Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Outside the Frame

I want to start a small but somewhat meaningful revolution.  I want us to stop being embarrassed by lived in space. We all do it, ya know, crop the mess out of our photos. And by mess, I mean the actual mess and clutter of living. And often by the vary nature of our hobbies, we sewcialists have more of it than many. Projects in progress and it looks like a tornado hit the place.

Yeah, right.


I personally have always been somewhat embarrassed by the not-pristine nature of my house. Its rather small and we have three adults, two kids, four cats, and various family and friends that stop by on a regular basis. I use my living room to sort clothes and my love seat to store the clean ones. Now that the kids are learning to fold and put away their own clothes that pile isn't nearly so bad. But this insecurity is something that is fed to us through culture and media.

That's what I'm talkin' about!


Someone I know who got divorced had a mother-in-law that told her "If you'd kept a better house, he wouldn't have cheated on you".  Which just totally flabbergasted me. If you have enough money to pay a house cleaning regularly, or have servants, or whatever, then I can see having a pristine house. Or maybe you are never home? Or never have any fun? I don't know. But the fact that we all do our best to put forth the best possible image of that  pristine house of, in this group of creatives, is probably much of an illusion. Much like the illusion that parenthood is all rainbows and kittens when that's total B.S. Most days is cleaning up bodily fluids, crisis intervention, and bananas getting stuck in the Kliptch speakers.



So all these thoughts running around in my head I though it would be fun to start a hashtag on twitter #sewdontclean and challenge other sewcialists to share their daily mess, the ones we don't normally show in our garment photos.  The following are all the ones that participated.  And I challenge everyone to not feel so bad about a little chaos.

spot the mallet











Please ignore the vacuum, I didn't mean it, honest!




See? We're all just human. What say you? Share your mess too! Just use the hashtag #sewdontclean

16 comments:

  1. Sing it!! I think we all need a little creative chaos to thrive.

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  2. I have a whole lotta love for this post! I'm so relieved to know that i'm not the only messy one!

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  3. I love it--I know I'm messy. Certain family members probably talk about me when they leave my house but I don't care. I told my sister, we don't live in a museum, we live here. I try to keep the bathroom and kitchen reasonably clean for sanitary reasons but living room and bedrooms are another story. Laundry is never caught up. My 3 month old grandson and his mom live with me so there's baby stuff every where. My sewing space is not bad because it's been shoved aside but once I get back to sewing, it will probably look like the pictures submitted. Thanks for allowing this forum -- no more apologizing and saying 'please excuse the house'.

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    1. Clean bathrooms, kitchen, and floor vacuumed on the regular. Oh, and I make everyone wash their sheets once a week and don't leave out bug attracting things, this is what I've decided is most important and livable.

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  4. It's real life, isn't it? We all can't live in a show home! I'm in a shared house bursting at the seams in my small rented room, and working full time and having some fun/exercise in the evenings means that I have to compromise on how much I can tidy.

    Thanks for sharing!

    P x

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  5. My first husbands mother told me that I should have made him feel more welcome in a cleaner home.Im apalled that more women like this exist. Sad. By the by- totally guilty of crpooing puppy pads, stray pillows, brewing supplies, thread, whathaveyou out of pics. I will break these chains of tyranny now!

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  6. "Someone I know who got divorced had a mother-in-law that told her "If you'd kept a better house, he wouldn't have cheated on you"."

    WOAH. i just... I don't even know what to say. People still think that way?

    I always think its kind of funny how people represent their lives on their blogs - all pristine and perfect. How boring!

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  7. this may actually be the only benefit to not having a sewing room (and sewing in a dining room that can't be shut off - we need to walk through it to get to the kitchen/ utility room/ back door). you really can't get in that much mess! clean tho? that's a different matter!

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  8. Can't. Don't have a Twitter account, and don't feel like starting one... But I know what you're talking about, and I try not to worry about the mess too much. :-)

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  9. I love this post more than I can say. I'm not the tidiest of people at the best of times, but now that I'm living in a tiny house with no storage, a three year old and a fiance who thinks fairies cone in the middle of the night to tidy up his mess, there is no hope of a tidy house. I can literally clean a room and it will be a mess within 5 minutes.

    Oh, and when I had my daughter my mum told me that I would have to make sure my house is really clean and tidy because social services would take her off me if they found out it was a mess. I was 25 at the time but it terrified me.

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  10. Your pictures have made me feel soooooo much better!! Parts of my house look like that too -especially the sewing room!!!
    KJ x

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  11. I feel so much better knowing that I'm not the only one with a mess in my house. I love keeping it real!

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  12. I need to show this post to my husband to prove that I'm normal! hehe.

    ~ Brooke

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