Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
Makers
I’ve been thinking a lot about “making.” Last week, I made my husband a Valentine’s Day card. Clients often have piles of saved cards to sort through, and most of them end up getting tossed. Usually, if it’s just a card that someone bought and signed, it isn’t that important. On the other hand, when it’s a handmade, personalized card, it is harder to let go.
I admire people who are artistic and crafty and make their own cards, and while I have tried to develop these traits in my children, I don’t really have them myself. For a long time, I just didn’t do cards at all. I felt that it was such an awful lot of consuming (trees, ink, shipping) for such an ephemeral thing.
Moreover, while I want to encourage arts and crafts, I don’t want to encourage spending a whole bunch of money on space-eating craft materials. I’ve seen how that goes, and it isn’t pretty.
Still, people like to receive cards, and my husband always gets me cards, and I don’t want to be the Grinch all the time. So I made a card. It made him laugh, which I loved. It was free (well, I stole some of my daughter’s construction paper) and it was personal.
My problem with our consumer culture is that we all consume too much, but I also find it to be so boring. No matter how pretty the card from Paper Source is, there are thousands of them. When we make things, whether it’s furniture or cards or clothing, they are unique.
It’s true that it is much harder to let go of things that we have made, so you might wonder why I am such an advocate of the handmade. But making things takes time. It takes effort. It takes planning. It is the opposite of consuming and impulse shopping. It is harder than merely clicking the mouse. You have to commit when you make something. You’ve invested time, you aren’t just going to throw it out just because you see something shinier at West Elm. So don’t just sit there, make something.