{"id":622,"date":"2010-08-05T13:04:51","date_gmt":"2010-08-05T13:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/?p=622"},"modified":"2010-08-05T13:05:32","modified_gmt":"2010-08-05T13:05:32","slug":"simplifying-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/?p=622","title":{"rendered":"Simplifying my life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/13.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-623 alignnone\" title=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/13-e1281012320172.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/13-e1281012320172.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/13-e1281012320172-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This week I&#8217;ve been systematically clearing up and cleaning through the whole house. It&#8217;s a rather surreal experience to clean somewhere and then come back the next day and find it still tidy and as I left it. This is only possible because two of the children and my husband are away. What it all means of course, is that I&#8217;m actually getting somewhere.<\/p>\n<p>The house is clean and I&#8217;m now starting on bookcases and cupboards. I did get slowed down a lot by this one though. It&#8217;s so delightful to sit on the floor and sift through knitting and quilting books that haven&#8217;t seen the light of day for a while. I&#8217;m trying to get rid of things that I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll ever need &#8211; in general, that is&#8230;.but here that was difficult. I know that I will probably never make a Baltimore Album Quilt, but I still can&#8217;t bring myself to get rid of even one of the 5 books I have on the subject.<\/p>\n<p>What I am getting rid of though are a few of the very beautiful &#8216;craft&#8217; books, which contain projects which I would be hard-pushed to spend half an hour on. Do you know the type of books I mean? They always look gorgeous, with fabulous photographs, but the content? Zippo, zilch, nichts&#8230;.nothing. Who writes these books? Who uses them? Or have I just made a mistake and they are supposed to be sitting on a coffee table waiting for non-crafty people to ooh and ah over? They are all books that I have been seduced into buying on Amazon; books that I wouldn&#8217;t have ever handed over good money for if I&#8217;d seen them in the flesh (in the paper?). Books which I know categorically I will never, ever use. They were just a big disappointment, a beautiful one, but a disappointment none the less. So they can go off to the next church book sale and make a little space for me to fill with something a bit more worthwhile. Although looking at this, you&#8217;d have to say that the space is full and I probably have enough projects available to me to last for this lifetime. My husband would at this point take control and tell me that I can only buy a new book if I get rid of an old one. He&#8217;s probably right&#8230;&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;ll plod on. It feels good, all this clean and tidy space. It won&#8217;t last once everyone comes home, but for now I&#8217;m enjoying it. It certainly adds to my feeling of inner zen&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>Helen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week I&#8217;ve been systematically clearing up and cleaning through the whole house. It&#8217;s a rather surreal experience to clean somewhere and then come back the next day and find it still tidy and as I left it. This is only possible because two of the children and my husband are away. What it all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQtrc-a2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":625,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions\/625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}