Accomplishments

I have accomplished much this afternoon

and

am finally able to relax

and

enjoy a bite to eat before a nice warm soak.

There were boxes of small items to be cleaned and sorted and inventoried and priced.

There was laundry to be washed, folded, hung, ironed and put away.

There was vacuuming to be done.

Dusting away some cobwebs.

There was the dishwasher to run and dishes to be replaced in the cupboards.

Just the ordinary household and work chores that we all have to cope with.

It's been a pleasant time of tidying and rearranging some pretties that I had been taking for granted.

I think I have a sweet little nest

and

am living the good life.

I enjoy refreshing my bookcase displays and counter top collections

and

organizing my closet

for the coming week.

Now

home made soup

 and good bread

and

a cup of tea.

Time to pick up my book and nestle in with my late supper

and enjoy the beauty of all that has been accomplished.

I'm so easily pleased with small touches!

Filing And Sorting and Shovelling Oh My

It's the first day of February, 

and I'm catching up on filing and paperwork.

I'm living the 

GOOD LIFE!

There is always

 too much

 of that filing and sorting and shredding and organizing

and

never quite enough time to do it properly.

It's not my favorite thing to do

by far

and so I tend to let it pile up until the pile topples over

and

I fear that if anyone sees the messiness of stacked and toppled receipts and invoices and business cards and whatever,

 they will think I'm one of those hoarder types who needs to have 

an

intervention.

I can see it now . . . 

they will shake their heads and say,

"we 

always

  knew

she was a little strange

and now we have the evidence

poor dear . . . 

buried alive under

  several tons

of crumpled receipts, paperclips, manila file folders and notes to self!"

Mind you -

this debris is essential to my business

as any antique dealer will confirm.

We faithfully keep exacting records of each item purchased

and

add to that

 receipts

 for the supplies we buy 

to clean, polish, restore, repaint and refurbish every little piece.

Why the paper towels alone run into the thousands of dollars!

There are mileage record books and checkbooks and all those business cards of hundreds of people who wish to

 sell to us,

 or paint for us,

 or convince us to advertise with them.

We 

dare not

discard anything so vital to our potential success!

There are paint sample cards

(oh my . . . I have thousands of those),

and even tiny chips of actual paint we have peeled off some old thing

 to save for reference

 for that day when we 

NEED

 that beautiful shade of robins' egg blue.

It's a little embarrassing!

That's just the tip of the iceberg

but if I blog any longer

I'll lose daylight hours

and

tomorrow it's back to the shop

and whatever paper is still drifting through the air will once again settle in odd places around the house.

So

if you ring the doorbell and I don't answer,

please

please just give me time to claw my way out from under my mountain

and run to greet you!

Don't call the authorities.

Happy filing!

Botanical prints today are courtesy of The Graphics Fairy @  www.thegraphicsfairy.com

Joy is partner/owner at

Dwell Antiques & Home http://www.facebook.com/dwellantiques

Greenwood Village Colorado

303-795-3454

Continuing The Organizational Quest!

There has been some progress on the organizing front in the little workspace I think of as my studio.

Truth be told,

I must use this niche for creative space,

office space,

and

" hide the piles until the company is gone"

space.

(Oh, you know what I'm talking about . . . 

don't even pretend you dont . . .)

I'm toting out boxes of half finished projects and broken items I told myself I would fix.

I've got bags and boxes of items ready for donation

and a couple of trash bags

as well . . . 

and a rather sizable stack of papers for shredding . . .

Where does this paper originate?

I have called and written and emailed every organization that sends me mail,

demanding to be removed from their mailing lists

and email lists.

(There are limits to what I can endure!)

I have organized and discarded magazines.

I have rearranged some furniture.

I have purged my bulletin board.

I feel so virtuous!

I'm rounding up

 MORE 

vintage jars 

to hold all the little messy bits of office supplies 

and crafty components!

There is such a sense of accomplishment

in such a small change.

Do I hear applause????

Organizing My Life

Well, it's 4 degrees outside my back door this morning, with a high of 10 degrees forecast.

I'm guessing this would be a great day to reorganize my creative space.

