art blogs

I don’t like the mail man. Or the mail lady, either. Every day, rain or shine, she drives up to our mail box and stuffs a bunch of JUNK inside. Sales flyers clamoring for my attention telling me about this great sale and I really just have to buy the next shiny object that I don’t need and I definitely can’t afford. She’s actually a very nice mail lady. But some days I want her to stop bringing me so much JUNK. And really, in this age of instant communication via email and every other means of delivering information through the magic of the internet, is there really much that comes in the mail box that we really need or want?

Unfortunately, in addition to all the JUNK in the mail box, there are frequently bills. I still like to get paper copies of bills, because otherwise I sometimes forget to pay things if I miss the email statement . . . . and the worst ones are the automatic withdrawals for things like life insurance, car insurance, and the orthodontist. I’m pretty good about writing that stuff in the check book to make sure I remember, but sometimes I get distracted and OOPS! there goes the payment to the orthodontist and I used that money for groceries. That’s only happened once, and that was actually not my fault. That payment was scheduled for February, but they accidentally pulled it out in January. Right after Christmas. Right after a 16th birthday party. I wasn’t prepared. They were good about correcting their mistake, and the bank reversed the overdraft fee because it really wasn’t my fault. But it is still a major nuisance to try to remember all that stuff.

About all that junk mail. When I’m not looking I’m sure it reproduces faster than the neighbors bunny rabbits. And it doesn’t help that my dear sweet family, every one of them, will pick up a piece of mail (junk or otherwise), take a look at it, and then drop it on the counter top. Or the table top. Or the dresser, or on my desk, or on the coffee table in front of the couch. Hmmmm . . . . the trash can is RIGHT THERE! I guess moms are the only ones who are allowed to put trash in the trash can. So all those pieces of paper, empty envelopes, coupons, sales receipts, business cards, note cards, old grocery lists, doctor bills, pay stubs, driver’s license receipts, notes from school, piano lesson reminders, volleyball schedules, church nursery schedules, youth group schedules, field trip reminders, fund raiser forms, class schedules, and a myriad of other bits and pieces of paper pile higher and higher and higher.

I’ve tried the “one touch” rule where you are only allowed to touch a piece of paper once and then you either throw it away, put it in a file folder, or actually do something with it. That lasted about 13 seconds. That’s because not every piece of paper fits neatly into one of those categories. Sometimes you need to do something with a piece of paper that requires more than just “touching” it. Like filling out three pages of your whole life history to get a library card. If there isn’t time right now to stop and fill out all those blank spaces with social security numbers, birth dates, immunizations, last doctor visit, most recent surgeries . . . . well, what are you going to do with THAT piece of paper? Put it in a pile, of course.

Well, I’m pretty sure you’ve experienced that same endless and ongoing battle with the Paper Monster, so you just might be interested in a fun idea of what to do with all that paper and junk that has piled up on your kitchen counter. Or wherever. One day when I was staring at one particularly annoying pile of junk, I decided just to walk away. That’s one lesson I have learned. It’s my Philosophy of Junk. If you ignore it for three months, everything in that pile of papers has either already happened and we already missed it (or not), or we’ve received several more notices exactly the same because we forgot about the previous three or four that are lost somewhere in another pile of papers, or it wasn’t important to begin with.

On this particular day I decided to walk away from that overwhelming pile of stuff and look at pretty things on Pinterest – or somewhere, this might have been before Pinterest existed – and I came across Junk Journals. Well, I’ve kept journals for many years, and we’ve also done a LOT of scrap book projects, but it never occurred to me to gather up all that junk and use it to create a pretty little book. A Junk Journal. I was fascinated, and suddenly I looked at that growing pile of junk mail, envelopes, tickets, brochures, and business cards with a different eye.

In our piles of junk, because we have kids, there is usually other stuff besides paper and junk mail. There is usually a few hair ribbons, stray buttons, coins, and broken pieces of teeny-tiny toys. And, after sewing for many years, as well as working on scrap books for the past 20 years, there are also piles and piles of fabric scraps, lace, ribbons, pretty paper, stickers, and various stamps that I have collected over the years. An over-abundance of JUNK and it could all be made into something pretty, if not particularly practical or useful, except to lower my anxiety over all that JUNK. If I put it in cute little books, all tied up with pretty ribbon, wouldn’t that look so much nicer than all those piles. Oh wait . . . . now I have to find a place for all those pretty little books!

If you would like to try your hand at making your own Junk Journal, I’ll be posting pictures of mine as I go along. This is just the beginning of a small one, but I have several others that are larger that I will be sharing here on the blog. If you make junk journals, I would love to see pictures or your creations. There’s always a creative way to use up the stuff all around us – and this is really a fun way to get the kids involved in an artistic project, too! In the meantime, I hope you will join us for the Favorite Things Blog Hop and Linky Party this week. I’ll try to get around to visit some of you and see some of your favorite things!

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