Too Much Space, Too Much Stuff

I’m not one to make New Years’ Resolutions.  I figure I either have the interest, temperament, and commitment to do something on its own or I do not.  (Mrs. Barn can absolutely confirm that I cannot be bullied, browbeaten, or guilted in to doing anything I do not want to do, no matter who gets offended.)  Making a statement about some goal at some arbitrary date on the calendar strikes me as nonsensical.  (It is sort of analogous to my apparent indifference to Christmas and Easter as religious commemorations despite being a devout Christian.  If I am a Believer, then incorporating the essence of the Incarnation of The Word and Resurrection of The Redeemer are part of my permanent personal makeup or they are not.)  Notwithstanding any “New Years’ Resolution,” in recent and future months, I have been/will continue to focus on a surmountable problem with the barn.  Actually, it is two interrelated problems, intertwined with a personal foible.

1.  The barn is too big.
2.  There is too much stuff in it.
3.  I am not by natural disposition an orderly person.

The fact that I have so much space at my disposal (roughly 7,000 s.f. plus a 600 s.f. lumber storage barn just down the hill) there is no real constraint on my inventory of things.  Thus, the natural devolution of the barn’s contents is pretty much inevitable.  I find myself spending too much time trying to manage all the stuff inside these walls and am undertaking a low-intensity review of all those contents to decide which are integral and which are superfluous to being productive at the work bench or writing chair.

Not sexy, hardly compelling blogging, but an ongoing undercurrent until I can get to the point where I spend a lot more time being productive – making furniture, historic craft exercises, writing books and short stories – than I do “straightening up.”  Fortunately, I have some models for this undertaking.  My dear friends MikeM and MartinO are living examples of how to do this, how to manage too much stuff in too little space.  I will do my best to invoke their spatial genius as I pull this all together.

I have too much to do to pursue any other path.