Ida Clare, I'm spring cleaning

Pep Rally Friday

Ida Clare, it’s time for some cheering.  I have been involved in two separate hands-on creative projects this week and I am still ready to go but my house looks like a creative hurricane hit.

Creative cheer:

Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar
If I don’t clean my house
It’s gonna turn into squalor.

"There is nothing cheerful about that Ida.  Nobody wants their house to be considered squalor.  What’s squalor got to do with creativity?"

The only reason I put that in there about squalor is that it rhymes with dollar and I don’t know many other cheers since obviously I wasn’t a real cheerleader in junior high or high school.

But now that we’re on the subject: Creativity is messy and isn’t messy heading down the road to squalor?  Doing projects requires books to learn about your craft, tools, materials, and the storage to hold all the goodies and a place to strew it all about.  If that doesn’t affect your Martha Stewart image, I don’t know what will.  Plus, there is all that secret stuff you have that you haven’t yet shared with the people who live in the house with you. 

"Huh?  What do you mean?"

Oh don’t play innocent with me.  We’ve all done it. 

I used to hide my tole-painting paint under the front seat of my car from my first ex-husband.  He thought I had about six tubes of paint because I would switch them out when I needed another color.  I was afraid that he’d put his foot down if he knew how much my “paint habit” cost just to paint apples and strawberries on little wooden plaques.

The point I am trying to make is that when you create, there is a lot of stuff that comes with creativity and it eventually takes over your garage, the basement, the kitchen table, the storage on your computer, or in my case, my car.

So what!!!!!  You are a creative genius and genius requires stuff.   And that stuff requires the occasional sorting and cleaning and organizing. 

So for today I am going to cheerfully get busy and put some things in order no matter how much cleaning stinks.  As bad as I don’t love doing it, it is part of the creative process.  I can work in chaos as well as the next guy, but I love it when my little creative corner is clean and neat too.  Why don't you join me?

So today’s cheer is

Two bits, four bit, six bits a dollar
I don’t like it but
Let’s clean up the parlor.

Oh God, Ida.  You are hopeless.

Pretty much.

Hugs,