2012: A Retrospective

I just returned from a few days away visiting relatives, back to a home still a little messy from a party I threw the day before I left.  I had to go on New Year's Eve, which meant that I have not had a chance to work on my home since that day.

Last year was like living five years in one.  At the start of it I was not in a good way, though I was managing.  Now I feel much more like myself.  You can laugh, but the day I spent with friends at Enchanted Forest was the day I think I knew I was getting better.

So many things have happened, though of course it's never enough. This year I hope to relax and focus on some creative goals I have, as well as long-term goals. I told my sister that I am going to do everything this year. I'm starting with some design projects including the one in my own house!

Here are a few things I want to take on this week:

1. Clear out the ex-computer room, spackle and prep walls for painting
2. Give large white bookshelf another coat of paint
3. Complete a secret project I started a while back.  Don't worry, all will be revealed soon!
4. Clean the bathroom for real, floor and tub included.
5. Make a pile of things that I can sell at my mom's upcoming yard sale.

Now that I know what tags are for on blogs, I want to go through my previous posts and add them too.

Thanky-doodle

It's Thanksgiving day and I'm waiting for my sister and her partner to come and get me so we can converge on other family members in a third location.  I wanted to check into my blog while I have a minute.

I only remembered a few days ago that I haven't really consulted any books about cleaning or organizing since I began this struggle.  I've looked at a few websites and recalled some common wisdom but haven't taken an academic approach to this thing yet.  I went to my library's website and put a couple books on hold to get started:

1. Leeds, Regina.  The Complete Idiot's Guide to Decluttering. 
2. Davidson, Jeff.  Simpler living : a back to basics guide to cleaning, furnishing, storing, decluttering, streamlining, organizing, and more. 

I already had 13 books on hold so I couldn't add any more after these two.

I don't think I'm going to learn a lot of surprises.  I really just want some inspiration.

Speaking of which, here's a show I really liked that I don't think is on anymore: How Clean Is Your House?  It originated in England, and then it became a program on American cable with the same two sassy ladies.  I know mine isn't even close to what they've seen, but right now it's in a state. 

 

Down in Hayes Valley

I've been back from the Bay Area for a few days now.  It was one crazy, fully packed trip!  I saw so many good friends and family members.  Alameda, California is a second home to me and if I didn't love Portland so much I might move there.

I had a great time visiting a part of San Francisco with which I was until recently unfamiliar: Hayes Valley.  It's the kind of place where I couldn't afford most of anything that my friend and I saw in the stores, but I'm going to mention them all because we had fun and got a lot of good ideas.  I'm still searching for the perfect bedspread, and we stopped in Reliquary to see a quilt I had looked at on my last trip.  If you follow the link, you can see many of their colorful quilts on a shelf.  Alas, it was too small but at least I have another reason not to spend money I don't have on it.  We paid another visit to Lotus Bleu to see their rugs and textiles again.  It's such a beautiful store, the kind of place I tell myself I'll come back to when I have the money.  One of my favorite places that day was Nancy Boy  , a store with vintage furnishings and their own line of bath products.  The guy that worked there was super nice.  One of the reasons I decided to blog about the place is that he told us that they get business through word of mouth, so I wanted to make sure I did my bit.  He also recommended that we try mixing tea with "cawfee" sometime for a surprisingly refreshing and delicious beverage.  I haven't tried it yet but I will, though for now all I have at home is herbal tea and instant decaf so I don't think it'll be as good as promised.

Ah, San Francisco

I'm attending a convention here in the Bay Area, and it happens to be in the Design District of San Francisco.  It's not an interior design convention, but the Alternative Press Expo or A.P.E.  I'm getting inspired by a lot of creativity here.  I'm lucky because I parked in an area where there are some great stores, such as Roche Bobois, a European furniture place.  These are some very high end shops!  My tastes aren't really expensive (as you can probably tell from the pictures you've seen so far) but I can appreciate good quality when I see it.

I'm looking for a really great bedspread I saw in a book called Paris Style vol. II, it was in the bedroom of Christian Louboutin.  I can't find a picture of it at all on the net, so here's a photo of a chair in his living room to give you an idea of his aesthetic.  He's the shoe designer, in case you don't know who I'm talking about.

The bedspread doesn't really look like this, but it's very bold and colorful and exotic.  I think I stand a chance of finding something to fit what I'm after here in the Bay Area, don't you think so?

A little bit of plastic

What I have pictured here are some small implements that can change your life!  They don't look like much, but they've been a great help to me and I didn't even know they existed until just over a year ago.  They sit right on a shelf, just about any shelf in a cupboard, and they give you a little more surface to set things on.  They're especially good for small objects, because you can set them on top and slide little things right under them.  Because they're not really as deep as a cupboard, you can stand things in front of them that are taller.  If you look at my previous entry, you can see them in action.  On the larger wire tray at right, I included some small vintage trays to set on top to show how they can hold tiny things that will slip through the openings.

My mother gave me the larger wire thing, as well as others.  I got about ten of the smaller ones at a yard sale for ten cents each.  I took all that they had!

This leads me to another pointer: you don't have to spend a lot to get sorted.  Keep an eye out at yard sales for containers.  You don't have to have a closet company come in and build a thing that looks like a cat hotel for your shoes and shirts.

I just returned from a week's visit with my family in California.  I have to admit that the continuing endeavors to clean out my basement were in my thoughts more than once. It's a creative project, and it's making me look at myself and my surroundings in a new way.  I think it's partly because I've turned some corners in the grieving process for my husband, and I'm looking at possessions as separate from memories.  It's very hard but it's extremely important for me.

Am I there yet?

I decided a couple weeks ago that I was going to treat this organizing project as a process, not a destination.  Only a couple days ago I was taking a long journey by car.  It occurred to me that if I thought of the trip as a series of little sections, it would be more bearable than wondering at what time I would end up at the city I was aiming to visit.  Like, if I told myself, I'll stop in Cottage Grove and then I'll stop in Grant's Pass, then  it gave me little goals to meet.  I didn't become impatient with myself for not getting to my last stop by a specific time, and I enjoyed the whole trip a lot more.

Thusly I am approaching my decluttering objectives.  If I say to myself, today I'm going to sort out this pile of papers on my couch and focus on that until it's done the way I want, then I don't get overwhelmed.  In contrast, when I look at my basement, or my computer room, or any whole room as a whole, I feel like I will never get through it.  Little bits of success make me want to see more.  You can't go through a garden and thresh out every weed in a single sweep; you must pull out each little nuisance one by one.

This process can be fun.  Additionally, I've found so many lost items while sorting that I want to see what else will turn up.

Last week I decided to apply this approach to my work in my living area.  I had been spending so much time taking things out of the basement that my upstairs was getting out of control.  After just a few hours I had a clean living room and kitchen, and the linen closet was looking a lot better too.  I had an even bigger pile of things to donate to Salvation Army, which went down to the basement to await their truck on pickup day.

I'm so preoccupied with decluttering as a hobby as well as a necessity, that I've begun treating it as a form of pornography.  I've been surfing before-and-after pictures of basements, bedrooms, closets and kitchens that underwent cleanups on Google Images.  I hunted down articles with tips and personal case histories.  I don't know if they helped so much as made me want to dive into their messes and see if I could make some headway.

Gretchen Rubin, author of the book The Happiness Project, has lots of great advice for living well, and counts decluttering as an excellent way to raise your spirits.  Read her upbeat blog here.