Messy excess + the desire to create.

Excess.
Much nicer word than what I’ve been using when I can’t find what I’m looking for. I, too, lived in Europe for a couple of years and traveled a lot. When traveling by Eurail for weeks, we lived out of backpacks and how I love the simplicity of managing those few items. You can concentrate on the people, the experience. When we moved back, I even bought a smaller house, so I wouldn’t be caught in the trap of a big house, filled with stuff to clean and manage; thereby, becoming a slave to materialistic things. But, now, here I am in a cramped house filled with excess. Thanks, Ali, for the reminder. It’s your new perspective that I needed to get back on track.

a good and inspirational post Ali, and if YOU can find the time to deal with your excess than certainly I can too! right? I think I would have to tackle every area of our home! thank-you your words have hit home with me today :)

Oh, so true. Unbelievably (sp?) true. Espeically with scrapbooking stuff. How much do I want all the cool stuff out there. And then I never use it. Either I want to "save" it or just never use it. What's the point in "saving" it? For what? As I get older (I'm only 28)I realize I want things to be USED!! Not admired from a distance, but used and appreicated. Who cares if things don't last forever? Memories do. Sit on the handmade quilt, each off the good china, scratch the table - because they are memories. Memories last, things do not. And I'm all about getting rid of things that do not make our lives better.

you are a wise girl..thanks for bringing up good topics & helping me remember what's important...
more 'new' trucks from garage sales= not important
teaching Q to appreciate the trucks he has & getting down & playing with him=very important
:)

gosh, i was purging all weekend and then i see this post. it is hard. we don't have a lot of extra money is it's easy not to buy things that we don't need. i just got a lot of stuff out of the house. one question i always have about "giving stuff away" is that you bring it to goodwill or that type of store and then you see people who really don't need the stuff taking it. i feel like there isn't a place near where i live that you can really feel ok about people in need getting the stuff. our transfer station (the dump) as a little store in it and that's where we bring a lot of our stuff, so it's easy to get the stuff out of the house.
my daughter's birthday is coming up and she doesn't need anything, then to think about the holidays and all of the unnecessary gift buying that goes on.

so feeling you here! I am in the process of a whole house purge! Can't wait to get rid of so much!

AMEN Ali!!

Ali,
Don't sweat these two seemingly conflicting instincts. They are part of what makes you such an excellent designer. Your joy of collecting things new keeps your pages fresh, current, never stale while your desire for a more spartan, organized life saves your layouts from the clutter and overkill which most of us to succumb to. Seems like these phases you go through are the solution to achieving balance. At least in your art. ;-)

Ali- I'm a 'Less-is-More' kind of gal. My friends don't quite understand it, but I don't see the need for excess.
Simple. Organized. Relaxed.
hugs~
Peg

Wow! This has been such an awesome topic! I have also noticed that I tend to buy more when I am not happy with my life. It's like I'm trying to bring me some happiness by buying more. And it does make me happy for a brief moment, but then when I'm trying to find a place to store yet something else, it frustrates me. I don't know why I want to collect so much! If I had less, I could spend my time actually creating instead of just trying to organize my stash!

I've discovered how refreshing my latest studio is---my oldest daughter just moved out this summer to her first apt. and I was able to move the pastel part of my art studio down to her now empty room. The watercolor part is still upstairs in the small dormer room with most of my other art supplies, my scrap/computer area is in our "parlor" but the pastel room has just my plein air bag/cart, two rolling tables my husband created from the previous computer table, pastel paper, and almost finished pastel paintings taped to the walls. My husband doesn't understand why I haven't moved more things into the room---why are the shelves still bare? Why don't I move my books down? I think I like having one room that's practically naked and echos still---it's a visual reprieve from the rest of the cluttery house! We're about to remodel the dining room which means we need to clear everything out of there---purge time---your post and all these comments are great incentive to work on the rest of the house, eliminating excess :).

EBay it, sister.

You hit the nail right on the head Ali. I really get into this mode of thinking when in relation to the rest of the world, and the simple life that is mandatory and not optional. Now convincing my family that less is more is a different story.

I always think I need all of my excess for a rainy day or "when the time is right"...Amazingly though, when I do let go of excess, I feel so light. We do not need piles of clutter bogging us down. As artists we must move forward and this is difficult to do when we have all of this unwanted excess is in our lives and studios.

Hi Ali,
this is so fitting I am in process of reorganizing my studio/guest/library room.I often felt that my need for excess in my life roots itself in the fear of not having enough. Than I would also justify that in order for my creative juices to flow I need to have things askew, because heavens know all great artists had chaos and disarray in their life! It is a process for me and find that the more stressed, hurried, inadequate feelings the messy I get. I gave up perfection after a couple of bouts of feeling broken and on the verge of losing it all. So I have allowed myself to be messy or excessive. But I always go back to wanting organization and tidiness and less.
I know it is a freedom of less is best that is comforting.

