Making progress

I've talked about this many times.  I say things like:  My house is fast becoming a hoarder house.  I feel as if I'm living in a garage rather than a house.  If I had company where would they sit?  If a grandchild or great grandchild wanted to spend a few days with me where would they sleep?  The craft stuff has taken up all the space of my life so that it becomes a cocoon around me. 

I've also shown several times how desperately I want all the STUFF gone so there is room for what really matters in life.  Time after time, I've cleaned it all up, gotten rid of some, and more or less organized packed it tightly enough the house looked somewhat presentable.

When I announced my retirement from full time machine quilting career in order to have more time with family and friends (to have a simpler life); I once again went on a mission to clear out the STUFF that is preventing me from being happy.  I haven't forgotten it, I've just been a little side tracked lately. 

During the thunderstorms (and flooding issues) we've had for the last few weeks; I've actually done quite a bit of clearing out STUFF.  I stay away from electrical things during a storm which means no internet and no quilting.  I used the down time for sorting and purging.  Here is one room as it was before.  I took the photos when the sun was shining because there's no light in there.  Its a catch all room for groceries that were not yet put away.

It was a dropping spot for the cardboard brought to me by a friend who gets really good cardboard boxes for making cardboard furniture.  I needed to cut it into storable size.  Hmm... enlarge the photo to see the detail I added on the cardboard cabinet base.  It's upside down because Ladybug used it to play grocery store with me.  She thought it made a great cash register.  What an imagination she has.

There is some recently canned orange jam that I couldn't fit into the kitchen cabinets and some bags of clothing scraps left over from the last two memory quilts.

More clothing scraps and more food.  There is my dehydrating machine that really should be stored in the kitchen..... but where to put it?

I kept telling myself all that food should really be put away.  Well.... what am I waiting for?  My next life?  Anita, put it away already!

So that's exactly what I did.  While the thunder storms were raging, I cleaned and sorted and put stuff away.  Cleaning kept my mind off the dangers but I also had the radio on to hear an alert if it came.  The room is once again cleared out and ready for me to start painting. 

The cardboard cabinet is waiting for me to finish it.  I'm undecided whether to make it into a bookshelf or put drawers in it.  Then again, I may change it completely.  But.... I promised myself I would not start working on any craft item until the house is visitor friendly.  A nice reward for all my hard work will be to sit and craft without feeling closed in by stuff or feeling guilty about quilting that should be finished.

After taking this photo, the rest of the food was moved to the kitchen.  The dehydrator is moved to the closet for now.  I'll put it in the kitchen when I get to that area of organizing and purging.... again.

The doors you see in this room were stored here many, many months ago when the new floors were installed.  They are the doors to all the closets of my house.  The floor guys never came back to install them.  I plan to paint the doors before I call the floor company.   I'm sure they are responsible to put the doors back up but after all this time there might be a charge involved.

It may not seem like a lot done but it was for me. 

I'm really an organized person by nature.  I actually like having a minimalist house.  I love everything having it's own place and everything being in it's place.  What happened?  Well, a major part of the problems was that I got busy running my machine quilting business.  Too busy to be normal.  I let the customers decide what my day involved.... which was always according to their deadlines.  Don't get me wrong, I appreciated having the customers.  They meant no harm asking me to complete work for deadlines.  I could have said no but I was afraid of letting go of the money earned. 

Gradually, over time, there was more and more quilting and less and less of life.  This was my fault.  As I said before, I could have said no.  There are several other things that contributed to my house being overwhelmed with STUFF.  All that is water over the bridge now.  The flood of work has passed as any flood eventually ends.  My life is on a more relaxed path.  I may post about some of the other contributing factors as I continue my journey. 

We are expecting more storms in this area later this evening.  The major weather system that has caused many tornadoes out west is now headed for our area.  I'm going to get off the internet and see how much work I can get finished before this evening.  I have my emergency stuff ready. 

First quilts this year

I hope everyone had a great time over the holidays and you are staying safe, warm, and happy.

It's said that whatever you do on the first of the year, that's what you will be doing for the whole year.  Well, I spent the day quilting, organizing, and cleaning.  It was also my birthday.  Here's the first two quilts of this year. 

I did a swag design on the border and line dancing on the blocks.  This is a backward pieced quilt I made several months ago.  Hmm.... maybe more than a year ago?  It's now ready to be bound and put away for charity next Christmas.  As Kathi would tell me.... done is good.

Here's the next quilt finished, ready to be bound and put away for charity. 

I did a curling feather design on the outside border and le lace on the inside border.

Here's another view of the feather.

I did a line danced butterfly on the blocks. 

I've been cleaning, organizing, cooking premade meals to freeze, and writing posts on my hints blog over the last month.  I've really enjoyed my time away from a quilting schedule.  I feel refreshed and ready for a new year.  I've started a year long house clean out journey.  I plan to clear out some of my STUFF every week until there's room for furniture again.  I'm hoping that by this time next year enough will be cleaned out that I actually feel I'm living in a home rather than one large quilting studio or in a garage.

My mother is still in the hospital in Indiana.  She grows more feeble everyday yet thinks nothing is wrong.  Both a blessing and a curse.  A blessing that she doesn't recognize how serious her health is and a curse because she says I've put her in prison and I won't help her get out.

Today I plan to clean my design walls and start clearing out some of the clutter in the studio.  After that I'll probably put the first customer quilt on the machine. 

Organizing in the studio

My one 2011 goal (and resolution) is to make my house a home again and not let it get this way ever again.  Fewer new year goals and resolutions mean a greater rate of success don't ya think?  Ok, the holidays are over and it's time to get back to accomplishing my goal.  I start back to work quilting today so the cleaning and organizing will go at a slower pace the rest of the year. 

I talked about "no junk drawers" a few days ago.  So how about a whole tower of junk drawers?  That's 10 junk drawers all together in one unit.  This thing has been bugging me for the longest time.  It's handy to have stuff close at hand but this thing is always in my way when walking to the backside of my machine.  AND, it's absolutely not organized.  Stuff gets lost in there.  It's time for me to clean it out. 

I won't bore you with 10 photos of 10 junk drawers.  I'll just show you a couple of them so you understand what I'm talking about.  This is the top drawer.  It doesn't look too awfully bad seeing it like this.

Now look at it all dumped out onto the table.  That's a lot of disorganized stuff in one junk drawer!  Hmm... maybe I need to finally learn how to use my MP3 player?  I've only had it two or three years without ever using it.  I can't figure out how to get books put onto it.

Ok, back to what I was type-talking about.  Here's the second junk drawer.  Not too bad looking either.

Look at it all dumped out on the table.  No, it's not both drawers dumped out together.  It's just one drawer.

All the drawers are out of the tower and this is what I find.  Look at all the dust and cob webs. 

I told you I had lots of spiders living in my house?  Eeeeewwww!  Here's where... uh... some of them died.  I found more in other drawers too.

I take the drawer tower completely apart to wash it really good. 

When cleaning out the drawers I found a box I've been looking for since 2007.  It contained spare parts for my quilting machine.  I knew I had these.   I simply couldn't figure out where I had stashed them.   Well cleaning out the drawer tower has saved me some money this year.  I don't have to buy these when I do a yearly tune up on my machine.

When I was cleaning and organizing the drawers; I stopped long enough to make this bobbin organizer out of cardboard and chopsticks.  Now my quilting machine bobbins are ready for me to start working.  If you want to see how I made it, look here on my cardboard blog.  It's simple, easy, and free.

Well, that's what I did yesterday.  The tower will not be going back into the corner.  I divided it in half and it will now fit under my quilting machine table along with the other 10 drawer units already there.  One down and about eleventy million more of those plastic things to go.  I have a lot of plastic drawer units around my house.

NO Junk drawers

Professional organizer Peter Wash says..... "have no junk drawers" and I see his point exactly.  Here's my former junk drawer.  As you can see, I had little plastic organizer boxes for this drawer but didn't use them.  They just didn't work for me.  I couldn't keep them in place.  They were constantly sliding around and coming apart plus nothing seemed to fit correctly in the boxes.  A junk drawer is a burial place to keep stuff you will never use..... well almost.  I do use the hammer.  I do use the alfalfa seeds to sprout something green to eat in the winter.  Or at least I used to grow sprouts.  It's been about a year or two since I did.  Hmm.... what else?  Well, I do need the matches for my emergency preparedness kit.  I don't see anything else I really need from the junk coffin.  Time for a clean out and give the drawer a better use.

