Accessory-Free Month: mildly successful

You may recall that at the beginning of June I decided to join Nester in removing all accessories from my house.  I packed away nearly all the tchotchkes in my house, keeping out only a few that had great personal meaning. I also kept out all the busts, because I really like them. (I broke all the rules in the first two minutes by not putting away everything.)  Everything else was packed in two large moving boxes and went up in the attic.

So, the majority of my busts (I cannot say the word "bust" without thinking of "we must, we must, we must increase our busts") were used as bookends.  Actually, pretty much all of my remaining tchotchkes ended up being bookends.

I used the smaller upper sections of the skinny bookcases to showcase the pictures and items not heavy enough to use as bookends.

I originally packed away all my ginger jars.  After two days I went back up in the attic and pulled them back out again, not because I feel the need for decorative ginger jars, but because my ginger jars are where I hide things like the checkbook and SD cards, and I missed their utility.  (Form follows function!)  The cigar box is the Mister's stuff-putter-downer place.  The yellow elephant is a piggy bank, and should be donated, because it doesn't have a home.  I like to leave that shelf empty, actually, so that I have a spot for library books.

So...how successful was I at going accessory-free?  So-so.  Not so great, not so bad. I did not start with a clean slate.  I could have removed even more stuff. Overall, however, I think it was a success.  I am glad that I packed away all the tchotchkes; it really helped me define the aesthetic I wanted in our family room.  It is not overly cluttered, and I am happy with the tchotchkes that remain in the room.

Unfortunately, as I was looking through the last remaining unpacked boxes in the garage, I discovered that what I thought were boxes of art were actually boxes of MORE TCHOTCHKES.  This was horrifying.  I started to cull the extra boxes, but it quickly devolved into the entire garage being covered in packing paper and MORE TCHOTCHKES.  I am ashamed to admit I simply packed it all back up into the boxes and shoved it back in a corner so as not to deal with it.

The tchotchkes that remain in boxes are older items that I have owned for a long time, and were given to me by loved ones.  I would not say that I am greatly attached to them, but I feel guilty getting rid of them. I need to sit down and go through ALL the boxes of packed away stuff, and get rid of it.  I don't need it, I don't need it, I don't need it.  If I can leave it in a box for years, I probably also don't really want it.  I just need to take that last step and get it out of the house.

Thus, I'd say that the Great Accessory Free Experiment was a draw, because while I managed to get all the accessories out of my living areas, there are still a number of boxes of tchotchkes taking up space in my attic and garage.

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I do have a  related problem that I didn't really deal with during this challenge.  I have a million gazillion picture frames.  Like....three large moving boxes full?  Plus more not in boxes?  I am at a loss for what to do with them.  I have long wanted to do this picture wall (which I did do on a smaller scale here), but am now having second thoughts.  I am attempting a cleaner, less cluttered aesthetic with this house.  On the other hand, I am trying to live by my defining values, and pictures of friends and family make me happy, and need to be included.

I love having pictures of the kids and our family and friends around.  But a hundred pictures on a mantelpiece looks cluttered.  A hundred pictures thrown up on a wall looks cluttered.  I don't WANT to tightly edit my pictures so that I have one picture of each kid and one of each family member and that's it. Since the Accessory Free Experiment, I only left out one picture of all the kids, two pictures of me and the Mister on our wedding day, one picture of my grandparents, one picture of my father in law with his mother, and one picture of Peter that I just came across during the garage debacle.  Six pictures in the entire house, and four of them were taken on the same day.  That is not enough. I want more.  How much is enough? (More than six, less than a hundred, apparently.)

I love the thought of the picture wall, how it is layers of history and family.  I just wish I had a more out-of-the-way spot in which to do this.  Currently all of our living space walls are large, enormous, vast expanses of space--the bookshelves cover most of the walls in the family room, so the side of the house with the vaulted ceilings is the undecorated side.  It would be hard to do the picture wall on a reasonable scale in our house.  Also, all the remaining spots where I could do a picture wall are visible from the front door.

Maybe I need to take up scrapbooking. (Mother! I have a project for you!) (My mother is a scrapbooker extrordinaire.  I...am not very good at small-scale art projects.)

So....what do you do with pictures in your home? Do you have lots of pictures on every surface?  A gallery wall of family photos?  Are you over the whole gallery wall thing?