I hate cleaning, but as I didn’t have time to do it during my month-long busy work period, the house was a pigsty by the end of last week. What’s more, we’ve got people in the house who aren’t us at various points over the next few weeks, so today I just gritted my teeth and got on with it. The house is clean and tidy now, and I feel so much better for it.
Generally, clutter and mess really depress me, so in an ideal world I would just clean the house once a week in order to keep on top of it and keep my surroundings pleasant and comforting. However, sometimes there just isn’t the time, and as a result my mood drops, often without me realising why.
Having cleaned, I feel so much better tonight than I have done all week! I’d feel even better if the house was properly finished in terms of the piles of boxes that are still unpacked, but that’s still a few months away. One step at a time.
Intensive transcription projects at work always do strange things to me. The last transcription period, in autumn 2017, involved a couple of projects, the larger of which was for a study about an experimental coffee machine. I had actually given up caffeine in 2013 and hadn’t touched it since, but the combination of a lack of sleep and hours and hours every day spent listening to people talk about coffee had fairly predictable consequences, and I fell off that particular wagon. I’ve been drinking a couple of coffees every day since then.
This time round, the transcription project I’m working on is for a study about public artworks. I’m not really ‘into art’ in the traditional sense – I don’t tend to visit galleries unless dragged by someone else, I couldn’t care less what the ‘meanings’ of artworks are, and I’ve never done much reading about the subject – but I like things that are nice to look at, and that’s what I have on my walls. Or it’s what I would have on my walls under normal circumstances.
The thing is, pictures are always the very last thing I put up when I’m sorting out a new house, as I think of them as the ‘finishing touch’. This is why, unfortunately, the walls have always been a bit bare in my last few rented properties – because by the time I’ve got to that stage of the house sorting, I’m thoroughly sick of the whole thing and I’ve really slowed down with it, and so I never get round to doing the pictures properly before we realise that we’ll be moving again soon and so there’s no point putting anything else up.
This time around will be different – I may have already mentioned once or twice that I am OMG NEVER MOVING AGAIN, because this house move has been so stressful, and so I will definitely have the time and motivation to get the picture collection actually finished. Sadly, the house is still some way off being sorted – all of our pictures and other wall decorations are currently stuck in the study, which I will be spending May going through. As such, the walls have to remain bare for a while longer. I do have a couple of posters up on the upstairs landing, as I needed to keep them out of the way and uncrumpled while I was sorting things out, but everything else will have to wait.
Which is a shame, as it would be nice to have some pretty artwork on the walls to look at while I’m spending hours listening to people talking about art. I guess the artwork on our boardgame boxes will have to suffice.
Probably the biggest project we did over the weekend was the DVD shelves. For space reasons, we bought new materials for these rather than using our old shelves, and it took a while to find everything (we’re now familiar with every branch of B&Q in Newcastle). Once Dad had put them up, though, the finished result was well worth it:
All our DVDs, videos, and console games, neatly stored in a corner of the living room.
As with all of our shelving projects from this week, we’ve got room for more. It’s really good use of the space as well, and I was quite surprised by how small the collection looks on the shelves. Of course, in reality, it’s not at all small (we’ve probably got close to 1,000 DVDs), but considering that when we stored it on Billy shelves it took up half a room in our old house, it feels much more compact now.
It’s also meant we’ve reclaimed some more space in the living room from the endless mass of cardboard, which is always good!
One of the shelving projects that Dad and I (mostly Dad) did over the weekend was for my shoes. Even though I got rid of a lot of shoes, I still need a good amount of storage for my remaining 59 62 pairs, especially as I’ve been on a bit of a shoe binge lately (though I think I’m satiated for now). Some of my pairs are ‘legacy shoes’ (i.e. old pairs I’ll never wear again but am keeping in storage boxes or on display for sentimental reasons), and there are a couple of pairs for gardening that I’m keeping in the cupboard off the kitchen, and my dancing shoes live in my gym bag, and my running shoes tend to stay in the Skubb hanger I bought for the hallway…but that still leaves a good 48 pairs that needed a place to live in the dressing room. Which they now have:
Dad built the shelves, out of our old Billy bookcases, to fit around the wardrobes, chests of drawers and mirror that I have in the dressing room.
As you can see, there’s plenty space for more, which is probably a good thing knowing me.
My shelf for all my tall goth boots.The wall is looking nice and colourful now though it probably needs a few more pairs.
It’s very nice having all my shoes to hand. Of course, since I put them all up, it’s been pouring with rain and I’ve not been out (save for a very wet run this morning) so I’ve been living in my slippers indoors. It will be good to get some use out of them once the weather clears up, though!
It’s been a great week and a half seeing family, and I’m thrilled with all the new shelves we now have in the house courtesy of my dad (more pictures to come tomorrow!) but it’s meant I’ve not had much time to catch up on all my usual things like reading and TV and music, so I’ve spent most of today doing that kind of thing, which has been nice.
Back to running tomorrow morning, some more house stuff, and a bit more catching up. It’s shaping up to be another productive week!
We built the Ikea Kallax wall for the boardgame collection today!
Boardgame storage extraordinaire!
