The life in our heads...

I'm working with woman I've known for 30 plus years. We packed her up in September so that her house could be remodeled, and now we are putting the house back together. She promised that she would prune her mountains of "stuff", but it seems impossible for her to give up much.  She is not a hoarder, but a child of the depression (the OTHER depression) and she was taught to hang on to everything.

Her closets are stuffed with projects...the hat knitting project, the doll sewing project, the beaded snowflake project, the six mini houses projects, the lamp repair project, the jewelry making project, the quilt project, etc. Each project has heaps of supplies that need to be organized and contained.  The storage unit upstairs is stuffed with these things, and so is the off-site storage unit.

She tells me, "I'm going to work on this one as soon as...."
I say "that's what you told me last week, and the month before that, and the year before that, decades have gone by, but you never seem to get to it. And you just keep adding more projects to the list."

As a professional organizer, I see a lot of people living a life in their heads that is
completely different from the life they actually lead.  It may be collecting tools for woodworking, recipes and cooking gadgets, clothes, cars that "just need a little work"... many of us envision a life that includes doing these things, when in fact, we have a mountain of
excuses for why we are NOT working on our hobbies and projects.

 I've organized her projects and gotten the closet under control...at least until the next project shows up.

How do you handle your list of projects?