A Dusting of Snow

I’m doing a little better now. I made Christmas cookies round 2, hung up some indoor decorations, and hung multi-colored lights up around the porch. It’s all Xmas up in here now! I keep playing Christmas music and keeping the fire going. Starting to get over the stupid cold we’ve had, it is NOT Covid-19, test was negative. YAY! Annnnnnd… it’s snowing! ^_^

Those are some of the good things in my life. I have so much to be grateful for. I can only assume it is human nature to sort of focus on the bad, on what’s missing or inadequate or whatever. I think I just need to fight that and try to focus on the good while working on solutions to any issues that crop up. I was just reading that happiness is something you can have welling up from within. It was put forward as something you could keep going, I’m assuming to varying degrees, through all the trials that life brings.

Here are a few pics of things adding to my happiness right now:

Peppermint thumbprint & Chocolate crinkle cookies, one nearly perfect Moroccan pancake, and my goof advent calendar.

My wonderful husband also put lights on the tree so we can decorate it soon. They are new lights and weirdly bright. The camera in my phone had an interesting time trying to focus on the tree.

These pics are in order showing the struggle to focus. I kind of love all of them. It’s okay, Tree, you’re beautiful even when you’re blurry.

Today will be dedicated to cleaning, laundry, getting organized in general and specifically getting ready to launch myself into the new year with shiny good intentions to change my life for the better. I have my free-form bullet journal and a free wall calendar from the grocery store and I’m ready to start building some more structure into my life. I will also be working on an experimental craft today. It goes along with many crafts I’ve done in the past, and I have a pattern for the structure of the item, but I’m winging it on the design. I can’t tell you more because it’s a present for someone who has been known to read this blog but I will post pics as soon as I can. ^_^

I hope you will all have a good, stress-free day today, the kind of day that makes you feel a little happier.

Decluttering Revived

After some very low-energy days I am back at it again. I baked a cake for my husband’s birthday yesterday, made french toast for breakfast and nachos for lunch yesterday as well. Today I have picked up the decluttering baton and worked on the front hallway. It was, of course, a disaster. I only snapped on pic of said disaster though so you will have to imagine the rest.

So, you have to imagine shoes Everywhere, dirt, sand, leaves etc. It was pretty bad.

Anyway, I spent some time picking up, sweeping, vacuuming, and setting aside some stuff to toss or give away, depending on the state of the item, and the entryway is improved if not yet finished.

The bags and boxes of stuff to give away is getting a little bit much. Also half the basement is full of foam computer bags connected to my husband’s work. It would be awesome to see all of it gone. There is just SO MUCH and a lot of it needs to go. Even all those damned shoes, we don’t need all of those and I’m positive that some of them haven’t been worn in ages and don’t fit anyone. Such a mess. I also need to sort through that basket of gloves, hats and scarves and get rid of the matchless, the ruined and the unneeded.

I let the dishes slip yesterday so I need to get back on that. I cooked 2 meals and baked a cake, prepped and ran The Slithering RPG for a bit of a celebration. The Fall birthdays continue! It felt bad giving my husband one skinny little book for his birthday, I think I will score him a bottle of the scotch he likes next chance I get.

My paints are all out in the shed and need to come back in the house for the winter. Bummer. I can’t let them freeze but I hate to bring more stuff into the house. In trying to get clutter under control I’m trying to use the library instead of buying books. It’s difficult. Books are my thing, my life, my weakness, my downfall when it comes to stopping spending. I’m doing fine at the moment, but I know there are books that I can get through the library and read and will still desperately want to buy anyway. Anything featuring both Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu is pretty much already bought. Whether it is written yet or not even conceived of at this time, it is as if those volumes are already in my hands and on my shelves. I always have a short list of books I “need.”

Everywhere I look, aside from the areas I’ve recently worked on, there is clutter. It’s depressing, draining and sometimes feels insurmountable. That’s why I need to take it one step at a time. If I do this slowly, and correctly, I might just get this all under control and have the nice, clean, fairly orderly, homey home I want to live in. I’m trying. Day by day, I am trying, and I can’t really ask much more than that of myself.

