Monthly Musing – June 2026 – A good clear out!

I started tidying out my yarn room today.  “Yarn room” sounds grander than it actually is – a small space between the hall and the utility room which once served as an office and then, once my husband and I decided that we could share the spare bedroom as an office, became the place where my yarn, needles and books live.  It’s very much in need of re-decorating as the paint is looking old and shabby now, hence the tidy out.

I realise that I’m very lucky to have this space at all and I think my husband is very glad of it too, otherwise there’d be even more of my stuff spread out across the house than there is already, but there are times when I could do with it being a bit bigger, or a different shape (it has two doors, a window and a radiator in a space that’s not much wider than my outstretched arms so wall space is limited) and redecorating is an opportunity for me to look at what I’ve got and see how I can make the storage work better for me.

It doesn’t help that a large section of the bookcases is taken up by books from my parents’ house – they had many books on all kinds of subjects and although my brother and I let most of them go when my Dad died, there were others that I didn’t want to part with – and there are all my gardening books in there as well.  I was a professional gardener in a previous life so have my RHS textbooks, books on pests and diseases, pruning and propagation, and plant encyclopaedias.  I’ve also discovered that I’ve got files and folders left over from when the room was an office so it’s no wonder that it was feeling over-stuffed.

I’m very good at taking everything out of a room, shuffling it about a bit and then putting it all back in again, congratulating myself on my newly organised shelves until I can’t find something or I don’t put something back straight away and then it all goes to pot.  My plan this time is to be much stricter about what goes back into the room and where it all goes.

This, I think, is the sticking point of my mission.  I’m not great at change.  Many people aren’t great at change, and the reason is, according to Harvard academic Ron Heifetz, that many people see change as loss.  Change is great if it means a pay rise or a bigger house with a sea view, perhaps, but not so much if you’re made redundant and have to find a new job quickly, or life circumstances mean that you have to move house when you aren’t ready to.

Of course, moving a few bookcases around when you’ve got limited places to put them isn’t in itself a huge change or an obvious loss – but I’ve already been through my parents’ books once and I don’t want to throw any more out.  I might not use my gardening books every day, but I want to keep them.  I love all my knitting books, my needles, all the balls and skeins of yarn whether they are brand new and full of potential or they’re the little bits left over.

I took them all out of the room and I know that they shouldn’t all go back in again but knowing that means that to me, there’s a loss on the horizon as once the rubbish and recycling has gone, I’ll need to make some decisions.  You and I both know that it is entirely my choice whether to see this as loss or adventure.  Am I having to give up things I don’t want to let go of, or am I choosing to make myself some more space for my creativity to breathe?  It could go either way as both options are valid.

I’m going to leave it for tonight as it’s getting late, and hope that nobody falls over the piles of boxes currently sitting in the hall.  I’m sure that in the morning, decisions about what to keep and what to release will be much easier.  Tomorrow is the day to look forward to what I can do with the room without shuffling everything about and putting it back where it came from.  Tomorrow is about creating a change without loss – and I’m ready for the challenge!