Confessions of a non-knitter...

I gave away my knitting box.  Everything I had: the needles, the faux wool (because I'm allergic to real wool), even the lovely suitcase-box with a handle and clasp I'd bought at Michael's to put it in. 

I've tried knitting several times in my life.  When young; we learned it in school.  When older: having learned to knit, I found I liked crochet better, set about to make an afghan when I was a post-grad.  I even made a baby-bundler for a friend who was having a baby once.  It was yellow. It was the lumpiest, funniest, badly made baby bundler you ever saw.  I don't remember whose shower it was for; I hope they ultimately forgave me for the gift.  I hope the poor baby never had to wear it.  He'd be the laughingstock of babies.

I had the notion that because I like to sew, I should enjoy knitting.  Then I thought that if I practiced hard enough, and often enough, I might get good at it, and then start to enjoy it.

These things have not happened.

People often knit while watching television.  I do that too.  But then when the show gets interesting, I stop knitting to pay attention.  Or I grimly continue to knit, and feel irritated and edgy about it.  I don't like dividing my attention between two things at once.

So yesterday, in the interests of decluttering, I offered my knitting kit to Sylvie, and she accepted it.  I realized as soon as I mentioned it that I'd been feeling a vague guilt for not knitting, for not being good at knitting, for not finding it relaxing and production and  useful the way so many of my friends do.

No more knitting. No more guilt.  And one step closer to having nothing on top of my dresser.
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From seed to blossom...

A few months ago I walked into a friend's house and thought: this is what I want.

It was a beautiful, peaceful place.  Not elegant, but not shabby, either. Decorated more with taste than money.  What I loved was that nothing was extraneous.  A living room with sofa, chairs, a bit of art; a plant.  Dining room with table and buffet.  Nothing special... but enchanting.

I want this, I thought.

I can do this, I thought.

I haven't done it yet, so it's time to start.

My place isn't a mess - not by my standards.  But I have too much furniture, too many books (is that an oxymoron?), not enough empty places to put things.  This can all be fixed.

Since I like to research projects - and it's a fine form of procrastination - I looked up the subject online.  I attacked it from three angles:

1. Moving out the clutter
2. Making it simple and beautiful, yoga-like and calm
3. Putting my life in order in other ways: saving money, making better use of my time

This is my quest.

There are many blogs and websites on the subject, most of them useful.  I kept coming across the same factors that make the sites a bad fit for me:

1. Sites about how to declutter a large house, assuming the declutterer has a spouse, kids, a garage and a car.  I have none of these things. I have a small one-bedroom apartment and three budgies. 
2. Sites which go too far: the people who live with 100 possessions only, which makes me wonder "is a pair of socks one object or two?" and "how do you deal with paper clips?" One package would be it.  Though of course, if you have no need of paper, you have no need of paper clips.  I have a way to go before I get there.  I want to be minimalist, even Spartan; but not stark.
3. Blogs which are defunct. The information on them is still good, but there's a static quality to them.  I am looking for encouragement, inspiration, a sense of immediacy.
4. Do It Yourself sites that give instructions on how to make all sorts of ingenious things, but which are based on the idea of "having more things with less" while I want to "have fewer things".

So I decided to write about my own process, and how I get there.  The theory and the practice.  The challenges and the (I hope) triumphs. Special bonus challenge: I want to do it without buying anything for the project. Ingenuity is the key: I don't need to spend money to do it.

My goal: to have a clear and beautiful place by Christmas.  "Beautiful" by my own standards.  "Clear" in terms of "free of extraneous things" and "purposeful and elegant".

Can I do it? I plan to prove it.

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