22 February 2016

Heights House 8: Home Organization

One of the things I am learning with my cast life is that I am getting stronger, my foot is hurting a little less, but the entire experience has made me pretty tired. After a full week of work and other activities I am pretty exhausted by Saturday and spend a lot of time resting. I thought it would be that way last Saturday but instead for some reason I jumped up, itching to do home organization projects.


I kind of bounced between my office space and our master bathroom. I started in my office, then had to go downstairs to get something and ended up spending several hours working in our bathroom. The drawer and cupboard layout is not the best. There are three drawers down the middle of the vanity and then two big, open cupboards under each sink.

The previous owners left a wire drawer organizer under each of the sinks. They aren't very effective but we'll use them until we have used the bathroom for a while and figure out something that would work better.

As I unpacked box after box of bathroom things, some that had been in storage for quite a while I threw out a lot of expired sunscreen and suntan lotion and other toiletries. It felt good to throw away quite a bit of stuff. Very good.

When you are dealing with a move or a deep clean of a room it can get very overwhelming to have so many little things that need to find a home. In the bathroom it was things like nail clippers and dental floss, empty travel bottles and razor heads. 


In my office it was small pencil sharpeners, glasses cleaners, scraps of art paper, and broken sunglasses that need to be fixed. Since I was a kid I remember getting frustrated with finding a place for all the little stuff. I would often just walk away and quit the job for a while.

As a grown up, it is definitely good to take a break for a few minutes when I start to feel overwhelmed with an organization project. Another thing I do is start telling myself, "Okay find just one thing that you can put away. Something you already know where to put." This way I take action on one thing, then find another and another. I keep making progress even when it seems like I am not accomplishing anything big. Little by little the space keeps getting tidier and better organized. 

On Saturday I keep saying, "Find one thing," and I kept going and going. When I would get frustrated with one area of the bathroom I would look for another area where I could easily find one thing I could do and I would do it and keep going in that area until I felt blocked again. Then I would look for something else I could do. As I went along, taking breaks from certain areas it was easier for me to go back to areas I had left with a clearer view of what I could do next or how I could organize the items that had I had gotten blocked dealing with. I made some great progress on Saturday even standing on one leg with my iWalk 2.0 supporting me.

When I went back to working on my office I finally started hanging up some things on the wall. I put up my magnetic pegboard, hung up my favorite clock that The Man secretly had repaired and gave to me as my very favorite Christmas present in December. I seriously cried when I opened the box. I'm talking about an IKEA clock I bought at a thrift store for two dollars that died right before we moved. So happy to have it back.

I organized the multitude of adapters and power cords we now live with, found the perfect place where I'll keep my purse at this house and finally figured out how I am going to have a little family command center that is private and hidden away enough and still easily accessible and visible to the family. It's right outside my office across from the kitchen pantry and not in clear view to visitors. When we had originally talked about creating a command center The Man was not too excited about the area I had originally chosen near the garage entry because it was too public of an area for a family calendar in his mind. I think this new area will be better.

We still have a lot of organizing and dejunking to do at the new house. It's getting to be time to get a date on the calendar to have our big Spring Yard Sale. It's a bit of a daunting task while we're combining homes and have been such vagabonds for the past few years. But I try to keep taking it in bite size pieces and saying "Find one more thing you can do," and continuing to press forward. Things do get done. There is a nice sense of accomplishment and I cannot emphasize enough how important I think it is for good mental and emotional health to live in a simple, tidy environment. It does wonders for the soul and makes life so much easier. So I keep chugging along.

Hopefully over the next few weeks I can continue to get some of these projects done. When I was ready to call it a day with my organization projects I had lovely CB2 and Paper Source catalogs and the latest issue of Albuquerque The Magazine to peruse in the beautiful, warm sunlight. This week is seems that winter has left us here in New Mexico. It has been sunny and beautiful and everyone has been eating lunch outside and enjoying the pleasant weather. We had to open up all the windows over the weekend to keep the house cool and there was a wonderful breeze blowing up the mountainside. Delightful. Hope all is well in your world too. Love to hear how you are doing! Any big organization tasks on the docket?


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