The Domino Effect

We've all had times where the Domino Effect wreaks havoc with our plans.  You know what I mean  -  you set out to do something, but before you can do it something else needs to be gotten out of the way, but when you go to put it away, there's nowhere to put it so you need to clear space for it, and so it goes.

This week the Domino Effect happened here  -  but it turned out to be a good thing in a way.  I did get a lot more done than I would have if I'd been able to just finish what I started ...

As you may recall, I set out to clean, declutter, and organize my itty bitty workroom (you can see the "before" pictures here ).  One of the things I particularly wanted to do was weed through all the books and get the bookshelves properly organized, so I started by sorting all the fiction into three stacks:  keep, donate, and books I haven't read yet.  The books to be donated are mostly science fiction; they've been set aside for my best book-sharing buddy to go through, and whatever he doesn't want will go to the library or the thrift store.  The ones I haven't read yet went onto two shelves for easy access when I get some free reading time.  The keepers were packed up to go to the attic, where they'll stay until we get the family room downstairs finished.

And that's where the Domino Effect took over.

The attic was a disaster zone.  Between Big Guy moving stuff around last winter to find out where the leak was, and then the roofers moving stuff out of their way to install the new vents, and then Big Guy just opening the hatch and blindly tossing stuff up in the dark, absolutely nothing was still where it was the last time I was up there.  Boxes on their sides spilling their contents, Rubbermaid bins upside down so that when I tried to move them they shed their lids and emptied themselves, sawdust and shingle fragments and shreds of insulation everywhere ... honestly, I wanted to sit down and weep.

I hauled every single thing down out of the attic and piled it all in the living room. Then I re-packed every box and bin and bag, resisting the temptation to weed and purge everyone's stuff and confining that process to my own belongings.  Once that was done, I hauled everything back up the ladder  -  not an easy feat, and that part took much longer than the rest of the process  -  and grouped stuff according to whose it was.  So Big Guy's goods are to the west of the hatch, mine to the east, Youngest Daughter's to the north, and general household stuff, like holiday decorations, winter blankets, luggage, and so on are to the south.

Three days later I can finally cross the attic off the "declutter" list ... but the living room is now worse than before, since I found quite a few things I want to see if I can sell via Craigslist.  Oh, well, I'll get to them once I've finished the workroom.  Besides, I found the boxes of gorgeous slate-blue navy-rimmed Denby stoneware I'd stashed "for when the kitchen gets reorganized"  and decided that now's as good a time as any to dispense with the cheap Chinatown-dollar-store plates and bowls we've been using and get the nice stuff into the cupboard.  (The Denby was a thrift store bonanza  -  I could never have afforded even one place setting new, but I got eight each of dinner plates, lunch plates, and bowls for less than thirty dollars!)  So the Denby is in the kitchen, and the old dishes are stacked on a table in the living room; I don't dare just get rid of them (much as I'd like to) without Big Guy's approval, since the kitchen is more or less his domain.  I have a feeling they'll end up in boxes in the attic ... hoarding runs in his family, and while he's not as bad as most of them it's a major battle to convince him to let anything go.

By the time all the dishes were changed out, I was getting pretty hungry, so I took a microwave chicken pot pie out of the freezer.  While it was cooking, I got fed up with the mess the cookbook shelves over the microwave had become, so I took them all down and re-shelved them properly ... which in turn created more clutter to go through  -  all kinds of odd things had made their way onto the shelves at the hands of Mister I'll-just-set-this-here-until-I-get-around-to-putting-it-away.  Not my clutter, though, so it's all in a box waiting for him to sort through it when he gets home from his fishing trip.

So, the Domino Effect in action:  decluttering and organizing my workroom turned into decluttering and organizing the attic, which turned into decluttering part of the kitchen, which turned into more clutter in the living room and a car stuffed full of stuff to drop off at the thrift store ... but although it may not be immediately visible, progress is being made.

