We decided not to switch the living room and study after all: the sound of the movies would keep the children awake. As it is when we watch grown up movies after bedtime, the kids call down the hall, "That music sounds scary, are you sure you should be watching it?" which is good accountability I suppose, but rather annoying!
DH got inspired this Friday to move the heavy furniture to a better arrangement. Our friend K the brilliant batchelor (boy, is he a catch! got any eligible ladies to introduce?) happened to drop by, so we recruited him to move stuff. We fed him, so that was a fair exchange. When the guys looked at the drawer for receipts I’d entered into the bank balance spreadsheet, they both said, "You (we) need a shredder." So I ran out to several stores to buy a shredder, better books shelf, and other stuff available in North Attleboro along Rt 1 that I could shop at quickly with no children in tow, and combine trips to save gas.
Once we had more shelves, other closets got ransacked and re-organized to take advantage of that new shelving being available, and I discovered that mold was growing on the little closet wall off my bedroom, so I moved papers into another box, bleached the mold, and left that door open to stir and warm the air. I also moved the shelf away from the outside wall to the hopefully dryer inside wall. You start re-arranging and it just spreads and spreads…I’ll post pictures once the shreds are vacuumed up and the flat surfaces are cleared off. The house is now messier than it was, but we know that’s temporary once we cut up boxes for recycling, take stuff to the Salvation Army and Library Book sale…With the mold in closet, we can’t keep all our stuff anyway.
So the bones of our creative space are better, hopefully we can finish what we started and enjoy creating here soon. I have a deskfull of little things needing to go to a perminant home, and some empty shelves. Hopefully I can prioritize important things to spaces easy to reach, and archive up to high shelves where they can be difficult because I don’t need them very often.
This is a step towards the ultimate inspiring workspace: we want to replace the huge desks and handy storage drawers with little Ikea tables and wall hung storage: so that the foot print will be smaller and we can manuver in here easier with more margins around the furniture. But buying new will take some budgeting, and work around future dental work.
I realized that I am keeping some thing because I feel like I will be less of a creative person if I let them go: if my yarn stash is gone, am I still a knitter? Will I ever sew again if I get rid of the bit of left overs my aunt passed down to me that are so ’70’s in color I’m not sure what to do with them? What about the ’80’s patterns for dresses I wore to banquets with the youth group? I need some confidence: just because I’m makeing homeschool and co-ops doesn’t mean I’ve stopped being a creative lady – I’m so addictied to making things I can’t help it! In fact, in a way, I’m more dangerous than I used to be, because I’m teaching the next generation. So maybe I really can let go, because the stuff doesn’t define me. But I don’t really want to get rid of everything. It’s nice to know that I (theoretically) could.
Oh, Chris, I identify with this post. You inspire me– I so want to reorganize… move books out of the shelves so I can find what I have (but does getting rid of All Men Are Mortal mean I'm no longer an intellectual?) and getting rid of all my old patterns I have mean I won't sew again. When we painted the bedroom, it was clean (and tidy) for about two weeks, and now it's full of fabric scraps from Penguin Pajamas, etc. I need to clean it out, but… You get the idea.
Happy space-making.
Annie