Not Quite Done

I recently read about a group of people who got together as a club in order to encourage each other to finish projects that had been sitting around gathering dust. This got me so excited I could hardly stand it. Here, finally, is a support group I don't need, a problem I don't have, a procrastination I don't engage in. Pat me on the back! I've done lots of crafts during my lifetime, but they were almost always gifts and therefore needed to be finished or I'd have been empty-handed. The other problem mentioned was that their craft rooms or closets were over-flowing with supplies. I don't have the overflowing shelves problem either, but I will admit that I cheated. There came a time when I looked at the paints, pine cones, yarn, buttons, etc., etc., etc. and got real. One by one I considered each item and decided whether it was something I ever wanted to do again. In most cases, the answer was no. I used the traditional system of making three piles: keep, toss and give away. Since I was in the right frame of mind to do this, I was ruthless, no fantasies of maybe getting back into a long forgotten craft. Fortunately, giving away piles of materials was not difficult. At the time I had friends who were camp counselors and preschool teachers and always happy to get "stuff," plus one friend who somehow knows who can use anything else I might have. But there are many unfinished projects around our house and that is a much bigger problem. We bought a basic, solidly built house a long time ago. We knew there was a lot we wanted to do to it, but with the confidence of youth, figured that would be no problem. We followed a system I referred to as "My Inspiration, His Perspiration." I'd dream up a project and then my husband constructed it. (BTW, he likes building things. It wasn't forced labor.) The problem was that we were always short on time or money, or both, and often had more than one pressing need. So what happened was that as soon as a project was usable, we moved on to another one. Finishing details went undone. Since, despite our best efforts, life has steadily gotten crazier and busier, most of those details are still finished. We have a To Do List for when my husband retires. It's one of those "it's going to get longer before it gets shorter" lists. All of these unfinished projects are on it. But so are many new projects, and ones we've talked about for years but never had time to start. I do wonder sometimes if we'll ever learn the art of finishing what we start.