One of the biggest obstacles to decluttering, cleaning and staying organized is knowing who we are at any given time. You are not the same artist you were in your 20s or 30s and yet you may have artwork, materials, and ideas that you’ve hung on to since then. Our subjects, materials, and processes change. Even our attitudes, aspirations and goals may be different. Yet how many of us hang on to the materials, ideas, visions and work from yesteryear (don’t you just love fancy words?).
Cleaning our workspaces is a material endeavor but it also is a pursuit of mental clarity through reflection. Because this is a Clean Studio Challenge, I’ll give you prompts for cleaning, but I’ll also give you some prompts to reflect on that have to do with artmaking. Our studios are really just a reflection of what we think and feel about the latter.
Here are three big things that get in the way of decluttering our studios (& lives).
- Nostalgia gets in the way of our letting go of objects that remind us of experiences. When we hang on to objects we have to spend time caring for them which takes time away from having more experiences.
- Sunk (or spent) costs. These are the costs of what you invested in your materials, furnishings, websites, schooling, etc. We may not want to pivot, shift course or give up on something in which we’ve invested a lot. The sunk costs can sink us.
- Unrealistic expectations of time. We can be unrealistic about how long it takes to do something. Will we really ever get back to doing scratchboard? Can we really fit in knitting that sweater to use up those bits of yarn?
As you go through the challenge, keep in mind how these three things affect you during your decluttering and cleaning process.
ACTION STEP: Journal this week about your feelings and thoughts regarding each of these three obstacles and post your insights in the Facebook group.
Two approaches to cleaning and decluttering
Decide which approach is right for you.
1. Take everything out and only put things back that you love and need
2. Review everything, removing only what you don’t love or need
The first approach this may be determined by whether or not you have the space to remove everything. You may want to consider whether you will be able to review it all in a timely fashion so as not to just transfer the junk somewhere else.
Week 1 – Where is your work?
Kondo in her book, the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up, says it’s best to declutter and clean by category rather than doing it one room at a time. That’s the format I’m following for the challenge. So we start with the work, both where the work is and where we are with it.
Action steps:
1. Pull out all your work from everywhere you have it. If you’re like me there’s work in every room in the house (yes even the bathrooms) as well as the studio and storage areas. (If it will stay on the walls where it is currently, don’t bother removing it. But if it’s stuffed under a bed or behind a door, include it.)
2. Arrange it according to type (works on paper, works on canvas, media, etc.) or by size to make it easier to handle. You could also arrange it by categories or bodies of work, or age (early work, older work, current work). Pick a method that works for you.
3. Go through the work piece-by-piece using Marie Kondo’s method by asking the following questions. When did you make it? Visualize yourself making it. Are you surprised by what it looks like after not seeing it for a while? How do you feel about it? Do you love it? Are you proud of it? Does it still make your heart sing? Will you show it again? Do you need it? For older work we made when we were first developing, it’s good to decide if it is a great representation of that stage in your development. In that case, you may want to keep it to represent that period. If it’s a lesser effort you may want to discard it. You can take a photograph to document it, but if you never plan to show it there may be little reason to keep the piece itself. Ask yourself if this image were to represent you would it feel right to you? Go through each piece asking these questions and sort into four piles for – active (current style/subjects, actively being shown or promoted). discard, donate, or archive (older work you are no longer showing).
4. Now you’re ready to deal with the piles
5. Destroy what you don’t want anymore and get it out of the way. Don’t just throw it out. A friend did that once and later found to her dismay that her paintings were being sold in a junk shop. Someone had fished them out of the trash. Cut up your canvas or paint over the image before tossing it, or gesso over acrylic paint to re-use. Stretchers can be gifted or reused.
6. If you donate work, you’ll want to give consideration to quality. I don’t donate work I’m not proud of since it will be out there in the world representing me.
7. Now you need a place to put the active work. We’ll deal more with organizing and storage options later. For now you can spend the week sorting and disposing of things. Also, Pinterest is a great resource for getting storage ideas as are art supply catalogs. But it’s better to get it all cleared away before spending a bundle at the container store. You may not need as much storage as you think.
BONUS ACTION: As you sort through your work, if you have the time (and space), it’s a good idea to spend time looking at it and reflecting on it. In your art journal, you can deconstruct what it is you liked about it and what no longer works for you. What were you doing in the older work that you want to move away from? What imagery, techniques, elements, and emotions do you want to bring forward or emphasize more in your work? What had you thought was a failure but now looks ok? Or you thought was terrific and now ask, ‘what was I thinking?’ And why? What elements or approaches made it so? What patterns do you see among works? What are you sensitive to in the work? Are you using primarily the same palette or techniques over and over? What could you do to move the work in a different direction?