Yesterday I refilled an old travel palette with new watercolors. This meant rummaging through my paints, discarding dried up tubes of paint, and sorting them out. This is always fun as I get to choose my colors out of the collection that has accumulated over time as well as just clean things up.
I don’t know about other people, but I really like my stuff – of which I have scads – to be organized and tidy in all its scaddiness.
Baggies are great for this. Permanent markers label them, too, to help me sort things out. Categories include red, blue, yellow, orange, earth colors, teal & turquoise, violet, neutral-white-grey-black, green, and maybe a few others. If a color leaks, the baggie keeps things from oozing everywhere and when this happens, the offending bag is dumped into a bowl of water, the offending tube(s) removed, the rest of the tubes cleaned and dried, and moved into a new home. We are all happy.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 
Cleaning up is such a freeing feeling, leaving you with a sense of accomplishment. Well done -N!
It really does make for a feeling of accomplishment, Anne. Small ones are also as important as big ones. Now it is time to continue those little tasks, in between playtime.
😊
My watercolors are in small stackable drawers by colors, but my gouache is in a jumble. For me, buying new colors is retail therapy.
Filling a new palette is such fun. Do you swatch your new palette as well?
In all honesty, I dislike swatching things. I know my colors well enough after all these years of painting, but when I do get new colors and use them, before I use them in a painting, I mix them with the colors I want to use on a separate piece of paper. This way I can see how they interact with other colors. I am more of the kind of person who just dives in and learns by doing, and it is afterward I think. Before painting, I try to think, more about value and composition than color. Don’t know if I answered your question – but I am rambling – not even through the first of the morning’s coffee . . . . 😉