It's been a busy new year, full of to-do lists and activity. I finally got the dryer hose situated. I had planned to simply vacuum and have done with it, but I ended up getting a new hose and changing it myself. I think I did all right. I reasoned that it had been ten years since the dryer was new, so the hose had to have ten years' accumulation of lint in its deepest reaches.
I made a mini rack for necklaces and bracelets using a wooden children's toy I found at SCRAP and a handful of vintage buttons in all colors. The buttons keep the jewels from sliding off the spindly parts:
By the way, I made the stuff hanging from it in this picture too! I'll soon post pics of a mini grotto I just made also.
One of my new ideas for the year is to create a fix-it basket for little things that need repairs and alterations. I keep it in a really obvious place so I can pick up something to work on if I have a moment. Buttons get stitched back on, split seams get closed, etc.
I'm getting overenthusiastic about putting little things away or finding good places to store things. Suddenly, my office is no longer a place where I store stuff that I want to hide from the living room, and I want to keep it that way.
I also now keep my planner nearby when I'm home or at work, so I can jot down anything I think of that I need to do. I don't have any resolutions this year, except to keep building on all the work I did last year, and I want to make sure I make notes of any little thing I can get done.
Oh yeah, and I think I mentioned that I was giving away my car to OPB. Well, a tow truck came on January 4th and got it. Bye bye Camry, thanks for the memories!
It was a great year, housekeepingwise and everything else. My home is looking really good. I was talking to a good friend a few weeks ago about the grieving process and mental health issues relating to it, and how you can't think your way out of that cycle. It's the truth, trying to chase thoughts away won't make it happen.
I accomplished a lot since last January 1, one of the biggest things being that I have a job that I love. For a couple weeks now I've been taking steps to rid of my car, which I'm donating to OPB. I shed my internet and land line at home last fall, who knows what I'll learn to do without. I'm trying to figure out if I should change my healthcare plan. Oh yeah, and I finally paid off my student loans! In this day and age, that's no little thing!
While I still have my car I'm making the donation rounds to Goodwill and SCRAP, and I sold about 60 CDs last weekend. I will miss my car, but Portland is great in that you can walk or bus anywhere. When I lived in Berkeley I walked up to a mile each way just to buy vegetables or see a movie, so I know I'll be just fine.
I'm having a love affair with gifs (and Michael Caine), here's another for the ages. Happy New Year everyone!!
Hey all, I've got my Christmas deco up, looking sweet! I'll put up some pictures later. I'm saving it as a surprise for a party I'm throwing this weekend. Yeah!! I've got to put some lights in the windows though. There's no point if there's no lights.
I found a sneery op-ed piece here decrying the having of holiday trees by folks who are childless (such as myself). I'm pretty sure it's tongue in cheek, and there's a counterpoint addressing my own opinion, but it still made me mad! I have three trees this year. I like sparkly stuff dammit. I like decorations and holidays period. Any holiday. I dress more or less like a human Christmas tree for any given occasion. I'd love to have a least one kid someday. Why should they have all the fun? Wouldn't they want their mom to be living a rad, colorful life until the day they find themselves under my roof? Well, that's going to be me, year round. And I'm ratcheting it up for this most wonderful time of the year.
It's December and time to think about the things I'd like to get done before New Year's Eve. What's on your list? I made one while I was a little bored over Thanksgiving, and here's some stuff that needs to happen:
Get brakes fixed
Clean dryer hose
See the Nutcracker ballet at last
Have a holiday party
This is by no means all of it. I keep adding to it too.
My office is still a shambles, but I did take some time to clean and redecorate the bathroom. I hung my collection of wall-hanging faces above the toilet, just in time for the family to pay a visit. They go so well with the head shots from Three Women, don't you think?
I'm toying with placing things on the counter. I don't know if I like it. I just cleaned out the drawer so now I can stash my necessaries in there, and the surface isn't such a disaster.
I like the theme that my wall art is assuming, even though it was quite unintentional. Now I just need something to go over the door!
I found couple links on Buzzfeed.com that got my interest, and were totally relevant to my mission here. These might be helpful for you too - who knew that Buzzfeed could be useful? 52 Meticulous Organizing Tips For The OCD Person In You
It's hard to believe that this blog project started as me just clearing out my bad basement, and now it's led to all these other changes around the house, and my whole life really. Getting your personal space under control is like increasing your mental health.
My work room is still messy, not bad, but I think that's where my real attention is needed. Not that I'm going to stop decorating in other rooms, but I'm going to make the office my priority.
I'm also making better cleaning a priority. I'm not a good mopper, but I am a good sorter. That's why my kitchen floor is so dusty. I'm working on making things a little shinier as well as straightened. Many people think these go hand in hand, but I'm a little slower to scrub and polish. I've been consulting Make Your Place: Affordable, Sustainable Nesting Skills by Raleigh Briggs to get hints on non-toxic homemade cleaners. I need to get a refill on Dr. Bronner's soap.
Yeah, those are prescription bottles on the coffee table, it's that dull in here. I need to channel Neely O'Hara in this kind of atmosphere. There wouldn't even be that secretary at right if it hadn't been too large for me to move after taking all the other furniture out of the way. The word "neutral" can be pejorative when used to describe the palette of this habitat.
The Vibrant After:
I learned a valuable lesson about priming, which is to do it, which I didn't this time. But I'm so pleased with how everything looks. Even though it could stand to be touched up near the ceiling just a bit more. Maybe no one will notice.
I didn't plan to move EVERYTHING in the room around, but I just about did. Surprisingly, the stereo & record cabinet was the heaviest of all to move, even with all the stuff taken out of it. I like a mix of antiques and modern furniture, as you can see. I have to stop myself from completely re-organizing everything as I go along. I'm just making it neat and clean for now.
I went buck wild at an estate sale a week ago and bought a bunch of milk glass & other goodies. That was after I'd already been to another estate sale where everything was free on the upper floor. I filled a small box with trinkets, like an adorable min vase with a flapper girl standing next to it. So what if she only has one arm? That's what fimo is for.
I started to watch Andrei Tarkovsky's film Solaris today. It's so intense, and I've barely begun watching it! It's making me want to watch Stalker again, by the same director.
I also watched a short but powerful documentary about Dolores Hart, who left Hollywood as a young woman in the early 1960s to become a Benedictine nun in a cloistered monastery. She played St. Clare in the Frances of Assisi movie, who also became a nun and founded the Poor Clares.
By now most of you have seen or heard of those plastic storage bags known as Space Bags, or some equivalent. While they aren't pretty (and neither will you stuff be once it's stored in one), they do work and they're pretty easy to handle. My mother put a bunch of pillows and blankets in some for me a couple years ago, and gave me extra bags to use just in case. Last week I put a king-size down comforter in one, and the results were impressive:
Madonna CD added for scale purposes!
It really is as simple as enclosing it in the bag and using a vacuum hose to slurp out all the air thru the little round door in the side. I didn't think my vacuum cleaner would do a good job because the nozzle is wider than average but it all went to plan. The hard part was making sure the zip lock at the opening was securely fastened all the way.
This kind of bag is kind of nice to store away things in a pile on a shelf. The bag shown here hasn't taken on any extra air, and neither have the ones my mom sorted out for me.
