It's as good as it gets here...

 ...in terms of getting the house organized and decluttered in between the busiest seasons.  I washed many of the windows before the weather turned cold, and have been able to conquer most of the messy areas.

I started an embroidery project for a Christmas gift.  I bought an embroidery hoop for it, but already had everything else.

I also have a couple of woodcarving projects in mind.  My husband brought home a woodburner, and we've been trying it out.  From looking at comic series art, I think the way to go with that is to do the shading first, and then add the fine lines and details.

The Twin Cities had some protests following the Rittenhouse verdict, but nothing near us.

We are well-supplied for Thanksgiving, and are thankful for what we have.  

The children have requested six different kinds of pie.

Surfaces and accessories

The next step in the process of cozy-minimalization was to deal with the surfaces in the room. Some surfaces I am intentionally keeping empty, as places to put things down, or just to leave clear for breathing room. Most of the remaining surfaces are either for holding stacks of books, or various people's projects. So there was very little accessorizing that needed to be done, and I only used things that we already had.

Plants fall under the category of accessories, but I had mine in place already. I did repot one of them into a larger and nicer planter.

There were several leftover items that found homes in other parts of the house.

I found a mirror at the thrift store, to replace the one I took from my bedroom closet. It happened to be on sale, so the cost was just over $5. It is faux vintage, but still endearing in its inauthenticity, and I like it.

Some observations

Our school room, without all the books and the rugs and the curtains and the coats and shoes, is LOUD. The sound bounces all around the room, sometimes doing more than one lap, I think, and it's not just the sounds generated within the room, but also those from adjoining rooms and outdoors.

It made me appreciate how much the carpet in the other areas of the house are quieting them, even though I thoroughly loathe that beige carpet.

I had the furniture more or less arranged, but I kept getting Ideas, and with the shelves empty, I could try them out fairly easily. I tried using one bookshelf as a sort of room divider, separating the entry area from the rest of the room. It was an intriguing option, but I decided against it, because it was blocking light and kind of fighting against the architecture of the room. There was also the matter of anchoring the bookshelf securely so that it wouldn't tip.

That particular bookshelf actually ended up somewhere else entirely:  downstairs, where there is a niche in the hallway that I have been thinking of making a bookshelf for. It just fits, and only because the light fixture there has the ability to swivel; I'm still discovering things about this house, after living here for several years.

Today I moved most of the books back. I think we may have too many.

Cozy minimalism in the school room

I was going to put off dealing with our school room until later in the summer, as the next few weeks are quite busy ones for us, but I decided to squeeze it in this week.

I'm glad I did; there was a lot that needed to be done in there.

I started by listing the purposes for the room:  it is our school room, our library, my office and craft room, and our main entry. It also has the biggest patch of bare floor in the house, which is used for sliding and dancing.

The biggest issue with it was Too Much Stuff. I have for some time been fighting the urge to buy even more things to put in it; a big reason why I wanted to deal with the room sooner rather than later.

The room also has a balance problem; massive bookshelves along one wall that seem to pull that whole side of the room downward. At the other end, there is a smoke detector hanging smack in the middle of prime wall space. Storage for coats and boots and shoes and hats and mittens and gloves and socks and sometimes snow pants has always been challenging.

The first step in the Cozy Minimalist method is to gather inspiration. I zipped over that, mostly, because the budget for this room at this time is zero dollars, and if I have anything that is inspiring for that room right now, it is the word "Gothic".

It took me only several hours to get the room cleared of everything but the main pieces of furniture. I say "only" because of the large number of books involved, over thirty boxes worth.  Then I took a few more hours to wipe things down and dust and vacuum under and behind everything. It was a lot of work, but it was good to get it all done at once, instead of trying to chip away at it a little at a time.

I've started a list of the other things that need to be tended to in the room.

The next thing was to work on the furniture arrangement. I highly prefer to measure the room and furniture and make little scale cutouts that I can scoot around on a graph paper room, although the book recommends just moving the real furniture. It helps me to see possibilities that I wouldn't think of otherwise.

But in the end, the furniture mostly came back to where it started.  A cabinet got promoted into a position in one of the room's focal points, and has been given the job of drawing attention away from that smoke detector. That displaced a so-so bookshelf, which is in a subordinate position that hopefully will help the cabinet balance the other bookshelves.

Next step is to work on rugs and lighting.

A much faster way to declutter

From Leila of Like Mother, Like Daughter, an outstanding post on how to quickly declutter and clean a surface:  clear it off completely, wipe it down, and then put back only the things that go there.  After that's done, then you can sort out and deal with the rest.

Spring refreshing: School room

I had some free time, and was a bit at loose ends. I picked up The Nesting Place, by Myquillyn Smith, and started looking at the pictures again. Which made me want to apply some of her techniques to the room I was in:  our "school room".

