Hoarding and labelling

28 March 2008

Not whoring and ladling, that’s different. I attempted a bit of a spring clean this week. Except, I did it the other day and now I can’t remember what happened. It used to tick me off when Dooce would start a story with “recently” or “yesterday”, I’d be left thinking, “oh great, and NOW you’re telling me?”. But anyway, Lauren was home poorly sick on Wednesday and I narrated to her via email my tales of not wanting to work, but wanting to throw crap away, so they can act as an aide memoire.

I have a “craft drawer” full of tat that I hoard, thinking that it’ll be useful one day. You know, that day I turn into someone else who is actually crafty. I’m not crafty enough to warrant a big drawer full of bits of foam, jars of beads and bits of ribbon. The bits of cardboard can be useful, but that doesn’t mean I have to grab every bit I see.

So, some stuff has been turned out, with – I hope – more to follow. I also turned my attention to the other two drawers and turfed out bendy rollers (how very 1990s) and a heated hair tong thing that never really worked and a few other bits to the charity shop. From the craft drawer I donated my pastels, oil paint set (!) and oil pastels to Mum’s school. It turns out, I’m not an artist and I ~~barely~~ don’t know how to use them.

I was right to check inside the box of the oil paints set. I got it when I was much younger, at a time when my love for marker pens was a passionate one, but my need for them was limited. Thus my use of them would be woefully limited if I didn’t come up with an idea fast. This is where the labelling comes in. Let’s write my name on everything I own! Multiple times! Yeah! And when that’s not appropriate, let’s just write the name of the object onto the object! Yeah!

Craft stuff

And so it came to pass that the oil paints went to Mum’s school without their box, the pastels without their carboard insert, the daler board! stayed with me and the 15″ ruler (mine! mine! mine!) was tucked back into the drawer, a reminder of that innocent time when I used to buy marker pens and ruin all my stuff for the future.