We’re 17 days in. How are those New Year resolutions going? I’m not good at them myself. I’ve heaps of room for improvement but I know my limitations and, let’s face it, I’d be setting myself up to fail – big time.

That said, if I had one resolution it would be to kick the habit of letting things pile up until I am stymied by indecision and overwhelmed by to-dos. Over the holiday break I sorted things. I didn’t really clear out cupboards – though that should probably happen someday soon – but I got things in order, physically and mentally.

I whittled down piles of paperwork, let go of projects clearly destined for another time and found places for things lying around the house. Piles of things. Mostly my piles. Piles of vintage fabric. Piles of mending. Never ending piles of unfinished books, magazines and recipe folders. You know, the things that’ll be better once I’ve taken them in, brought up the hem, ripped off the sleeves. The recipe to dazzle friends with when you finally get around to inviting them over for dinner. The magazine with pages of new things to look up and add to your reader. You know the stuff. The great big gargantuan piles of STUFF. I even photographed my latest pile. Two op-shopped books from my mother (I come from a family of pile builders); a vintage frock I WILL take the hem up on; a cheap and cheerful perfume I bought because I remembered wearing it 20 years ago; and, the latest still unread, edition of Frankie, bought because I adored the dress on the cover. See, I have a problem.

Even my digital space is cluttered. I’ve worked hard to rid myself of an extensive list of bookmarked pages and am instead using Pinterest to catalogue stuff I want to come back to and stuff I want to share. There’s just so much good stuff out there. I’m OD’ing on good stuff. How much good stuff can one girl handle? Is there a cut-off? A known limit? How do you turn away from the good stuff?

THINGS TO MAKE AND DO: Chinese rice bowl planters from Poppytalk.

THINGS TO COOK AND EAT: Raspberry curd from Kootoyoo

THINGS TO DROP DOUGH ON: This board is starting to look like a library catalogue but, hey, I like dropping dough on books. The Wilder Life, by Wendy McClure.

THINGS TO HANG ON THE WALL: OK, I failed. There’s four boards. Sue me. I can’t buy, eat or make E.A. Seguy’s natural history drawings of cicadas so there had to be another board.