Back to basics

The decluttering continues here at Hugs, which isn't making me happy in the moment, but is cultivating very good feelings about the potential for ease and charm in the near future:

I've never not been busy, but pre-house renovation, my life was pretty simple. You'd think having an entire extra floor would have given me more room to simplify even further. Apparently not. Mostly it's given me more places to let things pile up. No more of that nonsense! I've been at this a week now, and the transformation is officially noticeable. 

For one thing, our living room bookshelves are tidy, shed of unwanted items, and dust-free. Now I can get at my craft books a lot more easily.

 

The dining room table, which is used for dining on Christmas Day only and the rest of the year is my worktable, is now clear of everything but my favourite cloth, ready for me to sort papers or cut fabric. 

Our coffee table is clear too, except for a book Pete is reading - totally appropriate use of space - and the shelf underneath has new, very large, baskets wrangling my sock darning pile. Also the skeins I have yet to cake for future socks. 

The surface of the desk in the living room features only the plants and antique books and lamp that are supposed to live there.

The piles of things I'd been accumulating with a view to donation are making their way to boxes, some of which have been whisked away to a vehicle, no less.

And in the basement, digging out boxes from under the stairs, I discovered a collection of fingerless mitt forms I cut from felted wool sweaters, one of which was all ready to gift. 

I was not sorry to see a few with work left to do on them. I loved making those things, feeling the felted wool sleeves and deciding which ones were soft enough to really enjoy, then blanket-stitching the edges, maybe embroidering something extra. These ones didn't need that, with all the pattern on them. Just as well because even now I my fancy needle skills are strictly entry-level.

Feeling tired just reading all that? I am, thinking of how much I still have to sort and shed. But when I'm done with the dreck I get to sit here, in my freshly reorganized front hall, now 100% free of a misguided attempt at growing basil and rosemary on the sill.

I could knit. Or read. Or both together. Or just enjoy the fruits of my labours.

If you ask me, spring cleaning's for the birds. By the time the weather's nice you just want to be out in it. But in these weeks leading to the fall, wowza. I'm so jazzed to know that when the cooler cosier weather hits, I will have plenty of room for pulling out my spinning wheel, or my loom, or a quiet collection of felted wool, scrap yarn, and my embroidery needles. 

Or, you know, writing. That's the one thing that's guaranteed to happen.

 

Hope your weekend's fantastic and that your home is already tidy and ready for anything! Thanks for dropping by again. I'll look forward to seeing you next Saturday.