The Cake is not a Lie

My middle child has her birthday today so of course making the cake was a key honor and duty I had today. Triple chocolate with purple frosting. It seems to have come out alright. There will be ice cream and, I believe, Chinese food tonight after I get home from work. Happy Birthday, my sweet girl.

Of course I have also been cleaning. Laundry and dishes are caught up, our bed is made, cat boxes are clean, extraneous sensitive papers are shredded. I’m getting somewhere. Still busily decluttering and organizing. Today I cleaned off the heater in our bedroom and made a start at the disaster by my side of the bed. I’m a nester everything I use frequently ends up in a pile, or several piles, where I can reach it.

I’m working on getting us on an even keel again. It’s finally working because I am only shopping for really specific things that we have thought about deliberately and decided we truly want or need. It’s nice. Retail therapy is not a good thing. That little boost only lasts such a short time and the money is gone forever and there we are drowning in STUFF. I am really enjoying making our house, ever so slowly, into a soothing, serene home.

But I have to get ready and go to work! It really is very odd loving my job but hating leaving home to go do it. I’d much rather stay here and work on the house. It doesn’t help that work is So Weird with no patrons in the library. I can’t wait till tomorrow when we have our trial run of outdoor browsing. I’m not sure how we’ll enforce distancing and all that but hopefully it will go well. It would be nice to see people again. Oh, and I got a late b-day present from my husband. He forgot he’d pre-ordered it so it was a surprize for both of us. I can’t wait to read it!

Late Summer Declutter: day 2

Yesterday was a good day. I got a lot done and made a nice difference in the kitchen. It honestly gave me a little lift when I went down to make the tea this morning. So, I am going to assign myself one small area a day, on days when that’s feasible ie Not Saturday as I am working all day then running a game when I get home, and I am going to put in my best effort to declutter and clean that small area. Today will be the pantry area, a part of the laundry room with cupboard up and down that is just buried in STUFF. I’ll post before and after shots because that’s what makes it vaguely fun.

The pantry area Before shot. How did I let it get like this? That is a lot of stuff…

this is a better pic of where I started today.

I forgot that yesterday I dealt with all the mounds of plastic and paper bags that were jammed behind the sewing machine. Also, this 2nd pic shows all the junk on top of the high cupboards too. It was a disaster and a lot of stuff was pure junk. The teetering stack of photo albums has no home yet, I want to see if there is a better way to store all the photos. Damn, albums are huge and awkward space-suckers! Anyway, here is the after photo…

Look! There’s a counter there it must have been there the whole time but it was completely buried.

So decluttering is going pretty well so far. I’m considering doing two small areas today because Saturday is a no-go as I will have no time to myself at all. I like Fall cleaning better than Spring cleaning. Fall cleaning I do knowing we’re going into winter where we’ll be shut inside a lot and I like getting our home ready for those long months. There will be snow and sand and salt tracked in, ash from the wood stove everywhere, and that winter feeling that can either be “feeling cozy” or “feeling closed-in.” I do my best to try to make sure it’s the former. Spring cleaning is different, for me, it feels more like coming out of hibernation and sloughing off layers. It’s nice to deep clean and get ready for the higher energy months I think I just prefer the feeling of easing into the quiet dark of my favorite months. ^_^

The kitchen counter is still clear. The cat’s dishes are back, clean and shiny, and the crock pot is turning last night’s chicken bones into broth, but otherwise it’s clear. I feel like I’m getting somewhere at last. I wish I’d started in March and not waiting till now to make a plan. Oh well, this is where I am and it’s fine.