Getting On With It

Brace yourselves.  This is what my workroom looks like right now:

This room is where a lot of my life happens.  It's my sewing / knitting / crafts room.  It's the home office from which I blog, run my home "direct sales" businesses, do all the family banking and bill-paying, and conduct a fair bit of my social life.  It's my library and reading room. It's where I do all my garden planning and stash all my Christmas shopping.  It's where my "work" wardrobe lives, and where  -  when I have a job to go to  -  I get ready in the morning.  It's where my altar (not shown) resides.  And if I'm in here, chances are at least one cat is, too.

It's six feet by nine feet, plus a very small closet.

As you can see, it's gotten a little bit out of control ...

This room is going to be my number one project while Big Guy is off fishing.  I plan to:

1)  Catalogue the library, weed and purge (and donate to the local public library), re-shelve the reference books, and box up all the fiction to go to the attic for now  -  with the exception of the books I've acquired but not had time to read yet.

2)  Sort every piece of paper in the room and file, recycle, or burn (no shredder) as appropriate.

3)  Sort, purge & donate, and properly store what I'll keep of all the office and school supplies.  I have a feeling that even after I'm done I'll have a lifetime supply of pens, pencils, notebooks of all sizes, and file folders and hangers.  Right now a lot of local stores and businesses are collecting donations of school supplies, or I can take them directly to the local elementary school.

4)  Organize all of my home business supplies and stock in one place.

5)  Sort, purge, and organize all of my knitting, sewing, and craft supplies and materials.  And then finish the current pile of mending before I start any new projects!

When I'm done:

1)  I should have a lot more room to work, and a lot more time to work, since I won't be spending so much time looking for what I want and then trying to clear a space to work in.

2)  I'll be donating things that can't always be found in thrift stores, but that a lot of parents, sadly, can't afford to buy new for their back-to-school kids.

3)  I'll be saving money, because I'll no longer be running out to buy something I already have but can't find.

4)  I'll be saving more money, because I'll be making nice new clothes from materials I already have instead of shopping.

5)  I'll be making money, because I'll be able to get a lot more things made in time for the fall / winter craft fairs.

6)  I'll be making more money, because I'll be able to run my home businesses more efficiently.

7)  I'll be taking a lot of donations to the local thrift store, thereby decluttering my home and keeping stuff out of the landfill.

It won't all happen overnight.  But it will happen. 

Just wait till you see the "after" pictures!

Getting Things Done

For the first time in weeks, today I felt as though I was actually getting things done.  And it's a good feeling.

For months now I've had a "to-do" list of things that I wanted to see to around the house, but I could never seem to cross anything off.  No matter what I set out to do, it always seemed as though the universe was conspiring to prevent it.  If I got up in the morning determined to declutter a room, Big Guy would have something going on in that room.  If I wanted to shift furniture and deep-clean the living room floor, he'd pick that day to rack out on the sofa channel-surfing all day.  If I wanted to spend the day getting all the errands done, he'd suddenly disappear with the car for hours, or Daughter would need to be taken shopping or to the dentist or somewhere transit doesn't go.  If I wanted to start a sewing project, I'd find someone else's stuff all over the table ...  It was getting to be the story of my unemployed life  -  no matter what I wanted to do, someone wanted / needed something else to happen.

Until yesterday afternoon.

I've already mentioned that Daughter is working out of town, probably until mid-November.  Yesterday, Big Guy and a friend loaded up the camper and drove away for a week (at least) of fishing up the valley.  So I have the house all to myself.  For literally the first time in over thirty years, I have the house all to myself for more than twenty-four hours.  It's eerily quiet ... nobody is talking, unless you count the cats; nobody is crashing around in the kitchen or the basement or the workshop; nobody is yelling every five minutes for me to do something, or find something, or fix something, or clean something; the television hasn't been turned on all day.  And I'm loving it.

So what am I doing with all this unaccustomed peace and quiet?

Last night I was lazy; didn't do a darn thing except finish a library book and start another one while the cats took turns purring in my lap.  Bliss!

