My home has been a 3 month project

I haven't had the headspace to work on any big projects lately. However, I have been making HUGE strides on my physical space. For several years, I feel like I have been holding on to stuff. Now the baby birds have flown and it's time to let go. All I want to do is to organize my home and spaces. I started with what I'll lovingly call "the green room", which was one of my children's bedrooms. All three slept in there at various points and it was filled with furniture, lego, clothes, musical instruments, books, water bottles, school supplies... Just filled. 

I had made an agreement with my workplace to work from home one day per week and I wanted this to start as of October. I was motivated to create this space. It started with clearing the room and painting the walls cream. Where did all that stuff go? Garbage and obvious donations were sorted and hauled to the appropriate places. I put the bunks, bedside table, and a bureau up on freecycle, and most of the other stuff was stuffed into bins and loaded into the closet or pushed into the blue room. I didn't take a before photo, and now I really wish I had because it was a lot of work.

After painting, which looked great, I had a very clear vision of a low stimulation environment. I had a good idea of colours... I just had this unshakeable image of how I wanted the space to look and somehow that made it really easy to complete, which included a futon (and within an hour of that decision we found one sold locally, never used, and rated for 350 pounds) so that we could invite people to stay in our home. I love the space. The kids love the space. Neil loves the space. The cats would love it but I don't let them in. I have a rigid routine for my work-from-home day, including plant care on Monday mornings and clean on Monday afternoons. I keep it cat hair free and clutter free and I can breathe in there. More plants have moved in but essentially here's how it looks.

 

Here's my cozy, low stimulation "work from home" corner. Right above is my little plant friend and my beautiful art piece - The Carp. Further above shows some display pieces of old office equipment, and all the lovely plants that have slowly moved in. It is very much a peaceful place that is productivity focused. This is essential for me for a home office. I need one place in the home that is dedicated to work, otherwise my attention is pulled away from my duties.

The kids' stuff is being worked through in sessions - over Christmas I'll ask them to go through their video game collection which is the next biggest category of things. We have been through the clothes and books. There are some things that I find hard to let go, but that's my issue. I figure it has to do with missing my little boys. I just wasn't prepared for losing them to growing into fine young men.

The success of creating this space hooked me, and I turned my attention to the blue room. The blue room was so full of stuff we could not have used it to escape in an emergency, which to me crosses a line from messy to Big Problem. I feel quite vulnerable even showing this, but here is how it looked once I took all the little craft storages around the house and put them into one room. This was about 2 weeks into the process, as in already showing improvement.

Progress was incredibly difficult as I have so much stuff that I love... so much that there was no point even organizing it until I got some of it moved out of the house. Once I turned to decluttering I found a few things. First of all, it is really easy to cull the surface level - items that are easy to let go. It was harder to find time to move it out of the house than it was to let it go. We did more dump runs (a few bags at a time) and have given a huge amount to thrift stores. I am holding some things for SCA largesse, but this will get given away before too long, and two garbage bags of gorgeous fabric went to the Driftwood Players, a local theatre group. Lots of things have gone up on freecycle, and I try to imagine the joy of people creating and breathing new life into things that were stagnant.

I wish I had taken more progress photos, because this image above is about midway through the process and is the result of hours of work over a span of weeks. My remaining fabric has been moved into the wood cupboard (along with sewing tools, notions, and supplies), and the room was ready to sort. I got everything off the floor and am taking a break on house organizing until after Christmas. This is the current state of the craft room. It is useable, I can find the things I want to use/work on, and I am very happy with the progress we made.

There's still so much and not only in this room but in the whole house. There's beautiful but unused family furniture, dishes, games, photos, sentimental items, but I have finally gotten my mind around letting go - I can live without these things. I want a comfortable home. I want a recliner for my old age. I want to experience the stuff I like. I don't want the anxiety of sitting amid visual clutter. Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly proud of myself and try to stay in that feeling because if I broaden my view I get feeling overwhelmed. I have described this as looking into a fractal, an infinite dive into my things. Yes I got the room sorted out, but then there's the shelf. And the bin on the shelf. And the box in the bin... and so on... and so on... Just an endless inner dive into things I couldn't use in this lifetime.

Image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Self-Similarity-Zoom.gif

I feel better, less weighed down by my belongings. This isn't creating, however it is setting myself up. It's an investment in my future projects. I feel like I am shedding my old skin to reveal what is underneath. I suspect this "letting go" is some biological urge, maybe empty nest syndrome, and I am leaning into it.