I started working with Nick in January 2019. We’ve known each other as neighbors in Long Beach for many years. He saw my organizing flyer on our local coffee shop’s community board and asked if I could help get his Alamitos Beach studio in order. We began right away.
Nick is a renaissance man of many interests. He’s a musician, conductor, photographer, ceramicist, writer, director, sculptor, painter, tech tinkerer, and virtual reality guru.
He had decades worth of tools associated with different media–photography, ceramics, and most recently virtual reality–cluttering his home. He was experiencing a creative block / crisis, and his home was causing him stress. He was feeling stuck. He had run out of the physical space necessary to generate new work.
The first day we made lots of new space. Nick went through all of his books, reducing his collection by over half. We filled two recycle bins with random papers he’d accumulated. He took 39 pounds of paper to a local shredder. We hauled numerous boxes of tech equipment, cords, kitchen stuff, and art supplies outside to the alley behind his apartment building. The alley is where neighbors typically share their free items. Within hours, nearly everything was gone, disbursed, reallocated.
I forgot to take a photo from day one, but here are a few photos from day two. You can only imagine the abject mess I walked into helping this blocked creative artist:
We continued chipping away at Nick’s clutter for a few days. By the end of the first week, Nick was in the decluttering flow and reporting back to me his milestones via text and over morning coffee at Hot Java.
See the three huge, door-blocking racks consuming so much space in Nick’s living room?
They are no longer in his apartment. Nick was originally planning to keep them, but we found a better spot to store several stackable containers that hold his equipment and keepsakes.
See that mess of a desk? It was decluttered and is now tucked away in the Murphy bed cubby, providing an abundance of new open space for seating, living, socializing, and virtual reality fun.
Tackling the bathroom and closet and fine-tuning the living room and kitchen are still on the to-do list, but Nick has come a long way since the beginning of January.
Stay tuned for further updates and photos on Nick’s life decluttering / restructuring progress.
Visit Nick’s website at http://www.nickvenden.com
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