Organized

my 2011 calendar....

I really wish I were better organized than I am, but (you saw that 'but' coming a mile away, didn't you?)........but I'm not.

People who are not organized always have a million reasons why not. I think we spend more time thinking up excuses than it would take to simply get organized! But the fact remains that I live - and work - with a level of clutter that many people would find hard to deal with. Heck, even I find it hard to deal with!

Having 3 years worth of health issues to distract my attention really hasn't helped, either. There have been days (weeks, truth be told) that I just couldn't face the reality that I probably belong on an episode of Hoarding.

It doesn't help that I live with a DH whose level of tolerance for mess is even higher than mine, but that's just one more excuse.

With some forward movement on the health front, plus the start of a new major project, I've done some thinking about what needs to happen for me to get a grip on my disorganized life.

The first thing I need to do is to stop doing so many things. Between production weaving (and trying to sell the fruit of my looms - sorry about the pun - just couldn't resist), retailing yarns and fibres, publishing teaching aids (books, cd's), writing said teaching aids, teaching - all of which require copious reference materials, space to store yarns, products, etc., etc. plus my 'hobby' activities (knitting, spinning, bobbin lace, reading, jigsaw puzzles) - well, you get the picture. And all of this being done out of a fairly modest home.

DH also wants to retire as soon as possible - right now that's about 16 months from now IF the Canadian government in their wisdom doesn't push the minimum age to collect full pension to 67 - which means I want to pare my business expenses as much as possible before then. Which means letting the steam press and annex go. I don't know if we'll be able to sell the boiler that drives the press, but I'm pretty certain the press (made of cast iron mostly) will simply get delivered to the scrap yard and sold for whatever the metal is worth. Hopefully for enough to cover the cost of delivering it to the scrap yard.

But there's all that stuff stored there, too - yarns, books, left over samples from Magic, looms (two of which should really find a new home) etc. And then there's all the booth display apparatus that has to live somewhere.

So in order to make this happen, I need to finish skeining off the rest of the yarn that needs to be 'not white' and get as much of it dyed as possible in December after One of a Kind - which means I really need to get skeining NOW!

I need to sell the rest of Magic (down to 40 copies, plus the abridged copies which number around 60), Weave a V (haven't even recovered the cost of publishing that yet), decide to throw out the rest of the samples from Magic just to free up that space, sell as much of the retail yarns as possible (Fibres West March 18/19, and HWSDA conference in Calgary in June) and think hard about getting out of yarn sales. Getting out of fibre sales is a given - they are far too bulky and way too little profit in them.

As for teaching - I have one shelving rack with my binders holding the handouts (which get reviewed and edited every time I teach them), plus all the yarns I have specially for teaching those topics above and beyond the yarns for production, the numerous buckets of samples for each topic and which I have toyed with tossing out on more than one occasion. But if I'm not going to be in high production (and given this economy, will selling hand wovens really be economical?) then should I focus more on the teaching instead?

Then there's writing. Although I would love to write and be published, it would be best if I could get paid for that. There is only one major publication that pays for articles and there's no guarantee of getting a project accepted there and the once a year (or two years) I've had an article published isn't enough to pay the electric bill to run the computer.

So what do I actually wind up cutting out? Since the chances of winning the lottery in Canada are about 1 in 14 million, I guess that's even worse odds?

Currently reading The Waters Rising by Sheri S. Tepper