Home Organizing
Tim had most of the week off from work, so we took advantage of our combined energy after a family visit on Tuesday to dig into the mess that is my office and will someday be a family room as well. This is the room with the least storage capacity compared to what it needs, so we covered one wall with wall-mounted shelves. Tim spent about 45 minutes creating a jig for attaching the shelves to the shelf brackets just right, and then did the 12 shelves we installed in about 90 seconds apiece, with me and DD acting as the assembly line -- DD furnishing screws as needed, and me transporting shelves to and from the work area and mounting them on the wall. Since we finished the shelves, it's actually become fun to go through the boxes that have been sitting in that room for, oh, five months now with nowhere to go. We're finding all kinds of lost treasures and getting rid of a fair amount of stuff, too. My yearning for office supplies is being satisfied, and there's space to organize them at last! There's still more work to do, going through the rest of the boxes and finding appropriate containers for magazines, knitting and sewing tools, etc. So it's not a finished object, but I'm grateful for the progress (this, plus the other end of the shelves that I couldn't get in the frame, is something like eight boxes worth of stuff):
Holiday Food, Nice and Easy
Part of the reason we stayed in doing this project on a gorgeous snowy day (5 inches Wednesday morning) is that DD was sick with a cold and fever. That led to another project: instead of going to my aunt and uncle's house in Denver for Thanksgiving, we needed to make whatever food and festivities we wanted today at home. Tim shopped yesterday, we strategized, and we produced a modest but special meal on a family-of-three scale: a brined and roasted half turkey breast, cheesy rolls, mashed potatoes and rutabagas, beet greens, and cranberry sauce -- all from scratch except the cranberry sauce, most of it organic, and a fair amount of it locally grown or raised. Between me and Tim, we produced this all in a leisurely day of cooking, with lots of breaks to do other things like care for DD, knit, post ads to get rid of unwanted stuff, or take naps; and nobody felt like they'd been run over by a truck by the end of the meal. Now that is a day, and a meal, to be thankful for: My kind of slow food.
Did Someone Say Knitting?
Oh yeah, and I finished my Simple Stripes socks right before dinner! Here they are:
They're fraternal, in a degree that makes me happy. Clearly these socks belong together, but no machine could have made them look like this. :)
The next project will be some sewing, a dress for DD to wear to the child dedication service at our new church in a couple of weeks. She picked out the fabric -- purple, of course. In fact, if you look at my newly-arranged yarn basket for knitting projects in my immediate queue (most of which are for DD), you'll pick up on a subtle pattern in her color preferences:
If you guessed that the red and earth-toned yarns are for others besides DD, you are correct!
Having this basket in our newly-cleared stairwell makes me happy beyond all reason. It's like a promise to myself of yummy knitting for weeks or months to come.
(The yarns are, clockwise starting with the red: Knitpicks Swish Superwash in Fired Brick, Artyarns Supermerino in colorway 108, LOTS of Knitpicks Shine Sport in Violet, Trekking XXL in color 180, and Mission Falls 1824 cotton in colors 203 and 404. Oh, and some gray suede slipper soles in the back.)
And the Sleep...
With all this, plus a respectable amount of sleep, under my belt, I'm feeling ready to re-embark on the FlyLady BabySteps quest, starting with Day 10 tomorrow. Today I did my Day 9 decluttering in the family room, a satisfying and high-value target. And while we were cleaning up in advance of the family visit on Tuesday, I did my best to actually put things away rather than stashing stuff in closets or other out-of-sight areas. There is now an immensely satisfying lack of clutter almost everywhere in the house, and the family room/office is improving quickly. A bonus: Having the place uncluttered inspires better putting-away habits. Today when I came to the 2 minutes of putting out hot spots in my morning routine, I looked around and realized it wasn't going to take two minutes. That, my friends, is progress.
I hope Thanksgiving has found you all warm, well fed, and enjoying the company you're in.
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