Welcome back

Hi everyone and welcome back to Midweek Minimise. Can you believe it is week six already? So if you have been decluttering at least 10 items a week that is now 60 things gone! Can you see a difference already? I have to confess that I am really getting inspired to press on. I’ve even gone beyond the craft room and tackled my makeup collection which I thought would be traumatic but was actually really simple. If you follow me on Instagram you will have seen the new collection I bought myself on Saturday. Those items more or less replace all of my old stuff. I have about ten items max left. Result! If you are new here it is not too late to catch up, here is what we have covered so far.

So, the nature of colouring mediums is a bit different. Unlike other categories when I could just look through and make decisions this involved putting in some effort.

Alcohol Markers

The first thing I tackled was my Spectrum Noir Marker collection. I noticed they had some new colour charts on the website since I last looked. I printed out the blank marker system chart twice. I used one to go through my newer 2nd generation markers and colour in the squares. At this point, I realised that two new collections had been added since I completed my collection the Vintage and Nature collections. You can obviously get these at Crafter’s companion themselves as linked, however, I managed to grab a couple of bargains and got one from Amazon for just over £20 and the other from eBay for just under £20. Finances are likely to get tight soon so I grabbed them whilst I could! With the second blank colour chart, I went through my 1st generation markers. I did a quick scribble on some scrap paper and unless they were totally useless filled in the chart. Here was my first mixed blessing of a victory, five of the markers were completely dead. Great for the declutter but sad.

A word of warning

At this point, I really wanted to give you a word of advice, when buying markers I would always buy new ones unless you can see each colour swatched. I noticed someone on eBay selling their complete collection of 1st generation markers and they were getting bids. This occasion I went through mine and removed 5 dead ones but it is only a few months ago that I last did this and removed far more. One of the improvements with the 2nd generation is the ink lasts longer so the 1st generation ones can easily die even if they are not being used! To allow for my extra sets of markers I headed to Amazon and grabbed an extra storage rack. My collection now looks like this at the moment, you can see the gaps where the 1st generation marker pen has died and I have not replaced the set those pens are contained in.

Filling the holes

Planning ahead, I got out my old colour chart: I went through and marked off all the dead markers and did a tally chart at the bottom of which collection had the most missing. The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted in the previous photo that I also have a set of Illustrator markers (all the small packs but none of the large packs (from the launch offer) so I then went through the missing ones and made a note of which colours I had in the Illustrator and that gave me a true picture of my gaps. Talk about getting technical! Baring in mind that some are collections of 24 and others are collections of 6 I would say that the next ones I need to purchase are the Pastels 24 collection and the pinks collection of six. But let’s be honest if I see a good offer on any of them I’ll grab it because I want to replace them all eventually.

Confession time

I actually expected to find ten dead markers but no! All of my Illustrators were fine as were my Aqua Markers and Spectrum Sparkle, although I did have a bit of a disaster with my Sparkle chart as you may have seen on my social media account. Even my Colorista collection that I keep in a small draw that I can carry to the bedroom for relaxing colouring in bed were all still great. So I had to go rooting through my draws and it’s a good job I did because I found things I forgot I had! There are Perfect Pearls in the Draw with my H2O’s (not to mention those Smooches) and Pastels and Chalks behind some of my glitters.

Not that any of that helped with the decluttering but it was great to find things you forgot you had, a bit of a money-free shopping trip feeling. Well, I did talk about shopping your stash all those months ago!

What I did find of use was these though:

I had forgotten about the ink pads behind the embossing powders and also even though I reach into the other draw practically every time I craft, and certainly every time I stamp I have been totally ignoring all the ink pads to the right of the draw, so I figured I might have a win in amongst them.

A Major Success

Well once again the success is slightly tinged with sadness due to some over consumerism but the results of that purge are that all the ink pads to the right of the draw were dead so I didn’t find five more items I found 24! The ink pads behind the embossing powders were still fairly useable so they have relocated in with the other ink pads after pruning them down and removing colours that have since been replaced recently with My Brilliance Inks which I keep on top of my Distress Ink rack. The drawer looks like this now: The main black pads have had the oldest purged as I no longer use it and have been stacked vertically so it is easier to reach in and grab one from a sitting position. The Groove tool and stamp cleaners have moved into that drawer too. (The Groove heads are in my tool draw) I also have a supply of old ripped up t-shirt rags which will be on top of the bottles to clean stamps with. I then emptied out the Embossing Powders and looked through them. I removed all the ones that were the same colours as my newer Nuvo Embossing Powders (I’m a sucker for the diamond bottle tops) which allowed me to purge these items. Now I could fit all the Nuvo powders into the draw which had previously been hanging around on a shelf in an unorganised fashion. The result a neat drawer: The final piece of the puzzle is my large desk ink draw which had got so busy that I had to route around whenever I needed anything. Now my Dreamees Dinky Inkies are in their new home and the Groove and cleaners have moved as well my Memento Inks are all tidy in their draw, success!

Are you in need of a bit of a declutter and organise in your craft area? If so it is not too late to join in on the Midweek Minimise Challenge. You can join the group on Facebook or add the #MidweekMinimise on the other social media channels.

Next Week

So what’s the plan for next week? I’m not totally sure yet, it might be embellishments or possible craft tools? To be honest, pretty much every category already covered could be done again but I should cover all the categories at least once first! I’m sure by the weekend I will have a plan, so keep an eye on my social media channels and I’ll let you know on one of them when I’ve decided.

Good luck if you are minimising and organising your craft stash, do show me a photo of your progress. If not, enjoy your crafting time.