I believe I'll tear it part and move some furniture around

and create a more efficient environment.

There should be more walking room in this area

and fewer piles to have to jump over and skirt around.
I'm in here every day,
and
so much seems to pile up.

More defined spaces for my buttons and book pages

and strings and clothespins and all those yummy pieces of life I love to create with.

Hmmmm . . . 

This could take some time . . . 

I believe I'll begin with a cup of coffee.

Organization

I've been on a steady and determined pathway to becoming more organized in life. Those of you who buy for your antiques shops will laugh at this, because you all know the futility of trying to be neat and orderly when the very nature of our business is junque, junque-ing and accumulating more junque. There is a native wisdom that says, "never throw anything away, because you'll need it one of these days". We live by this adage! We collect old hardware, knobs, rusty nails, spigot handles, drawer pulls, buttons, pieces of wire and small chips of wood that we just KNOW came off of something we'll be repairing next week . . . Then there are the receipts . . . millions of tiny little receipts, and the notes to self about the things we purchased without receipts, at flea markets and yard sales, and traded from one another. (Or the things we scoffed from the junk pile, or out of the dumpster.) There are the maps and business cards and brochures and usually 4 or 5 napkins with undecipherable reminders about resources and estate sales and barn sales and seat caners and formulas for the best homemade wood restorers . I keep a great big envelope for paint colors I like, but I can never find it to add my latest 50 paint chips.

My motto has become:

"NAIL IT TO THE WALL!

We save phone numbers with no names and names with no phone numbers, and email addresses and blog spot addresses and info on antique mall dealers who have been out of business for 3 years.

Best of all,

(you know you do this . . . ),

we save magazines and magazine pages and photos clipped from magazine pages, for inspiration. We accumulate the nicest journals and photo albums in which to paste these magazine clippings. (If we could ever find the time, or the photo albums when we want them.) That's just the first layer. Then there are the sugar bowl lids missing sugar bowls, and the butter dishes for which we expect to locate lids, and the single pillowcases of which we're positive we bought a matched pair. There are glue guns without glue sticks, and the large cache of glue sticks which do not fit the glue gun we have in hand. (They no doubt fit the other glue gun - the one we thought was right in the tool drawer, but is missing at the moment . . . ) I DO attempt to organize in a cute way - just in case some antiques dealer friend might stop by and see my accumulation of important stuff. Tools of the trade, you know . . . There are antique show fliers that we keep, so we don't miss next year's show - and company names torn from product packaging so we can order from them, only we've no longer any idea why we wanted the product to begin with. There are books and how to manuals. Usually a hundred or so, mostly out of date and irrelevant at this point. There is a huge assortment of cute price tags and business cards we keep for inspiration. And trust me -they were a wonderful inspiration when we first saw them, and no doubt will be again, if we can put our hands on them. There is string and raffia and glue, (usually 5 different types of specialty glue), and felt pads and sliders to move big pieces of furniture. There are numerous types of gloves, each specific to some task. I save every piece of antique looking paper . . . . sheet music . . . . ledger paper . . . . etc.

I might need it some day - you know I might!

I'm into clock parts. Faces, gears, hands. They must be sorted and stored in antique blue Mason jars, according to size and type. I'm into buttons. They take hours to sort through. Especially when you buy in bulk. Brother Dearest once travelled with me on a buying trip, and helped me count out 5,000 white and cream and ivory antique buttons, from a whiskey barrel full of all different colored buttons. These were eventually washed, dried and sorted by age, packaged and labeled and priced. These things are important and take time. They also take up space for weeks, all over the little house, while they're being prepared for the shop. Honestly, no matter how hard I work at it, there will never be a truly organized system of running this type business from a small house. The important, (and easier thing), is to

only have friends who are also in the business,

so they will understand when they see your overabundance of important things and your particular style of disorganization, and not have you committed.

If you do choose to have friends who have never been addicted antiques dealers for 20 or 30 years, don't invite them over. Just take them

out to dinner,

and claim your house is being fumigated . . . or painted.

(Again.)

We know

that we're incredibly creative and busy people

who have more important things to do than fuss over

every little thing being in it's proper place.

We'd rather shop!