One of these techniques is simply to consider what the purposes and functions of the room are. For this room, I started making a list...which went on and on...and I ended up with seventeen purposes for this one room.

An aside:  Our previous house had one small living room. This house has three not-small living rooms, and it seemed excessive to me at first. But God knows what he is doing, and we do use all three of these rooms heavily.

Then I listed all the things that needed to be in the room to support those functions. Almost everything was there already, but there are a few things that we can add to make the room work much better for our family:

1.  Two more footstools; the one I made before is constantly being used for seating at the low table (repurposed coffee table), or as a perch for the shorter members of the family to see out of the window, or as a satisfyingly hefty toy to roll around, or as a rather unstable step stool.

2.  One more light source; we try to keep the overhead lights off in the evening and instead use lamps for lighting. This room has one lamp and needs about one more. My husband has an LED project planned that will probably cover this need.

3.  Folders for homeschool paperwork and assignments, instead of one big pile of papers.

The second technique is to "quiet the room" by taking down all of the decorative items (things on the wall can stay, if you want). When they are all down, it is much easier to dust the surfaces, and also to think of new possibilities. And then things can go back where they were, or not, and you can bring in different or new things, and just play around with making changes.

It is very useful for when you have gotten so accustomed to your decorating that you aren't really seeing any of it anymore.

So I went through the room, quieting, straightening, dusting, and rearranging, and I got a lot done in the time that I had.

Organizing kids' clothes

In the past year, several people have handed down children's clothing to us. Each time, I pulled out a few things that would fit my children at the time, and packed the rest away into closets and spare dresser drawers.

Which meant that I would soon have a very hard time finding the clothes that fit my children next.

Today, the right time for organizing it all came about:  It had risen to the top of my Big Projects list; I had accumulated enough boxes; and someone just dropped off another bag of clothing. Also, it was just before laundry day, so I could put anything that needed washing into the laundry queue (and there were some things that needed it).  Things that come out of the laundry process, later this week, can be integrated into the clothing storage system I have created.

The first step was to pull out ALL of the clothes...boxes, bags, and (in some cases) entire dresser drawers. Everything was hauled to the living room and sorted by size and girls' versus boys'. I also made a pile for worn/unwanted clothing. As I wrote before, I am on a campaign to get rid of gray children's clothing in my house; this was a good time to carry that through.

I let the older children choose their wardrobes from the available clothing; what they don't want may be used later by a younger sibling.

Then I packed up the clothing that was to be stored, into boxes. I started with the largest sizes, which will be in storage the longest before being used, and worked downward, labeling each box front and back with the size.*  When I ran out of boxes, the rest fit into one large dresser drawer, that I had already been using for the purpose anyway.

I still have the Unwanted pile to sort through:  Give Away versus Re-Use/Recycle. Worn-out clothing gets stripped of buttons, zippers, and possibly elastic, and is then cut up into small rags to use in place of paper towels.

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I've adopted this practice of labeling both narrow ends of the box for all of our storage boxes, so that I can read the label no matter which side is facing forward.

The best thing about the month of February...

...is that there is only one of them a year. And it's short. This year February has brought us a nasty cold and a stomach virus. But there have still been many wins:

1. Having quilts and soft pillows to cozy up with while ill.

2. The couch took a direct vomit hit, but it was easy to clean up, because there are three layers of washable covers on it.

3. The one Sunday that I made it to church, some ladies were giving away unwanted materials from their crafts and fabric stashes. I am getting pickier with age about what I bring home, but I did choose some patterns, fabrics, beads, and sheet copper. I've already made a bracelet, two child-size skirts, and a new flannel cover for a worn diaper from these materials. I also picked up a useful sewing tip from the sewing directions in one of the patterns; there's always something more to learn. (The tip was to sew down the seam allowances for the part of a seam that goes up into the casing for an elastic waistband--before sewing the casing--so that you don't have to worry about running into them when you're running the elastic through.)

4. Being able, thanks to the power of persistence, to fish a part from the tub drain cap out of the drain...oh, the things that gifted children will find to disassemble. A replacement cap would have been about $70, with shipping.

5. Investing in some real duct tape (shiny HVAC tape) to seal some gaps and gapes in the ductwork, so that the furnace doesn't need to run so long to get heat up to the thermostat. It is definitely making a difference. 

6. Being able to help some friends who are facing difficult circumstances.

7. Getting last year's paperwork sorted, and the taxes figured out...math is fun!

8. Working through a "punch list" of little details around the house: sanding a bare wood switch plate and giving it a light spray of acrylic sealer*, spackling some dings, painting the tiny space between the door frame and the ceiling in the basement bathroom to match the rest of the walls, figuring out how to remove a drawer from the bathroom vanity to get at the baby stuff that had fallen behind it...a bunch of five- and ten-minute jobs.

