Share the Shame. . .of Stamps

Two drawers in my cubbies held stamps.  47 stamp sets, plus four roller stamps; almost all Stampin' Up!  Ashamedly, nine of them had never been mounted or cut and at least five while mounted, had never been used.

Now, I have one empty drawer - soon to be filled with a child's memorabilia (I need three more drawers) - and nine stamp sets that I'll be keeping, in the other drawer with hopefully whatever stampin' paraphernalia I plan to keep, as well.  Five other stamps I'm keeping are  for sentimental purposes; I used them to create my two oldest kids' baby announcements.

I also have a binder of The Stamps of Life acrylic stamps - I have used those.  Those, and the ones I'm keeping are on the list of 2011 goals for using stamps/creating cards.

I listed 23 sets on eBay where they can go live productive, happy lives, will give away the remainder and have one set aside for someone here, on the blog.  Earn it by sharing your purging during Share the Shame.  You don't have to be dealing with your stamps but you do need to show what you worked on to get it.  Upload "before" photos if you have them, but "after" photos for sure by Sunday evening. 

I'm off to tackle yet another drawer - the stamping accessories drawer.

Sharing the Shame. . .

Time to share the shame. . .Hello, my name is Lori and my scrapbook space is a disaster.
One of my goals for 2011 was to make my cropping space, my studio as it shall be known, is to make it a place I actually WANT to go to.  My dilemma is that I work in my studio space - don't you love the sound of that word, "Studio?"  Sounds inviting.  Sounds like a creative space.  Sounds like an oasis.  Anyway, I tackled the surrounding area, which is "Kid Space," toys, Legos, Wii, train set after train set, etc.  The Kids' Space is in better shape after dealing with it over a couple of days last week.  The problem is now it makes my space really look bad. 

As I stand in the middle of my combined Apron Strings mess of paperwork, invoices, sales receipts and products,  plus my scrapbook stash of kits, loose papers, scraps, photo stacks (scrapped or not is the question), and stray embellishments it's overwhelming.  Where do I start?  How do I begin to dig in when I don't know where I'm going to start and I know it's gonna look worse before it gets better?

Well, follow me and we'll figure it out together.  If your space looks like this, or maybe worse, though it's hard to imagine. . .

I (we if you're willing to share your shame) will be sorting, purging and organizing to make my studio look like the picture in my head.

There will be encouragement and "encouragement" along the way.  Start by taking and sharing your photos - I warn you, what your lens sees is far scarier than what your eye sees.  Whether you work at your kitchen table and photograph the totes, cupboards or drawers you store you stuff or you have dedicated space, sorting, purging and organizing is a good thing.  Really.