Doing something undemanding

You know how it is, there comes a time when you just can't stand it any more. Heaps of paper have been accumulating on my desk, leaving no room for a coffee cup beside the computer - so I moved them, bit by bit, away from the messy space to sort. (Remembering Rita advising, when I said "I just don't know where to start!" - "First clear a surface"; such good advice ... you really need that clear space, physically and metaphorically.) They started out on the table -

The bowl, my catch-all place, isn't exactly empty now, but the recycling bin is fuller! There always seems to be - have you noticed? - a residue to things that don't really have a home, but you can't throw out "just yet".  Of course we're overwhelmed because we hang on to too much stuff - but it takes a lifetime to overcome the habit of a lifetime....

Encouraged by this (and needing to make a last-minute xmas present), I turned to the studio, where the fabrics for the sewing kits etc are overflowing from one big box (which lives in the cupboard between sewing sessions). A three-tier, wheeled, wire trolley has been sitting under the table by the window, full of nothing much. My plan was to sort the fabrics into one type for each tray, but it turned into piles of 1.prints, 2.shiny fabrics, 3.geometrics, 4.woolly fabrics, 5.plains, 6.travel-lines prints, 7.narrow strips, 8.pieces already cut -

With the help of smaller containers holding the smaller categoriesof fabric, it's now in the trolley and box, tucked under the table and back in the cupboard -

The top of the trolley holds some colourways that just fell together while I was sorting, so now it's just a matter of choosing which to use first. I'm so ready to start....

A piece of paper that turned up along the way has notes from a talk heard on the radio, something about divergent thinking, cognitive slowdown, functional fixedness, schema violation - grand phrases!  What makes it relevant to the mundane task of sifting and tossing and piling things up differently is this -

"If you want to come up with a creative solution, do something undemanding!"