I designed this mishmash of Ikea Kallax units to fit our dining area space a few weeks ago, and ordered the requisite Kallaxes in the big Ikea order. I built the individual units over the last couple of days, and today my dad came and bolted them all together to make a nice solid structure. It got a bit tricky, involving having to shave bits off where the wall width was uneven, but the finished result looks amazing (and Geth finally has access to the boardgames again, which will keep him very happy).
We also started building some shoe storage, but that’s mainly a project for tomorrow!
Geth and I have had a nice Easter break visiting the in-laws in Lancashire. We’re now back home and ready for another visit from my parents, who will be arriving tomorrow to help with putting up shelves and taking the messy remains of my bloody wardrobe cull to the dump/charity shop. Exciting!
I’ve been buying a lot of stuff the last few weeks. At first it was all house stuff, but lately it’s been mostly treats for me. New clothes for my almost-at-target figure! New makeup for my new makeup storage unit! New shoes (quite a lot of new shoes) for…uh, they’re not for anything in particular, I just love shoes.
I mentioned before that I always feel a bit guilty if I go on a spending spree, but I’ve found it difficult to resist these last few weeks. It’s mainly because I’ve been carrying out a ruthless cull ofmy entire wardrobe and so the state of this particular collection is always on my mind at the moment. Post-cull, the gaps in my wardrobe are far more apparent, and there are a few areas (underwear, jeans, skirts) where I genuinely do need to buy new things.
I’m not delusional enough to think that’s the case with the shoes, obviously. But I did get rid of an awful lot in the cull, and shoes are pretty, and shoe shopping makes me feel better at the end of a difficult day. I’m very aware that I’ll need to replace this habit with something less expensive soon. Seeing as I can’t go back to binge-drinking now that I’m (sort of) healthy and slim, I imagine it’ll be baths, especially as the bath in our new house is so awesome. I just have to hope I don’t develop a ‘luxury bathing products’ obsession instead, although in fairness it would be cheaper than shoes. We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks.
Yeah, so that turned out to be a bit of a waste of time, given that I threw 90% of them out today.
When I was packing up the old house, I knew that I’d end up chucking quite a lot of stuff out to make things neater, but I didn’t expect that I’d end up being so ruthless with my clothes and accessories. The thing is, I’m just sick of the hoard. The hoard is everywhere, I’m currently spending my entire time sorting through it and tripping over piles of it and moving boxes of it about so that I can access more boxes of it, and it’s causing me a lot of anxiety and stress, especially on ‘sorting days’ like today when my hoarding nature means that I have to go through every single thing and devote mental energy to agonising for a few minutes about whether I should keep it.
And with jewellery and hair accessories it literally is EVERY SINGLE THING I’ve ever owned in my life, because you don’t outgrow necklaces and scrunchies the way you do clothes, so my collection genuinely dates back to when my parents first decided they needed to tie my hair back in 1987:
New baby bro scheduled to arrive next month, gotta raise my style game.
Yes, I still have those green tartan ribbons. Of course I do. They’re not being chucked out (they’re in an inaccessible part of the hoard right now, so I couldn’t even if I wanted to), because if it dates from the ’80s, it obviously stays. (What, you thought I’d been cured of ALL of my issues?)
Thankfully, I’m coming to the end of the ‘sorting days’ as far as my wardrobe is concerned, but next month, there will be the study. Oh dear god, the study. Boxes and boxes and boxes full of old correspondence, and schoolwork, and the first fumbling childhood steps in my lifelong fiction-writing habit, and the most painfully private diaries and poetry – all of which will need to be carefully scanned and then frantically shredded (and ideally burnt, but I’m not sure the atmosphere could cope). Mounds of receipts and paperwork and keepsakes, which will need to be sorted and filed. Piles of old broken electronics, and the manuals for the old broken electronics, and the twisted and tangled mess of connector cables for the old broken electronics. Artwork and other wall decorations that I don’t like any more but have been dragging with me through approximately five house moves. Cassette singles I bought in the early ’90s, which I won’t throw out, but will instead stare at wistfully for ages, marvelling at their glorious age and endurance, remembering a different century, wasting time when I’m supposed to be getting on with the hoard.
I know I’ll get to the end of it sometime. It just feels like such a mountain to climb. A literal mountain of stuff.
But I’m going to climb it, because there’s no other way through for me.
After a couple of days of dribs and drabs of small deliveries of house stuff, the big Ikea order arrived today! Most of it (I’ve already assembled the replacement lamp) is still sitting in the middle of the living room, as there’s no space to assemble the units or put them in their eventual places yet. And just when I thought I’d reclaimed that bit of living room floor. Oh well.
I also finally finished the wardrobe cull. It’s amazing how much stuff I realised I just didn’t like or want to wear, and in total I’ve probably got rid of about 75% of my clothes. To be fair, I am now spending a lot of time online, fantasy shopping for replacements, but I’m trying to be good and only (mostly) buying things I actually need.
Now that the Ikea order is here, one thing I can do is start putting stuff into its proper storage boxes. Hopefully I’ll have a properly functioning dressing room, at least, by the end of the week!