Housework Intensifies

Yeah, so, being home 24/7 for 3 months didn’t cause me to magically whip my house into shape. 3 1/2 months of just me leaving the house for part time work didn’t help me to magically whip my house into shape either. I have finally come to the conclusion that I may need an actual plan, I may need to make a schedule for various chores and even slot in some vague times of day in order to get things done. I made a list this morning of all the things I’d like to get done today and then I scheduled them throughout the day. So far today I have:

Made tea and breakfast
fed cats
changed our sheets
run a load of washing
filled out school paperwork for our son
rescheduled a dentist appointment ….And…
Written a sympathy card for my cousin

I still have to:

Plan dinner
water plants
clean cat boxes
pick up prescriptions
make lunch… And…
Hand a load of washing

For longer term/ongoing goals I Really want to declutter in a major way. We simply have too much stuff that is here for no good reason at all. Just so, so much stuff. I mean, the house isn’t like anything you’re seen on “Hoarders” but it’s cluttered and some parts are really disorganized. It’s tough to know where to start, really, but I think I might go back to basics and start with Flylady http://flylady.net/ again. It’s such a gentle system, starting out with just cleaning one’s kitchen sink and progressing from there. It’s helped me in the past when I’ve let things get out of control though I do tend to drop it after a bit when my inner whimsy balks at the structure. I find a lot of value in a few of her ideas:

You can do anything for 15 minutes. (set a timer and do a chore for 15 minutes, stop when the timer goes off and move on to something else. You can return to the original chore later.) Set a timer on the next chore for 15 minutes… etc.
The last 15 minutes of every hour are yours. Take a break! Stop and drink some water or tea/coffee, read or call a friend. Get back to chores when 15 minutes are done.
When decluttering there are only 3 options for each item: 1. Keep it (and put it away) 2. Give it Away 3. Throw it Away. Find a box/bin/laundry basket and sort all the items into them. (1 for each: Keep/Give/Toss!) Very helpful to sort this way and then… Follow Through!
Shun Perfectionism. Doing some cleaning is a lot better than none! So run your vacuum quickly over the high traffic areas and don’t bother moving the furniture if you don’t have time. Do half the dishes! Wipe the worst of the muck out of the fridge, fold the laundry even if you don’t have time to put it away! Basically, anything you actually DO will make you feel a little better and improve things a little bit so go ahead and do what you can manage, it will help.

Those are my favorite ideas of hers, probably imperfectly interpreted, please check our her website for the real information. There’s also the idea of ‘habits’ how getting into a routine or schedule gives one the inertia to keep going, cleaning chores become automatic. I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten to that point but it would be pretty cool if I did. Imagine the cleanliness. ^_^ I’m going to start today with one area and post before and after pics.

Today’s project: The kitchen counter to the right of the sink. (Before & After. Note: the cat was NOT disposed of, I cleaned her dishes and she left in a huff.)

Creating Space

I’ve finished 15 paintings in 3 days. I am feeling much less stressed than I was. I know that will wear off if I stop creating but it feels great right now.

While I haven’t painted much in a long time, I have been crafting right along, crochet, knitting, sewing, DIY Harry Potter stuff and so on, and there is just no space for me to create in. All the painting I’m doing? I’m doing it in my kitchen, I pretty much stole the kid’s study spot which everyone is about to need again. I also had to stop sewing because there is no place I can set up my machine since my eldest moved home. Most of my supplies are crammed inaccessibly in bins in closets right now too. So I’ve been dreaming of a space of my own, cruising ads for used RVs, looking at new sheds, etc. We have a shed, half of which is full of crap we don’t need, so why not use that?

It needs work. After deciding even used RVs are way too expensive, and after looking at new sheds and the extra windows I’d want and all that, I went out an looked at the old shed again. It’s filthy, but I know how to clean, I can pull out all the nails someone pounded in, it needs new windows, some flooring, insulation, interior walls etc etc. Anyway, I emailed the person who does all our handy-work to see if she’ll give me an estimate. I might have to get it done in stages or something, but the space could definitely work. Get rid of the junk, pull the nails, scrub it up a bit and then Anita can work her magic and I will have a studio. I could have my own studio. With a little loft to read and nap in. (Hopefully) That’s the dream!

To get what I want new would be around $6,000… way out of the budget. I’m afraid to get the quote from Anita but it will have to lower, right? Further updates as event warrant.