Winter is right around the corner and we're pretty much done with all of our autumn activities. The wood for the firepit is almost cut and stacked, the garden has been harvested and then picked over by the moose (luckily for us they only escaped with one cabbage this year), and the pipe running through the culvert should be covered in plastic by this weekend. We spent yesterday evening canning some beet relish for my father's Christmas present using the beets and the remaining red cabbage that we grew this summer. If he likes it, I might make it a summer tradition to grow cabbage, beets, and onions.
I've spent the last month slowly, but surely, cleaning out our mudroom. We had stuff piled on top of stuff and so much stuff that I had no idea what (exactly) was in there. It became a hassle going in there because I was terrified that someone was going to trip, knock over a huge pile of something, and get crushed. It was a pretty useless room, not much better than storage.
I decided to turn it into a playroom for Arthur and his friends so that they would have a fun place to play this winter. Below is the Smilebox that I sent family with pictures of the new mudroom. I wish I had some "before" pictures to show you (but do I really want people to see what the room used to look like?), but I like the "after" pictures. The room really does look so much better.
There's still the problem of what to do with my old sewing cabinet. It's just too big to fit anywhere in the house and when it was in the mudroom, I just piled stuff on top of it. What a waste of space. Now, almost all of my sewing projects are stacked neatly on a shelf and hidden behind a curtain, or taking up space upstairs in my bedroom (which, after I finish some miscellaneous projects, should be gone fairly quickly).
It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be letting go of my stuff. As I sorted what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to give away, I figured if I hadn't thought about a project for at least a year, it was probably time to get rid of it. I had a half-finished blazer and a skirt piled on my sewing table. I got rid of the jacket and finished putting the elastic in the skirt and then gave it to one of my sisters as a birthday present. The fabric was so lovely, I couldn't bear the thought of the skirt sitting there at the transfer station, getting trampled by people digging through other peoples' junk.
What was the impetus for such a drastic cleaning? I'm actually chuckling to myself as I write this. Humans are built on denial. I thought I'd be able to get my projects done...someday. You know, when I didn't have a kid always pestering me or when my house was (magickally) cleaner. I didn't want to face all the stuff I had piled in the mudroom because I didn't want to remind myself of all the projects I had failed to finish.
It wasn't until my family visited in May and my sister's boyfriend made a comment about how everyone in our family had crap everywhere when it hit me: "Oh, my Goddess, he's talking about me!" I looked at my sewing table. I looked on the floor. The shelf next to the washer. Everywhere I looked was a disaster. (Now, of course, it's funny - then it wasn't.) That day, I became determined to get rid of all the junk in the mudroom and turn it into a useful room.
I suppose sometimes it takes another person to point something out to make you realize that you need to change.
Blessed be.
I've spent the last month slowly, but surely, cleaning out our mudroom. We had stuff piled on top of stuff and so much stuff that I had no idea what (exactly) was in there. It became a hassle going in there because I was terrified that someone was going to trip, knock over a huge pile of something, and get crushed. It was a pretty useless room, not much better than storage.
I decided to turn it into a playroom for Arthur and his friends so that they would have a fun place to play this winter. Below is the Smilebox that I sent family with pictures of the new mudroom. I wish I had some "before" pictures to show you (but do I really want people to see what the room used to look like?), but I like the "after" pictures. The room really does look so much better.
There's still the problem of what to do with my old sewing cabinet. It's just too big to fit anywhere in the house and when it was in the mudroom, I just piled stuff on top of it. What a waste of space. Now, almost all of my sewing projects are stacked neatly on a shelf and hidden behind a curtain, or taking up space upstairs in my bedroom (which, after I finish some miscellaneous projects, should be gone fairly quickly).
It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be letting go of my stuff. As I sorted what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to give away, I figured if I hadn't thought about a project for at least a year, it was probably time to get rid of it. I had a half-finished blazer and a skirt piled on my sewing table. I got rid of the jacket and finished putting the elastic in the skirt and then gave it to one of my sisters as a birthday present. The fabric was so lovely, I couldn't bear the thought of the skirt sitting there at the transfer station, getting trampled by people digging through other peoples' junk.
What was the impetus for such a drastic cleaning? I'm actually chuckling to myself as I write this. Humans are built on denial. I thought I'd be able to get my projects done...someday. You know, when I didn't have a kid always pestering me or when my house was (magickally) cleaner. I didn't want to face all the stuff I had piled in the mudroom because I didn't want to remind myself of all the projects I had failed to finish.
It wasn't until my family visited in May and my sister's boyfriend made a comment about how everyone in our family had crap everywhere when it hit me: "Oh, my Goddess, he's talking about me!" I looked at my sewing table. I looked on the floor. The shelf next to the washer. Everywhere I looked was a disaster. (Now, of course, it's funny - then it wasn't.) That day, I became determined to get rid of all the junk in the mudroom and turn it into a useful room.
I suppose sometimes it takes another person to point something out to make you realize that you need to change.
Blessed be.
0 comments: