Curtailing and Curating Collections

This Wednesday, I decided to do a bit of re-organising in the sewing room. With our new bed due any week, I wanted to clear as much room as possible for when we move our double bed back in here.

The main thing I needed to do was to swap over some fabrics from one small ottoman storage chest to a slightly narrower one from our room, so that I could move it to another position in the room, thus making space for the larger bed.

Fortunately, the swap went to plan and everything fitted in the respective chests.  I swapped them over and found a new spot for each. I then decided to tidy some fabrics away, that I'd got out to use for Furoshiki, or present wrapping with fabric, and also sort out some scraps I needed for a quilt project I'm working on.

I'd been thinking about minimising my vintage linen collection for a while, so I decided to go ahead and do this at the same time and see if there were any items I was happy to part with.

Most of this collection will be kept under the double bed when it is moved in here, and I'm currently of the mindset that the fewer I keep the better.  I sifted through the two storage boxes and the under bed storage bag that house them and assessed almost every item as to whether I wanted to keep it.

Quite a lot got put onto the donation pile, I think probably about 40-50 items, some of them were a little stained, some I will never use and some I just wasn't too keen on and were just not to my taste any more.

The whole collection didn't really cost me very much, as many of the pieces were bought from jumble sales or car boot sales for pence, so I didn't feel too bad letting some of it go.  In any case, the items were just sitting in boxes not being used, so it's got to be better to let them go and let someone else make use of them.

Having  said this, I did still keep a lot.  The under bed storage bag is still full of sheets and pillow cases, although not quite as bursting at the seams as it was.

My table linens were reduced to half a small box, that I managed to fit on the shelves, and the under bed storage box contains a very pretty vintage single eiderdown and a couple of pillow cases. These could be used if anyone sleeps on the sofa at some point.

Although I loved collecting these things, there comes a time when you realise that a collection is not really serving any useful purpose. I could try to sell them on eBay, but I just don't want the hassle, so they're going to the charity shop.

Thankfully, I'm currently out of the habit of collecting things, which is good news from a decluttering point of view and I really don't want to get back into the habit any time soon. So, it was quite a satisfying day, feeling able to part with yet more belongings with no regrets and the room is now ready to accommodate the bed when our new one arrives.