Decluttering my Life

As I browse Pinterest, I seem to find a lot of links to other blogs that involve decluttering and/or organizing your closet, kitchen, bedroom, LIFE, etc...And they are always from these organizing gurus that have been at it for quite sometime and really know what they are doing. I love be organized and love to shed my crap, but really...sometimes it really just seems almost impossible b/c where the heck to you really start to declutter and take back your life. In the age that we live in, we just have stuff. We have stuff in drawers and stuff on our floors. Stuff here and stuff there. We just have a bunch of useless stuff, and if you are like me, you want to just throw it all away and start over. Doesn't that get expensive though? Don't you just end up sometimes buying the same thing that you just threw out!?! Decluttering is hard, time-consuming and not very practical for day to day living b/c you have better things to do than take time to just go through your crap.

We move a lot so I have found that we don't have just a bunch of useless stuff, but we have enough to be a little irritating. Our homes aren't always the biggest so there hasn't been a lot of room to put, well, anything. We have a few big pieces of furniture, but we aren't decked out. We have a couch, a dining room table and 3 beds. Everything else is just throw away crap/furniture that will go elsewhere when it comes time to move again. But as I really start to look around, I find that I have accumulated more than I thought. We still have full boxes out in the shed of things that I need, just not right now. When you don't know when or where you are going next, it's just pointless to unpack everything you own. Unpack the things that you use day to day and that will work.

I should have taken a before picture of the shed, but I was too anxious to get in there so here is the after!

Nice and neat right?? Trust me...It wasn't like that yesterday. Here is my get rid box(es)

No matter what, I am getting rid of the stuff in these boxes. I don't care if I have to donate them or just throw it all away. I don't NEED this stuff. 

So there you go. Day 1 of decluttering! Have a happy Tuesday :)

The Shower Curtain

Ok, so one more post for the night and then I am done. I have been putting off this particular for whatever reason, I don't really know, but here it goes. I am not an expert sewer, but I have learned in my craft how to do things and how to do them well. The more I practice, the better I get. My first project was an easter basket for my kids. Something small and easy. I am not one to tell others that they can't do something, but oh man! Did I witness a disaster of a sewing job that I did end up fixing. A lady had taken on the task of sewing a shower curtain that had a chevron pattern that hew customer wanted to match up perfect. That right there was a job! Here is the before...

Now, if you have an eye for mistakes, you should see where they are. The chevron isn't matching at all and the bottom is way uneven. That's not even the worse part because that could be fixed.

Whoever thought that this was an acceptable button hole was sadly mistaken.

I had to take the whole thing apart and start from scratch. Just taking it apart took a little over an hour. I got in a full episode of Supernatural so that will tell you that it takes time and effort and even more to fix something that should have been done right the first time. After I got the whole thing disassembled, I was a little nervous about the butchered holes on the corners and the uneven pattern. I was given an extra long piece of fabric that was cut off to finish off the hack job. If that gives you any kind of clues, the seam wasn't even in the middle of the curtain. Ugh!

(you have to know that I was doing this out of a favor to a very good friend of mine or I would have charged a lot more to do this job)

So the first thing that I had to do was pin, pin and more pinning.

Can you tell where my seam is? I sure hope not! I topstitched the seam just to make sure that I got it perfect. My edging foot is the bomb! Just sayin.

I did that to both sides along with cutting off the excess where the hacked button holes were. I was so happy that it turned out!

As you can see, I don't have a ton of room. I work with what I have. My friend wanted to see what I had done so that is why one of the pictures, one of the hems isn't finished. Chevron matched up! I was pretty proud of that. And here is the correct way to do a button hole!

Just to show off my cool new photofy app, I'm gonna recap the button hole!

And here is the shower curtain hanging up!

So there it is people! A custom shower curtain. It took me total about 6 hours to take apart and fix. Let me tell you though, if you want custom items, you had better be ready to pay for it! Like I said before, I did this as a favor to a friend. She did pay me, but not as much as I would have charged anyone else for the time. Don't get me wrong...I loved this project. I was so excited when I got the chevron to match up and the button holes to look like they did, but it took time!.

Ok, really now...have a happy day! Stay in touch for the next fun project :)