Goals for the house

In the past month, I've rearranged the living room and balcony, and bought a new shower curtain. That last doesn't sound like much, but it looks like I completely redid the bathroom!

The living room functions better with its changes as well; I just need to hang my swords up, fix the couch cover and put it back out, and get the Singer 66 back together and in the living room. Of which the last two are a fair bit of work. My computer desk is much cleaner, but not perfect, and I still have piles on the kitchen table. And a plant on the kitchen counter, that needs a new home found in the house. The plant stand it was on has been filtered. I could use better organization around the computer, which involves more space on the bookshelf, which is a challenge. I need another bookshelf far more than another sewing machine in the living room! Or give Ester (the electric) back to my mother, since I won't sew on it anyway, and replacing that with shelving of some kind. Maybe.

My bedroom is a bit chaotic. Too much stuff jammed in there, between trying to keep my off-season stuff in the carved chest and all my crafts, all my SCA stuff, and most of my books in the room. Eek, that even looks bad typed! But the storage unit is still full as well. Getting the sewing machine out will help. Getting the '66 sewing machine running, even though it means more money, is actually very conductive to finding it a new home. No one will take it right now, they just tell me how pretty it is. I have finished completely flipping over to summer clothes, and also sorted out my box of 'size 12' clothes and got rid of most of that (I had gotten to size 16, now back at 14 and very slowly getting to 12).

The balcony: I've rearranged the pots, gotten rid of several pots (more going!) and bought a whirlygig and a windchime. Once I get the bikes stored somewhere other than my Sitting Spot, I'll have a place to sit. All but two of the pots have herbs in them - rosemary, mints, lemon balm. If I can find a snowball bush (hydrangea) that will work out there, in a pot, I'm getting it. It looks like Endless Summer^® Blushing Bride Hydrangea may work, I just need to find one.

I've taken a few loads to the thrift store, and a couple more loads to friends that can use what I'm filtering. The living room looks much nicer, and mostly stays clean. Since the the last time I reset the computer desk (a week or two) it's stayed dramatically cleaner with little effort from me.

There is still room for improvement but I think right now I'm going to work on finishing some of the craft projects. Some of those will result in snowball cleaning - when I finish painting my new SCA jewelry box, I can fill that up with stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else, then paint the old one and use that to hold A&S tokens. Those two things will clean up stuff that's sitting on my dresser right now, where they don't belong. Then the table will be clear, so I can do the sewing that's sitting on the sewing machine, etc. Snowball cleaning!

And once I've done some of that, the next layer of clutter will be more visible to me, and I can peel that off. Decluttering can be like an onion - you have to peel of one layer before you can deal with the next. Especially when it's your stuff, and you're living life in the middle of it.