Saturday 5 December 2015

Downsizing Grandma’s Craft Room


Recently I watched a friend attempt to empty out “hoards” (my words not hers) of stuff from her mother’s home and this had to occur too quickly follow this wonderful woman’s death.  The emotional toll that this took was difficult to watch.

“Why did she keep these?”

“What am I to do with this?”

And while the answer to this seems easy just box it all up and ship it off to a thrift store and let them sort it, because these things belonged to her mother she needed to open each book, magazine and sort through all the containers.  

She found among these soon to be gone items things that did have importance to her.

A hand written Christmas list
A childhood school story of hers placed within book
A poem that her mother created

We do not want to put our three children through what our friend has gone through so we have been downsizing.  We set a goal of two boxes every weekend and some weekends more go out while others just two begrudgingly are let go of.

I have a passion for craft magazines and books each contains at least one pattern that I want to make at sometime.  

Downsizing here was extremely painful until I realized that I could scan a personal copy of the pattern I wanted and let go of the book.  Copyright is a big issue I uphold rules and so I worried "Can I even do this?"  

Now I should have known the answer because I have always make a working copy of a pattern to write on and this is what the scanned copy is,  my working copy – Fair Use Law. 

So today I have been making digital copies of the patterns I want to make and letting go of magazines and books.  I have decided on a few that I will keep and the test is when there is more than two pattern I want to make.

When my children have to close up my craft room they will find an external hard drive labelled, Patterns Mom wanted to make - Deleted.

Grandma Snyder


©2013-2015 twosnydergirls

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