- Mies van der Rohe, architect
Even though the great modernist Mies was talking about construction detailing, his motto rings true regarding material possessions. For me, at least. These past few weeks where I had more free time (jobless and enjoying it.. like a boss!), spring cleaning my bedroom was high on the agenda. In the course of clearing out the clutter and sorting out the stuff, I found all sorts of trinkets, unread books, games, musical instruments, drawings equipments, craft materials, cookbooks etc etc etc.. All these things are cluttering my space and my mind! (Thinking, 'oh yeah I'll do this someday.. I'll use this someday..")
Wheew.. Time for less accumulation and more action.. As the great French general succinctly puts it:
"Riches do not consist in the possession of treasures, but in the use made of them."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
So, I am starting a project 'What have you' where every time I find a good use for the stuff lying around my room, or read a book that's been tucked in a corner for a long time, or do a drawing using last-I-touched-them-was-3-years-ago watercolors, I'm gonna put it in the blog under the category 'Project What-have-you'... because that's what it is, trying to use what I already have to give me contentment instead of buying more and more stuff.
Just a confession: I am the kind of person that will get super excited at a new hobby/idea and, before anything else, will check out all the trappings that come with that... piano playing? let's photocopy all the cool looking scores from the library (then realized have no time and determination to play them). Wire craft? Let's get those pliers and the beads (and then after some time got more excited about baking cakes and forgot all about wire craft.)
You get the idea. Damn, I should've realized sooner it's really silly to have lots of stuff but little to show in terms of how the stuff has actually enriched my life.
To start, the other day I was thinking that I should get a make-up box to get all my make up organized (How did I end up with so many types of mascara when I rarely wear make-up?! That's one item to put in Project What-have-you!). Thought of buying a make up box, but hey, I have a lot of plastic boxes I used to store model-making materials while I was in university studying architecture. So, voila!