Okie dokie, it's empty.  Time to give it a three time cleaning just in case any critters has wandered through there lately. 

I took a little break to create my own custom divider to fit exactly what I want in there.  It took me about an hour to create my drawer divider out of cardboard.  There is actually more room in the drawer beyond the end of the divider.  I chose not to use that area because it's very hard to reach anything back there.  The drawer doesn't come out as far as it should.  These utensils used to live in a basket on the counter.  They have a better home in this drawer next to the stove.  Getting them off the counter frees up more room for mixing and things.   I may change this later if it doesn't work right for me.  I have to give it a fair try out before deciding.  Notice the little white box?  I realized I regularly used the rubber bands that were in the junk coffin. 

While I'm in this area I decided to clear off the top of the fridge.  I removed some stuff before remembering to take a before photo. 

On top of the fridge were these Ramen noodle packages.  I had planned to make a purse and a couple of baskets from those.  The ice cream sticks were in the junk drawer.  I had planned to use those for another craft idea.  Out they go!  If I ever decide I want to make those crafts I can save again. 

So now the top of the fridge is better.  I didn't three times clean the top yet.  I'll do that when I clean the whole fridge, top and all the sides.  I wasn't ready to pull it away from the wall just yet either.  I'm afraid of what might be lurking back there and I was not in the mood for getting into a panicked cleaning frenzy.  I'm busy enough already.  Cleaning the fridge will probably be the last project I do after cleaning out the whole kitchen.

I'm very determined to do a complete house clean out.  I'm hoping I can do most of the kitchen area and part of the studio area by the end of this week.  Next week I'll be a bit slower cleaning stuff out because I have a couple of customer quilts I promised to do right after the holidays.  It's taken me years to let my house get this crowded with STUFF, it's going to take more than one week to do a complete house clean out. 

To be continued.......

Office clean up

I couldn't wait to get started with simplifying my life. In the past I would be out the day after Christmas looking for bargains.  Not this year.... I have enough!  It wouldn't make any sense to go get more STUFF when I'm doing my best to get rid of a lot of what I already have.  There will be time enough to look for bargains later IF I think I need something.

I decided to start my 2011 house clean out with my office.  I really don't like doing paper work so I tend to put it off.  Well, this year, I figured since I really need to do the end of year reports and filing anyway, I might as well start my house clean out with what must be done.  So this is my office.  Yes, it's dark.  This was at about 4 am. 

I think this closet has been my office for about 20 years.  About once a year I straightened it.  Every year or two I made an attempt to clean it out.  Somehow not much got tossed.  It seemed like everything had a value so I saved everything year after year.  Looking up and to the left you can see dated boxes of papers and stuff.

Up and to the right you can see some of my books and genealogy binders.

Down below you can see more binders and other stuff.  Hmm... I wonder why I've been keeping the box for my 4 year old printer?  Gee what a mess my office is.

 I got started with the old papers.  I brought boxes of papers to the intake table to sort.  That's the place with the most room for spreading everything out, making stacks, and sorting.  I got out the paper shredder and went to work. 

It was kind of fun going through old waiting lists and remembering the people.  No reason to keep these anymore though so I shredded them. I had more than 15 years of waiting lists to shred. 

Next I went through lots and lots of notes I had made for myself as well as old reminder letters and stuff.

By the time I had finished I had 2 bags of old envelopes and 5 bags of shredded papers. 

The office is starting to look much better.  Empty I mean.  I'll paint in there eventually.  It will be after I've done the house clean out and decided which direction to go next. 

While I was busy going through old papers I kept thinking about the hoarder shows.  Often the people helping with a clean out don't want the hoarder to go through things.  Well, I would have hated to have someone tell me not to go through my stuff before it was shredded or tossed.  I found some valuable items while going through the papers.  Some of the papers I found were the birth certificates and death certificates for my sons.  I can't figure out why I had those in the office unless I was putting information into the genealogy files.  Those got put away with the family photo albums.

To be continued......