Simplify

After reading through everyone's resolutions and to-do lists for 2012 I was inspired by one blog to choose a word for this year.  At first I thought it would be Organise, but then I realised
what I really want is to

Everything. To take everything I have and pare it down until I have a representation of what I like, rather than excess amounts of it. To fight through the maze and clutter of my life and find a clear pathway. This involves abandoning my collections and keeping just the absolute-love-love-adore-cannot-part-with-it-stuff. Because I have a lot. of. stuff. And I don't need it all. Books, magazines, records, CDs, paperwork, ornaments, toys, craft stuff, you name it,

I've got it in excess.

This new leaf turned over when I read Corinne Grant's book Lessons in Letting Go: Confessions of a Hoarder. Luckily, I don't keep bouquets of flowers from ten years ago (yikes!), or a scrunchy from when I was 12, but I do hold onto things for a long time. And they just sit. On shelves or in boxes. And like Corinne, I realised that I am hoarding for no good reason.

And I procrastinate. I reeeaaaallllly do. I drraaaaggg things out for as loooonnnng as I can before they have to be done, which has annoyed everyone around me for ages, and now is annoying me. So I want to simplify the processes in things that I do.

I am devoting my year to

A Project A Week

I have made a list of things I need to do to simplify my life and improve it, so the systems work better, and I am going to work on one each week.

I have spent this first week on updating my blogs, by refreshing my profile, blog buttons, and backgrounds, and catching up on
posting my adventures. 

My every day blog

My book blog

My film blog

My teaching blog

 I will be adding mpre posts to my sideline blogs very soon!

 My second project is to simplify my magazine collection down to the bare minimum. (Some of my mags are 10 years old or more!)

 (image from Google, my pile is bigger!)

My sister gave me a gorgeous notebook for Christmas so I am going to use it to journal my achievements for the year with the 52 projects I have named. I won't tell you what they all are yet, because they might swap and change with time limitations, and then I will just feel like a failure!

 I invite you to join me if you like on achieving A Project A Week. Some projects will be big like 'paint the bedroom', and another one may be small like 'sort through books and sell some'. You might want to choose some projects like 'make a dress' , 'sort through the back shed', or 'finish crocheting a granny rug.' I certainly didn't find it hard to come up with 52. Keep in mind you have to be able to do the project while normal life goes on around you. I also included some projects from my workplace.

I'll show you the pages from my journal as I do them.

Let me know in the comments section if you would like to join in! xx

 
You can check out some more Words of the Year
at the Linky Party below: