i am a gemini=full of contradiction

note; please excuse lack of capitals and a partial lack of proper punctuation. my laptop is being a beast.

i aspire to live in a tiny home. it’s insane how drawn i have been to this idea since the very first time i came across it and yet it may not be something i could actually live with. on the one hand, i can see paring down on many, many possessions. i can see getting by with minimal kitchen gear that all nests together as much as possible, minimal dishes and cutlery/utensils, no problem. minimal wardrobe wouldn’t be an issue for me, i could digitize the movies and shows i ‘need,’ i already use a little laptop not a big desktop, i can totally see minimizing down to essential towels, bedding etc, i can see one day living with just a single cat or smallish dog instead of constantly cohabitating with a minimum of 3 furry fellow-travellers. shoes are not an issue. i can get by with a single pair for each function; snow boots, hiking boots, sandals, work shoes, and one dressy pair. i don’t even need a bunch of make-up i wear it maybe a few times a year. i’m sure there are other areas i could easily pare down as well, but…

it all falls down when i consider;

books. i have lots and i am forever acquiring more despite my best intentions. i have a nook, and there are many books i could handle having only digitally… but i ‘need’ a shocking number of books as physical objects. i love them so completely. books.
art supplies. paints, canvases, sketch books, colored pencils, bags crammed with odds and end i intend to use in some nebulous future project, adhesives, brushes, etc etc etc. it is hard to imagine paring it all down enough to keep in a tiny home.
crochet and knitting gear. holy crap. i have lots. lots. i can honestly see paring this particular hobby down a fair bit, getting rid of items i don’t really need, of which there are many. this one might be doable; a single bin of yarn, a basket for scraps and all the hooks and needles.
also sewing stuff. i have a sewing machine, a serger, and tons of fabric and hand sewing items too. just the basics of this one is fairly bulky.
games and gaming books, minis etc. we have a lot. we have several game platforms and tvs for video games, multiple bookshelves of rpg books, endless, boundless bins and bins of minis, etc. plus board games, card games and on and on. we could probably halve the amount without pain but it would be awfully difficult to divest ourselves of much more than that.
fandom stuff. yeah….. i do not, we do not, have a vast epic collection of museum worthy, collectable amazing fandom stuff, but we do have more than it seems at first glance. i have made tons of cool harry potter/hogwarts stuff for wearing, decoration etc. i have tardis string lights and a dalek pepper pot. in brief we have; marvel stuff, star wars stuff, doctor who stuff, game of thrones stuff, star trek stuff, fruits basket stuff, ruroni kenshin stuff… and many, many more. how would i even begin to pare that stuff down…

plus, i keep a lot of food on hand in case of emergency/illness/etc. i am not sure how low i could manage and not induce anxiety in myself. i tend to have at least a few months worth of food on hand. they wouldn’t be the best months we ever got through but we damn sure wouldn’t starve.

oh, and stuffed animals, using the term very loosely, i have more than would likely be great in a tiny house. henry, rocket, cap, and yix all live in the bedroom and i have a doll crib overflowing in the hall with more. i have pared down in that area, wildly. my remaining collection is ‘bare-bones’… for me.

so i want to live a minimalist lifestyle in a tiny house …but… i will also need another tiny house for my books, another for arts and crafts, and we’ll need a dedicated gaming tiny house as well.

yeah.

sigh.

i think that many tiny houses probably equals pretty much a regular house.

disappointing.

Snag

My idea of reopening my shop in March has hit a snag. Well, snagS, to be honest. A lot has been going on in my world.

Ramping up crafty productiveness made me suddenly decide to make my first sweater… I think. I have vague memories of maybe trying before? Eh, likely not terribly successful, or why isn’t my wardrobe chock-a-block with cute sweaters I made? So, I found a tutorial for a super cute sweater I totally want to wear ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYHF8e8q1hY&list=LL&index=4&t=14s ) and bookmarked it. Then I searched for “super easy beginner sweater tutorial” and landed on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xl-O8RC_g8. So, I made a sweater. Not just any sweater, MEGA SWEATER. It is huge! I didn’t actually watch much of the tutorial, I used the linked text pattern, if there was a swatch/scale I missed it completely. My sweater is unstoppable.

It’s so huge I couldn’t get it all in one shot.

That ate up basically all my free time for a week. On the plus side it could be layered over the most massive of other sweaters. (Mega Sweater has no equals.) Yeah, so I’m calling it a modest success and a great learning experience. Meanwhile I have moved on to making the next sweater and I did do a swatch and it worked out fine. I’ve finished the front piece and started the back.

Despite my efforts with the swatch it is clearly wider than intended…

There will be some scalloping added in the neckline and I hope to use it to make the sweater more reasonable. If it comes out really wonky I am considering trying again with different yarn and hopefully whatever lessons I learn/knowledge I get from this first try. Crochet is tricky! But I’ve had it with being afraid to try things. Fuck it! Life is not a dress rehearsal.

I also got side tracked making a baby present for my beloved boss. She’s having her first baby like any minute now and I wanted to make something nice as I know she appreciates heartfelt handmade items. I made these adorable stars that were going to be a mobile but ended up being a wall hanging. and it looks like “insert pic into text” is just a well-oiled machine! Anyway, she loves it and already hung it near the crib. I’m glad I went with ‘wall hanging’ because she is making a mobile. Here’s a bigger pic:

These little things are fun and easy to make. Fast too!

So, I still have a couple of weeks, or more if I open later in March, to get things done. I have several pairs of mittens that need liners, (that I still need to make) a basket full of cloth waiting to be made into cloth napkins, a couple of boxes filled with handmade envelopes, and lots of plans to make more mittens in new and exciting colors. I’m just not sure I will get enough done to be ready to actually open. The liners are a big project as are the napkins and our place is currently cluttered all to heck since I haven’t been able to purge things we don’t need for almost a year. I really need to box up major amounts of clothes, books, etc and get them to the thrift shops to find new homes. It’s getting ridiculous. No, I won’t soon be seen in an episode of “Hoarders” but clutter is basically everywhere at this point and no room really looks nice anymore. Yeah. I need to get to work on the clutter even if it has nowhere to go. I need to figure out something to do with it all!

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.

All Outta Rooves

Today is another headache day which is tragic as I was hoping to get back on track today, things continue to slide. BLEH. I am actually sort of keeping up. My cleared spaces are remaining cleared and I’m keeping up with laundry and dishes. That’s just all I can ask of myself right now. I’ll have to make dinner and go get the farmshare as well so that is plenty to do when I’m feeling this way. I want to make more progress but I have reached the city limits.

For those that might not know, I suffer from frequent (almost daily) headaches and from mostly controlled migraines, I have been on daily medication to keep my migraines away (mostly) for YEARS. Lately I have been trying to fight my headaches without resorting to acetaminophen as much as possible because my liver has some sort of issue. I drink lots of water, sleep regularly as best I can, and use heating pads and ice packs. It, my life, used to be much worse. This morning I took some meds. They haven’t worked yet. I still attended the ComCat webinar and answered a bunch of work emails so Go Me.

We all have our burdens, am I right? Yeah, it’s tough getting through some days without going on some kind of pain-related spree but I keep trying. I wanted today to be super productive. I wanted to declutter one or two more areas, get some more regular chores done and spend time reading. I’m down to: maybe I can watch an episode or 2 of Vera tonight. I hope you are all having a better day than I am. XXOO

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.)

Sunday, Relaxing,& Thinking

The hippie fort soothes me. It turns off the jagged, jangling, screaming of my overwhelm and lets me rest. Out there, 30 yards from the house, there is no TV, the internet is slow and unreliable, and time slows down. I colored for a bit while my husband took a turn reading the book we’re reading aloud to each other: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet; by Becky Chambers. It is a great, fun read so far. It’s got a little of the flavor of Firefly plus… something else, with aliens and such, and the characters are wonderful so far. We are enjoying it so much we might make it a family read-aloud in the near future. ^_^

I finished The Year of Less; by Cait Flanders. Terrific book, just what I needed to motivate me. I’ll be getting started on Step One soon; Declutter your House. It sure needs it! So much stuff. Why? So much. The not spending much has happened on it’s own due to the global pandemic but it’s still something I’m going to have to track as the world struggles to go back to some kind of normal. I don’t want to slip into old, unconscious habits that were dragging us down. Hmmm, I guess I’m going to need some boxes and some bags, I have a lot of stuff to go through.

Progress

I’m getting somewhere.

After a long time of feeling like no progress was being made in almost any areas of my life I am making some headway, however small, in more than one area.

Decluttering: In the past few weeks I have filled up the trunk of my car twice and dropped everything off at the Survival Center. Several bags of clothes, a few boxes of books, some household goods, and loads of CDs, DVDs, and video games are all gone. I’ve also been making an effort to put some items away that had been left in awkward places for MONTHS. Moving some of the things I will use for my studio to the shed has helped too. The house is feeling less out of control and more livable. I’m getting somewhere!

Meal Planning: Officially back on track after mucking it up for a while. It’s been 2 solid weeks now that I have planned everything out and I’m doing well. I even turned down an invitation to go out tonight for someone’s birthday because it would muck up the schedule and becauseI hate biggish plans last minute. I like small invites like let’s go get coffee/tea, are you free? But Dinner and movie on a Tuesday? The movie theater they are going to is over an hour from our house and the movie wouldn’t be getting out till after 10:00. My husband has classwork and we need to be here to make sure the kids do their homework too. I don’t know these folk’s exact schedules but I am willing to bet they don’t have to be up at 6 am tomorrow. I initially thought they meant this weekend some time. Spontaneity seems fun but I don’t have that kind of freedom.

Work: I am getting near to having things planned out three months in advance as my boss requested! Once I nail down a couple of dates for events and get some flyers made I will be right where I want to be and will just have to keep up planning for that 3rd month in the future as I go. Awesome. I am also about halfway through with pulling together my plans for next summer’s Summer Reading Program. I am starting to feel less overwhelmed and under-qualified. ^_^

My Son: His therapist reports progress is being made! He is less depressed and some of his other issues are lessening in intensity and he is feeling better. He reports he is doing well keeping up with school work and doing well socially! BAM! ^_^ That is awesome.

There are loads of areas that are still pretty much sucking but I am just going to be happy about all this progress right now. Things are good. Things are good!

The Shed and Decluttering…

Got an email at last. Someone is coming tomorrow to assess what will be needed to put the new windows in the shed and make a plan to move forward on the things I can afford to get done now. Yay! All the traps I put out have only caught one mouse so far. I am beyond shocked and will keep a watch on the situation. My guess is that the little buggers are crafty AF and that there are loads of them.

Been working on cleaning and decluttering lately. So much to do. Actually, my trunk is full and I should stop writing and go drop off a load of stuff at the Survival Center.