OK Crafters, maybe you have seen my post from the thread on money issues. My questions are this:
-How often do you change mediums or crafting activities?
-How do you balance using the materials versus the tendency to "save"
-Any tips on organization & cleaning? Right now the craft room, office & dining room table are an explosion of materials & projects.
-How do you time budget? This last week I was a little "light" on dishwashing because I wanted to craft instead! How do you find balance?
While some of this is real progress in terms of me not spending all my spare time (and even not-so-spare time) playing computer games, my house has regressed.
Grab a cup of coffee, this is the part pasted from the other thread (may not necessarily need to read even)!
The interesting thing is that the dovetail to overspending ends up being its own form of hoarding. Some of this has most recently come up with *crafting*. I was able to downsize a bunch of clothes, things in the kitchen, but now that the house got clean enough to craft in, I've been going nuts on crafting supplies. I'll post more about this elsewhere because it's currently in my face.
The one thing I find really challenging: it used to be that I "collected" art supplies, but because I had that awful negative self talk thing I wouldn't do any art because I was convinced I would make horrible things and "waste" the supplies.
So learning here how to deal with that voice opened up the door for me to craft and do art again. And I've been doing it! I joined swap-bot and I do a very low / moderate number of swaps and am really enjoying this.
But the reality is that every 4 weeks or so I switch "mediums". In the Fall/Winter of 2009 I was all about crochet. Then I "over-crocheted" and had to rest my arms, so I switched to sewing. Then January 2010 I went nuts on card making. Late February I started beading. Early March I was alllll about mixed media and pulled my acrylic paints out of hibernation. Then right before Easter I did a bunch of needle felting. And now suddenly I'm gaga over envelope making and ATCs (artist trading cards).
Mind you--I'm doing this stuff. It's not just all materials sitting here that I don't use. In some cases I already had the materials, in others I added to it, or I didn't have the materials and began gathering. And just because I'm gaga over ATCs doesn't mean I don't crochet. I crochet on a weekly basis still. I might actually pull the sewing machine out to sew on some of the cards and ATCs because it looks fun.
But the deal is that this stuff adds up and as fun as it is, I can't keep buying more supplies. The other thing I will run into is anxiety that I might "use materials up" and not be able to replace them.
Ugh, any suggestions folks have, I'm all ears.
What I forgot to add: without this group, and without de-squaloring my house, I would not be crafting. Part of what made me finally get back into it was the fact that I knew I either had to craft or unload *all* the materials. And while I did pare down a huge amount, I kept the best things. I can remember in August coming so close to throwing out the acrylic and water color paints, and there was this horrible pang in my heart....and so I kept them.
You'll remember that I was an addict online gamer, so part of this was also "therapeutic" in that when I finally quit gaming, I *needed* to fill that empty time with other activities, and things I was interested in. I'm enjoying letting my interests wander across the different mediums, I'm just not sure I can afford it!
The other thing--I've lived with a lot of self-deprivation, which I don't feel comfortable at this stage blaming on outside circumstances, since I seem to be the common denominator.
But over Spring Break, when my mom was out of town, I was able to use her car to go someplace. I was stunned with our daytrip, it was so wonderful. I also think that somehow I use that overspending as a way to try to somehow fill the void because I feel "deprived" (can't travel because my own car is an unreliable piece of junk), and so I do this instead. What is really sad is that like others have posted, if I wasn't blowing my money on these kinds of things, perhaps I could afford a better car and afford to do more day trips!
Thanks for feedback everyone, appreciate the topic Misc.
So is this why some of the DA folks think that clutter is a symptom of debting?