9. Taking in the seams on some of my clothes, as I have been gradually losing weight.

10. My husband set up a free, scrounged pegboard behind his workbench. We were also given some tools and books by a church member who is downsizing.

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*Edited to add:  The acrylic sealer very soon started to wear off; I ended up sanding it off and spraying the switch plate with a brand-name clear coat, which has been holding up to wear much better.

Does it provide support?

I've been thinking lately about how the things that are stored in the "support spaces" of the home (basement, garage, attic, closets, cupboards, utility room) should support the life that is being lived in (and out of) the home's living spaces. We are still storing many things that we never use, or look at, or, in some cases, even remember that we own.

Loose ends

With the end of this pregnancy rapidly approaching, I've been finishing up a number of projects and downshifting into maintenance mode (which in itself takes up most of my energy). The last coat of linseed oil on the coffee table top is still drying, one week later. I gave the armchair its two coats of Danish oil--this gave it a light, pleasant finish. I've been trying to get the yard under control, which has been difficult because of the frequent rains. As I was doing the usual bread baking, I baked a few extra loaves for the freezer. Usually we try to have a couple of batches of boeuf bourguignon canned or frozen ahead of time, but with money very tight this time, we'll have to put it off until after the birth.

I've also been trying to do some deep cleaning and organizing, considering that it will probably be about six months (i.e., when baby achieves some measure of mobility) before I can take on any substantial projects in those areas. I've never had a nursery to decorate; cleaning and organizing have always been my nesting projects.

My husband found a free glider rocker and footstool at the curb. This just after we finally got our old rocker back from relatives who stored it for us when we moved. The fabric goes well with the family room, and it needed only a little cleaning up. The arms on it are very low, so probably it won't work well for nursing without pillows.

Since I usually go about a week past the due date, I schedule a potential outing or two for that time.

It only took two weeks...

...to get the internet working consistently at the new place. That's one week less than it took for the last move, when they lost the first order entirely and had to start over from scratch. (This is one reason why I have resisted going paperless with finances; working online is very convenient, except when you cannot get online.)

We found this place in the last two weeks before moving, through a unique and Providential set of circumstances. We were looking for a house in an older urban neighborhood, close to where my husband works, but ended up in a suburb. In a house that is more than twice the square footage of our previous house, which is ironic considering the amount of voluntary and involuntary downsizing we have done in the last few years. Suddenly we have achieved a cleaner and much more minimalist aesthetic, solely through the generous addition of square footage and closets. We had help from about a dozen people for the actual move, which we badly needed because neither of us can do heavy lifting at the moment.

In the past, I never put aside any money for new decorating after a move. This time, I scrimped for weeks and weeks and saved about $70. Last weekend, I went to various stores, looking mostly for fabric for curtains. I'll save the precise breakdown for another post.

I'm now at the point in the unpacking where the books are all back on the bookshelves, but the TV is not yet set up.  It turned warm a few days ago, and the children have been spending many hours outdoors.  Finally.

Pants and purging and perusing

A lady at church gave me a couple of yards of light fleece. I drew up pants patterns based on sweat pants my kids already had, and then made five pairs of pants for them.  Very simple, back side same as the front side, zigzag stitch throughout.  I re-used elastic from their old pants for the waistbands. But sometimes the elastic is stitched in too well to make getting it out worthwhile. I like pattern drafting, and my children are constantly growing, so I usually draw up a new pattern every time.

I had enough fabric left over to make one small dress. And to lengthen the pants for one child who wanted his pants longer.

Since then, I've been working on the first task of moving, which is a huge purge to minimize the amount that needs to be moved. I try to keep things decluttered as we go, but there is always more that can go out the door. This week I have been working on cleaning behind and under as many pieces of furniture as possible. It is amazing how many toys and odd objects find their way back into the dust bunnies.

I have been reading Tsh Oxenreider's Organized Simplicity. My reaction (after one reading) is mixed. It felt like the book was aimed at people living large and complicated lives in McMansions; as a writer I understand the temptation to write to a straw audience, but it made it difficult for me to meet the book where I actually am. I have been working for a long time on a simpler and more efficient lifestyle, and never had anything very big in the first place, so I have already picked most of the low-hanging fruit that she is offering her readers in this book. Still, there were several interesting ideas and organizing principles that I took note of. The appendix of recipes for homemade cleaning recipes and personal care products is very good, and includes many that I use myself.

But I differ with her on washing windows; instead of newspaper, I have a scrubber and a squeegee. With a towel (to wipe the squeegee and window edges) and some warm water with a little dish soap in it, I can wash the windows very quickly. It's very similar to washing the car's windows at the gas station, now that I think about it...treat your home like a car.