Cutting back ~ part two

In a previous post I mentioned that I had decided to cut back, amongst other things, my crafting aspirations ~ which, of course, has created a fair bit of upheaval and chaos!  To be perfectly honest, my lovelies, I hadn't finished the major sorting-out that I'd started way back in 2023 😲 I did make a little more progress last year, as can be seen in previous posts, but of course since then I have had to make more "big decisions" which has turned everything somewhat upside-down again 😏 

The first thing I decided to tackle was my book collection.  The photo above makes said collection seem as if it just needs a bit of tidying-up....oh no, my lovelies, this was just a small part of the books I have accumulated ~ the rest were scattered throughout the craft room, piled on surfaces and hiding in boxes and bags 😲  It was a mammoth operation just to gather all the buggers up into one place, I can tell you!

I made a Very Big Decision that my collection of craft books would be confined to just these two slender white bookshelves.  I'm not quite up-to-date with my photo records so will share more photos later, but I almost managed to achieve my goal.  In the end a handful of the books have been allowed to live in other bookshelf, which was empty when I took this photo.  I'll explain more in an upcoming post 😉

I had already made enquiries at the Stromness Library as to whether they take books, and was delighted to find that they do.  Apparently, if the books aren't suitable for being integrated into the library system they will be put into their regular sales of old/unwanted books, which of course then raises funds for the service 😊  As you can see, I have sorted out a helluva lot of books (yet to be trundled down there) for donation to the library...  

plus those in the photo above, which I didn't think were quite right for the library, to go to local charity shops. 

The books, along with the bags in the photo above, have since all been taken the our local Orkney Cats and Red Cross charity shops.  In fact, this photo only shows the first batch of donations as I filled even more bags as I went through everything!  It wasn't all from the craft room, I hasten to add, some was stuff that I had put to one side thinking that I might try to sell them on Ebay or our local Facebook market place.  In the end, I decided to go through all of that "put aside" stuff as well and whittled it down to a more realistic amount to try to sell.

I also gathered together things to donate to Employability Orkney-Restart Orkney, which they came out to collect last Friday.  As you can see there was a sideboard and cupboard that was donated, which means that I will shortly be rearranging the remaining furniture in the craft room...

which should give me more space to move about...

and set up a new hobby area ~ more about that later 😉

And finally, I made a Very Big Decision indeed which lead to this work table becoming ~ temporarily, at least! ~ empty 😳  I shall be posting about that decision on my other blog in due course but I'm sure that you will be able to make an educated guess as to what that's going to be about 😄