All Pared Down

Winter is a great time to pare down.  Forget spring cleaning, who wants to be sorting through old jumpers when the sun is shining?

Winter for me is the time to:

• clean out my wardrobe and donate all old clothes to the Salvos.  I cannot make myself sell my old clothes.   When there are people queuing for stuff at the place I go to in St Kilda, it just seems wrong. 
• throw out old kitchen bits of plastic which the children have grown out of.
• sort though endless bits of paper.
• most importantly, remove bits of furniture which just aren't working.  

I think when you spend time reading magazines and blogs, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the way things look, and to be drawn into a vortex of thinking that you need more Stuff.  More cushions.  More side tables.  More bibs and bobs.  More.  More. More.   Of course that can't be right.   I am certain that most of us need less than we have.  

It is a big trap which I am increasingly wary of.   

As it happens, I feel at my best in rooms like this.  It creates an almost emotional response.   It makes me feel calm.   Not just because of the clean lines but because of the absence of stuff. 

Whereas this room concerns me a lot.    Extreme example I know but there are a lot of overfilled rooms out there.   

This room again, with just a couple of special pieces, has the patina of age and modernity all in one.     

Same story here.  

But this room?  I do realise that Miles Redd is a great designer and all that but really, does any one person actually need five lamps in their bedroom?   There is just so much Stuff in here it makes me feel seriously anxious.  

My daughter and Miles Redd would get on like a house on fire.   She won't throw anything out and hoards and hoards and hoards.   She also loves to cover surfaces with Things.  And she is a lover of Piles of Books too.    All of her stuff was audited and listed by me here.   So it seems we have a little corner of Architectural Digest in our house.  It's called Imogen's bedroom:

(carefully cropped and edited section of bedroom. The whole room is like this but if I showed you any more it would be quite alarming) 

So in honour of paring down, I removed all the bits and pieces from the mantelpiece in the front room, as part of ongoing project to de-clutter it, and came up with this:

(ridiculously small mirror to remind me to save up for ridiculously large mirror to go over mantelpiece)

This is my inside winterscape for the next month - willow and magnolias.   

So this weekend, I will be doing some more packing, storage, culling, cleaning, and folding, just in time for spring, if it ever comes.  

ps thanks for all the lovely comments this week, and also to new readers and visitors. xoxo

(Images (1)(3) Remodelista (2) (4) Architectural Digest (5) Miles Redd) 

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