My mom always says: make it do, use it up or do without! (Not sure where it comes from, but the older I get, I find I am able to get by with less... Love Claire (from South Africa)

Hi Ali, I have been thinking about thtis post of yours for quite a while now. I wanted to respond to it since this is a hot topic for me, but there are so many ways I could go, so I've just been sitting on it.
I think, for you, there is a difficulty bc as you have posted before, you are an artist, you are very visually oriented, and you get inspired by "stuff". By things. You like to shop. It makes you happy or gives you comfort or is entertaining whatever. I always picture you as one of the ancient hunters/gatherers, looking around the internet or the scrapbook store or Borders or the mall, always on the lookout for nourishment and collecting treasures. :-)
At the same time, in reading your blog, I see more than occassionally a struggle to "not be that way", sometimes described as too much clutter or excess, sometimes described as struggling to get a handle on spending habits.
But it is what it is. You are how you are. I know that having 2 sides of yourself pulling at each other can really be maddening. I feel it myself (in other areas). The 2 sides seems to be non-compatible, and yet, there they both are. It's impossible to suppress or destroy either side, so somehow they have got to be integrated with each other. This is an issue many people struggle with, maybe in the same area as you, maybe in others. I know I do and have. In a couple areas i have been successful but there are some where I still struggle mightily.
I was watching Oprah last week and she had a show where she said something I have always believed, but in one of her famous Oprah soundbites. She was actually talking about spending, not necessarily owning excess, but to me they are related. She said she always thinks that people who buy too much do so bc they feel "less than." To me, I have always believed this is more a spiritual issue, than a space or financial issue. So that resonated with me.
It would be hard for me to say "that is your issue" bc here at least, you always come across as a very confident and fulfilled person. Obviously we all have our insecurities and imperfections, but I haven't really seen you talking about liking to buy things bc you are feeling sad or lonely or empty, more bc you are excited visually by the things there are out there. But it's something to reflect upon anyway.
On a related note, there is a theologian and I cannot recall right now for sure who it was -- I want to say Michael Himes [he is at Boston College] who has what is called the donut hole theory. It goes something like this -- we are all like donuts. Our outer selves are like the donut -- the matter, the emotions, the memories, ego, id, appearance, etc. That is the finite part of us. In our center is the donut hole. That hole is infinite, and it is there as a place for the Infinite [however you would describe it for yourself] to reside.
Since that hole is infinite, it can never be filled with the finite. I look around me and I see people in our society always trying to stuff things in that hole -- relationships and children as well as buying things... overeating ... too much computer/TV/etc time ...the ever present drama drama of life or 2peas or whatever.... and how many moms claim as a badge of honor that they are so "busy busy busy" frantic with appointments and responsibility? Stuff like that. And there are the bigger ones -- money, power, fame. Look how many people will do ANYTHING to be famous, for example.
No time to think. Afraid of Silence. Afraid of Being. Afraid of what might come up out of the Depths if we just SIT. Always running away, always entertaining ourselves, 125,934 songs on the iPod always playing and 345 DVDs to watch and 12084843498 websites to read and click on, and double and triple booking ourselves running around.
But what Himes wrote is that no matter how much we shove in the hole, it will never be enough, because what we put in there is always finite. And the hole is Infinite. And the only thing you can put in there to keep from feeling the hollowness of the donut hole is the Infinite itself. No matter how you fill it, it never seems like it's enough, because it really is not.
So that is how this issue plays out for me in my life. I am always catching myself trying to come up with finite solutions to a problem which at it's base, means I just need to Sit. Be. Hear the Silence. See what is there. Lots of times I'd much rather eat a hot fudge sundae.
Good luck to you on this journey.

A friend of mine just posted a great article on this whole issue in her blog. Here are some links from the article:
a performance artist protests against fashion consumerism by making a brown dress and wearing it every single day for a year:
http://www.littlebrowndress.com/brown%20dress%20archive%20home.htm
a woman who wrote a book on a whole she went without shopping or spending on anything but necessitities
http://shopping.msn.com/prices/shp/?itemId=83157143,ptnrId=18,ptnrData=24001
Here's the article she posted:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney/GetOffTheSpendingTreadmill.aspx

Globaleducationcounsel.org – We offer specialized courses, coaching and counseling for gre, gmat, ielts, toefl, cet, sat, snap, study abroad, pune, india, international english language testing system, test of english as a foreign language, scholastic aptitude test , common entrance test, symbiosis national aptitude test.
http://www.globaleducationcounsel.org/coaching/graduate-record-examination.htm
http://www.globaleducationcounsel.org/study-in-united-states/scholarships.htm
http://www.globaleducationcounsel.org/study-in-united-states/career-opportunities.htm