So far today I've gone online and applied for three jobs, touched up my grey roots, washed and hung up two loads of laundry, rearranged the living room and steam-cleaned the floor, got all caught up on e-mails and online surveys, and got half the pieces for Other Daughter's quilt cut out. I also gave our downstairs tenant the perfectly good mattress from our dying sofabed to augment hers, and had the city garbage truck take away the frame.  The living room looks twice as big and just as comfortable; once I find time to reassemble my Ikea armchair, I think even Big Guy will see what an improvement it is to have the old sofa gone for good.

This evening I'll be mending while I watch a lecture series on the origins of civilization.  I've always regretted having to leave college halfway through, and never having the funds to continue; and I've always looked for ways to keep studying the subjects I'm interested in, outside the framework of "formal" education.  So when Mom started getting university-level lectures, on DVD sets, with study guide books, I was delighted  -  especially since we have very similar interests.  So far I've studied my way through a series on the origins of religion, and when I finish the set I have now, I'll return them to her and borrow the set on the origins and evolution of language.

Tomorrow?  If it's nice out, I'll probably spend a good part of the day gardening and cleaning up the yard, possibly stacking firewood.  If it rains ... well, there's always that quilt.

Chipping Away At Things

Every time I make plans, something happens to change, disarrange, or nullify them.  Heavy sigh.  So I've decided that instead of announcing any intentions ahead of time, I'm going to focus on what I'm actually doing and what I've managed to get done.  Take that, Raven, Coyote, Loki, and whoever else has been throwing sand in my gears!  I'm also going to stop restricting my posting to twice a week; from now on, if there's something I want to post, I'm going to post it right then.

Yesterday was a fairly lazy day compared to most Mondays.  My poor knees were still protesting the hike through the provincial park on Sunday, so I mostly did things I could do sitting down ...

I gathered all of my makeup and related items on the desk  -  for someone who doesn't wear makeup often, it was suprising how much I had  -  sorted out stage/costuming/special effects makeup & tools, and  set all that to one side to go back into my "conventions and costuming" bin.  Then I weeded through everything that was left, tossing out whatever was too old or was a shade I knew I'd never wear again.  There were a few items in the "toss" category that were still new/sealed  -  they are all now in a bag for either the local women's shelter or Dress For Success, depending on which end of town I have an errand in next.  What's left now fits nicely in one smallish basket in my top dresser drawer, and is all stuff I know I will use.

Then I did the same thing with all my hair ties, clips, headbands, and related odds and ends.  Now, instead of an entire dresser drawer where I can never find the one thing I'm looking for, there are two small baskets in the same drawer with the makeup.  That frees up an entire drawer for other things, and there's still room for one more basket, which I think will be all my nail polishes and manicure tools  -  once I put that collection through the same weeding process, that is.

I downloaded all the pictures I took yesterday ... most of them are so-so, but I was really pleased with these three:

This fellow was determined to get every last bug out of that stump no matter how close I got:

The island seems to be all sandstone and there are some interesting formations, especially at the tide line:

And the arbutus trees are all twisted and sculpted by the wind:

If I ever come into a lot of money, I'd love to invest in some really top-of-the-line camera gear and take some photography courses.  For now, I'm happy playing with my little Nikon.

Apart from that, I finished a library book, started another one, and did some mending in front of the television.

So far today I've gone through my dresser and the "casual" half of my closet, and have filled two big bags with donations for the local thrift store.  I don't know if I'll get to the "office" clothes today, but I'm pleased with the results of my weeding so far.  When I finally get to the point where I'm ready to start using my patterns-and-fabric stash, I'll have plenty of hangers for new pieces, and enough space in the closet for them too!

Of course, there are the usual everyday chores ... dishes, cat care, weeding & watering what the squirrels have left of the vegetable garden, and so on ... let's just take it as a given that those are the things that happen every day and don't need to be detailed in every post  :-)