage and floor space in her room for playing and dancing with her friends than we needed just for sleeping. We had the largest room with the best natural light streaming though huge windows and yet the room remained empty most of the day. All that light and space was wasted on us. Now she has storage for all her books and toys/board games. She has plenty of floor space to spread out with her friends and the low winter sunlight in the room makes it a sun filled, warm, pleasant place to be for her. She loves it!
• We moved our bed into the spare room. It has ample space for us and a great large wardrobe so we haven't lost any space. It's on the South West side of the house so we don't get much sunlight until the late afternoon but that's fine because we're rarely in there during the day.
• Our daughter's bedroom we've turned into an office, it only has a single wardrobe so we've converted that into the linen cupboard. All the towels and spare sheets are in there and it's close to all the bedrooms and the bathroom where we need it.
• The office space is large enough to fit two desks and some shelving with room to spare, so all the files I have stashed in boxes will have homes as soon as I pick up another shelf unit. That also means that Hubby's desk can be cleaned up.
• Which leaves the lounge. I haven't taken a picture in there yet as I've got a large pile of things to be donated growing in there at the moment. I can also say that we've moved our home library in there too (it was in the spare room before) and it's so much better having the books near a comfy, well lit, place to read them.

So it looks like we had a mixture of problems. Some of it was due to too much stuff but a good bit more of it was due to us not thinking about how we could better make use of our available space.

The master bedroom doesn't have to be used just for the adults. I'm not sure where the idea came from that we have to have the largest bedroom in the house but it seems a waste of space to me. If I want some quiet time I can go to my room, lie on the bed and read or listen to music. I don't need loads of space for that. I've also discovered that if the kids have a nice space of their own to be in, they're more likely to spend their time in it. So the lounge is then quiet anyway. 

If you have a spare room you can turn into your office, do it!

This removes all the work thoughts to that room, where you can walk out, shut the door and leave them when you need a break. Having the office in the lounge just encourages working at stupid o'clock or when you should be having family time.

Storage is best placed where you need it. Linens and towels near the rooms you use them in. Files and office stuff in the office. Your home library is best placed near a comfy chair and a window for good light to read by.

Major changes at Zazzle

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, I've been very busy working on my three Zazzle stores.

My main store Wildmacnz which houses my clothing, household goods, greeting cards and poster designs etc. 

My business store Wildmacnzbusiness which is where I house all my business card, flexi magnets and other business related designs.

And lastly my Electronics store Wildmacnzelectronics which houses all my phone, laptop and tablet case designs.

I hadn't looked at any of these stores in nearly three years. With all the stuff going on in my personal life with my husband being laid off and then us moving house and town, I just ignored them and as is usually the way, life kept happening and things changed without me realizing. One of the major changes being that Zazzle had hidden a lot of my designs that hadn't sold, so they are no longer visible to the public. I never noticed anything as my sales were getting better over time so I just thought everything was as I left it. 

What a big surprise! But actually it was a good surprise. It took some of the pressure off me. How you ask?

Well, for a long while before my personal life took a sudden left turn, I was creating designs and then putting them on as many products as I could, that suited the design. I never used quick create, I didn't like the idea of my designs going on everything at once especially when not every image is suitable for every product. When new products were released I put all the existing images on the new products if they suited, however this didn't leave me much time for creating new designs. Just keeping up with the old ones was becoming a full time job! I started to slip further and further behind. It felt like I was trying to run up a downwards traveling escalator that was speeding up.  In short I put too much pressure on myself to create a large store, thinking that this was what I needed to do to get seen in the marketplace and get sales. I was wrong. My sales picked up even though a lot of my products were no longer visible for sale in the marketplace. I was focusing on the wrong things.

This reshuffle from Zazzle eased the pressure off me to create more and more and made me look at fine tuning what I already have. It allowed me to take a step back and really think about:

1. What I really wanted to sell in my stores. 
2. What I wanted my stores to look and feel like to a customer
3. What I enjoyed creating. I hate making some products so why am I making them?
4. Why have some of my products not sold? Wrong design for the product? Have I aimed at the wrong audience for a certain design? Is the design just old and outdated now, especially designs with the date on them?
5. Keywording and descriptions. Are they letting me down?
6. What have I sold? This was an eye opener. Some of the designs that hadn't sold were on on products I hated making. Could this be related? 
7. Do I really need three stores or should I condense down into just one or two?

These are all questions I've been slowly working through for the last few weeks as I delete crap/outdated designs and products I hate making, that haven't sold anyway, and rework my keywords and descriptions on designs I want to keep. It's a painstaking process, but one I'm very happy to do. I can see light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a lightweight streamlined store filled only with designs and products that I'm happy to make and are more likely to sell well.

This is my most popular tie. My watercolor painted scooter design on a yellow background. This scooter is also available on other colored backgrounds. My scooter sells well on multiple products so it makes the cut and will stay in my newly designed store.

The top picture is of a new wrapping paper design I created last week. Now I have time to create new designs which is the part I really enjoy doing. 

I love another new feature that Zazzle introduced whilst I wasn't looking, 

Collections. (see pic above)

Collections are a great way to showcase groups of products either by theme, product or by grouping useful things together, such as, matching birthday cards, gift wrap and envelopes for example, or matching designed cups and plates. I've only just started using this feature but I can see loads of possibilities with it.

