Sketchy Thursdays 11.17 Challenge

We recently made a long distance move. Not a lot of fun with four little kids including a newborn, but on the bright side it served as a good catalyst to purge our belongings.  I must admit that I take an almost gleeful satisfaction in organizing our possessions and seeing a large number of things destined for the thrift shop and rubbish bin.  Of course, I also take immense pleasure in scouting out deals and re-accumulating more stuff once we are settled in our new house, but that is another conversation entirely. 

Generally I can be quite heartless when it comes to tossing or giving away stuff.  My kids tend to get a look of terror in their eyes when they see me headed towards their playroom with a garbage bag.  My husband has learned to keep really important things at the office where I can't accidentally throw them out in a cleaning frenzy. You're not likely to see my house on any upcoming episodes of hoarders.

Unless of course they start a new show called "Scrapbooking Hoarders". (Which, incidentally is a really good idea.  I would totally watch that if I had a t.v.)

I do go into my scraproom regularly with the intention of cleaning it out and purging the excess supplies, really I do.  I just get distracted and start working on layouts instead. Or I just sit and admire the pretty bits and baubles.  It's so hard to throw any of it away.  I mean, if I bought it in the first place it was likely because I liked it, and just because I now have more paper than I could possibly use in a dozen lifetimes does not mean I like any of it any less than I originally did. Sigh.

My husband suggested that the solution is to stop buying more stuff until I have used up everything that is currently in my stash - which would be really good advice except for the aforementioned buying addiction... 

Anyway, all that is to say that I have been feeling a bit guilty about the amount of supplies that I "had to have" only to put them away and never look at them again, so when I sat down to make this layout for this week's Sketchy Thursday challenge, I also challenged myself to use some of my "old" supplies. The end result is a layout of Oliver that uses Making Memories papers and embellishments that I bought to do a layout of Isaac... 4 years ago.

(Please forgive the crummy photo - apparently we don't get any sun during the winter here!)