De-cluttering is good for the soul.

Each year our complex undergoes a check for termites. It’s a time when I need to wrestle with my storage area under the stairs. Useful as it is to have a place to store “stuff” unfortunately it often, no usually, becomes an area where things are shoved unceremoniously and pile haphazardly on top of other things. It gets to the stage where it becomes a "No Entry Possible" zone. In order for the area to be checked, it needs to be empty so that’s what I have been doing. 

I made a resolution this time to reduce the amount stored here. I planned to de-clutter anything that hasn’t been used since the last inspection. That’s easier said than done, because it’s tempting to fall into the trap of thinking an item might be useful in the future.

Upstairs I have a spare bedroom where I store canvasses. This too, has become crowded and many of the paintings are ones that haven’t worked. A few I have recycled and painted new paintings over the failed first attempt. This is often not good practice since the subsequent layers can be prone to cracking if the “fat over lean” principle is not adhered to. 

Oils can be painted over acrylic but the additional layers need a higher oil content than the underpainting. Acrylic can never be painted on top of oils since the new layers will simply peel off. 

There were a few stretcher frames that were not square or of poor quality. Some of the paintings were those that came in my container. A few paintings I will keep as a record of past themes but there were quite a few that just didn’t make the cut. These got the cut literally when I got busy with the Stanley knife and slashed the canvas to ribbons! 

SO SATISFYING! 

Now I need to have a Studio sale and find homes for some still in storage.