The Office Cure

I've been very loosely following the Apartment Therapy January Cure. I do what I can when I can but I'm not stressing myself out about not doing everything or doing things completely and perfectly. In short, it's been great. It wasn't part of the Cure but I knew that my office needed a massive overhaul. In my mind it was the linchpin to our whole home organization.

Basically, I collect stuff. I've always been a stuff collector. The stuff changes over time but I tend to be constantly bringing things home. I'm not so good about getting rid of stuff. When I have a lot of stuff I stuff the stuff in my office. When my office gets too stuffed with stuff it overflows into the dining room, my bedroom, everywhere! In order to put things away I had to start by pulling everything out.



Sunday: My dining room is under there.

I started with cleaning out the office--vacuuming, rehanging the curtains, dusting, wiping down all the surfaces, cleaning out all the drawers of my desk. Slowly I started to put things back.



Monday: Slowly digging out.



Tuesday: Ahhhhh. After I took this photo I put away all the yarn piled on the chair at the end of the table.


Wednesday: The office. Far from perfect. There's a box of things to sell/donate and a box to shred. I've ordered more magazine holders too. Please note, before I shelved the book alphabetically I made sure they were all in my Ravelry library. Now I can search for patterns on Ravelry and actually find them on the shelf!

I know for a normal, sane person my office is still an overloaded mess. But I'm going for better, not perfect.

Two Blocks

I got two done that are passable.




There was a lot more yard work today. The guys who came to pick up the yard waste wanted an insane amount of money so we sent them away. We've got another guy--who gave us his price upfront--coming next week.

What's Up

We've been working on the yard. We're going to go ahead and sheet mulch (thanks to reader Andi who gave me lots of good advice) the whole thing and not worry about planting anything until later. Right now we're clearing all the fallen canes and big stuff. We've got some people coming tomorrow to haul off all the yard waste. We've gotten cardboard down with a small bit of bark chips in one corner of the yard. There's a LOT left to do. We've got calls in to some local arborists to see if they can dump some wood chips here.

I'm still working away on the Merino Lace socks. I'm just finishing the gusset decreases.

My sewing has been languishing. I was doing really well with the Dear Jane quilt-along. In fact not only was I completely up to date as of mid-April, I won the contest for people who were up to date! And have only finished one block since then. I went to a little sewing bee on Monday and brought all my Dear Jane stuff with me. I had blocks prepared to sew already. I started stitching and felt like I had never done it before. It was awkward and uncomfortable and the results were shit. I'd show you a picture but it's just too mortifying. Last night I ripped out the really embarrassing parts and managed to finish a block. It's okay but no masterpiece. I'm half-way through another two blocks. They're getting harder just as I'm feeling less confident. I know I just need to work through a few to get the feel for it again. In a sea of 225 blocks no one will notice the wonky ones. It's dark now so I'll get some photos for tomorrow.