Peter M 0071CE

My War on Clutter: Never "organize" what you can discard

I seemed to be finding headlines that link together. First I ran across - "Never organize what you can discard" via a blog titled 'The Lesser Photographer'. Now this made a lot of sense to me as I can be a pack rat and periodically do organize bunches of stuff that I should 'discard'. And I am not alone. Even though the average US home doubled in size between the 1950's and the first decade of the new millennium, we still needed more storage. By 2009 we had in the US 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage rental space and 1 in 10 households rented a self-storage unit. But then I saw a post on Facebook (thanks Erin) that made me think the above quote needs reformulation. Yes, we do need to unclutter our lives with so much stuff. But we should really try to find a new owner or purpose for the stuff - not just discard. "The Incredible Landfill Orchestra" headline comes from Slate and the embedded video below is highly recommended.

An amazing music program exists in a slum in Catuera, Paraguay. The slum sits on a landfill and the children's instruments are made from the trash in the landfill. The story is being made into a documentary film and the above video is a teaser for the movie. The image I shot for today is the Silver Jewelry Studio of Peter Manship about 1 mile from my home. His studio is obviously built from scraps of this and that and it would be easy to not expect much before entering. But his work is truly beautiful and when my daughter-in-law was pregnant with the twins, Peter designed a special twins necklace that she wore throughout her pregnancy. Shot with Tamron 10-24mm@15mm, f9, 1/100 sec and post-processed in NIK Color Efex 4. Truly one person's discarded "trash" can be another's opportunity to create a treasure.