All in all, although Zazzle has created lots of new work for me, I welcome the changes as a new beginning for my stores. As I try to simplify other areas of my life, be it creative or home life, it makes perfect sense for me to simplify my stores too. 

I hope you may find this post useful if you have a Zazzle store that you haven't looked at in a while. You may be surprised with the changes. It can be a shock, but I think it's good to take a step back from time to time and reassess what it is you really want to accomplish. Sometimes it's hard to see the wood for the trees.

Have a great week :) 

Week 5 of 365 Challenge. Texture week.

Next week is Numbers week and I'm quite looking forward to getting away from the house and the redecorating and getting out to look for numbers. Roughly the last 3 weeks has been spent working on redecorating our house. We'd still be at it but we ran out of paint and it seems like a good time for a break. I was starting to taste the paint in the last couple of days, yuck. 

What a difference a coat of paint makes to the look and feel of a room! My daughter's room before and after.

The toy room/spare room before and after.

We've also repainted the downstairs spare room for my son and also the upstairs hallway. All of them were covered with an ugly brown wallpaper that must be from at least the 80's. It wasn't vinyl and was in good nick so we've painted over it all. Even the ceilings were yellowed with age. All part of buying an old house that needs work, I guess. At least it only requires cosmetic not structural work. That will come much later when the kitchen and bathrooms get done.

This week though is all about Spring cleaning and having another decluttering session. 

Have a great week!

Big Life Changes

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, 

move with it, and join the dance ~ Alan Watts

I can't believe how fast time has flown by since I last posted here in November 2013! Such a lot has happened in that time but I'm very glad it all has.

Shortly after my last blog post my husband was told that the company he had worked for, for the last 20 years was being sold. We were okay with that as it had been sold a couple of times before. However this time turned out to be different. Early in 2014 the company was sold to a group that only wanted the recipes and brands but not the buildings or the 120 odd people that worked there. My husband was okay with that at the time. He felt he was stuck in a rut and fancied a change of career. A couple of months down the road though it started to get difficult when Hubby still hadn't found work and we then decided to sell our house and move into the city as the commute from our small town was becoming too expensive. So we tided up our house and put some things in storage to make the house look more saleable and waited and house hunted. I was kind of excited, I'm a Gemini and love change, so the prospect of pastures new invigorated me. A few months later though the strain of keeping the house tidy for viewings and worrying about finding somewhere else to live for the 6 of us became very stressful. I couldn't focus on my art and I lost all enthusiasm for photography. I had a creative death. Nothing interested me and I just couldn't rekindle my creativity. So all posts stopped here. Thankfully Hubby had found work but he'd dropped a third of his pay in the process which made the new longer commute seem even more expensive. We needed to move and fast! As for house hunting, I hated it! The houses we liked sold before we could do anything and ours sat waiting for the right buyer. Looking back now I can see that I was depressed. I couldn't see a way forward at all but it worked out in the end. Our house finally sold and we moved on Halloween.

In the end we didn't buy in the city, we found a nice house in a bigger town with just a short drive to Hubby's new work. The house is old and needs updating but we've made a start and it's now feeling like home. The pic above is of my new work space in my dining room. The table we bought cheap and sanded it down and refinished it.

The corner desk was built by hubby and finished by me. I love it! I have loads of light but without direct sunlight shining on my workspace.

On the creative front, I bought a new camera, an Olympus OMD EM5 and I've started to come out of my creative slump. It has taken a while though. To further my recovery I've started a 365 photo project with a new theme each week. I'm in my 4th week and things are looking up.

A bright new future

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful ~ William Morris

The image above was one of the break through moments I had recently while working in my pocket journal. I've been struggling for years with clutter and over the last couple of years I have really started to look at 'stuff ' in a different way. It took a long time though for me to realize that my stuff owned me more than I owned it. This may sound strange but I've found it to be true. My stuff rules my life. I have to pay for it when I buy it, then spend lots of time and/or money looking after it, and even then it's not finished with. I may have to pay someone to take it away, or spend time listing it to sell, or spend money dumping it or donating it. Then there is the inherited stuff that has the emotional ties to it, you can't just dump 'great whoevers' stuff can you? Not to mention wedding keepsakes, birthday presents and other gifts etc. Add being an artist into that mix and suddenly you have piles of art and craft stuff added to the house as well.  Don't get me wrong I'm not a hoarder like you see on tv with stuff piled to the ceiling and no room to walk around. We can see the floor in every room but the cupboards are full and there are lots of books, toys, art supplies etc stored in extra storage spaces around the house. The kitchen cupboards and drawers are full and I won't even mention the garage/workshop area.

I've had enough of clutter and I want to make some big changes starting from today. So from now on my blog is going to be a bit more of a mixture of topics. I hope you don't mind. I want this blog to be a record of my art learning and decluttering along with sharing some links to other interesting art and minimalism blogs and any tips and tricks I find along the way. I really enjoy these minimalism blogs Becoming Minimalist and Zen Habits and also Miss Minimalist and the art blogs that are listed here in the side bar in my favorite bloggers list. There are loads of other great blogs too but I haven't yet found an artist minimalist blog. I guess it is a hard niche to fill because you have this urge to declutter things but it can be hard not to collect things to add into your mixed media or other art works. I'm not sure if this will even work but I'm willing to give it a try. 

So I think with new beginnings should come a new blog title. Say goodbye to "My first artist's journal and blog" and say hello to "Simple Life, Simple Art"

Have a great week :)