KonMari - Category 1 - Clothes

It has begun!

This weekend I began my project based on Marie Kondo's book, The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up.  My goal was to get through at least one category - amassing all of the stuff in one location in the house, going through it item-by-item, touching each thing, keeping everything that "sparked joy," discarding the rest, and finally figuring out how to organize it all, and put it all away.

This past week I worked on a project spreadsheet to keep me organized.  Each tab of my spreadsheet is a category of items containing a list of the things in that category.  My categories are specific to my belongings, but they follow Kondo's order and guidelines of clothes, then books, papers, other stuff, and sentimental items.  This weekend, the task was clothes.

My goal for this project is to follow Kondo's methods as closely as possible.  I outlined those in my previous post.  One key thing I did differently was not work on the project alone, but with my husband.  To make this even possible, before we got to work we talked about what was going to happen, why the process is about one person making decisions about his or her belongings, and what his role in would be.

1. He would not offer opinions, and I would try to not ask for his opinion, but decide for myself if something stayed or went, how to arrange the drawers and closets, etc.  
2. He was not there to make the process harder by making suggestions of how I should get rid of things, unless I asked him.  No, "oh you should try and give this to so and so."  No.  That just piles more work on me and makes me cranky.  If I give things away, though in a perfect world, I want them to go to just the right person or charity, chiefly, I want that part to be easy and I want the stuff out as fast as possible.   
3. He was there to support me by doing what I asked.  When he goes through his things, I will do the same for him.  

Except for some lapses on both of our parts, this worked pretty well.  He fetched and carried and gave me hugs and encouragement at regular intervals.

 

So, clothes.  I thought about the clothes I have, and where they were in the house, and naively assumed that going through them all would take a couple of hours, max.  Then we began pulling all of them out of closets, drawers, shelves and bins and piled them all in the front room.  Just that part of the process daunting and tiring.  I didn't want to stop working, but I was taken aback at the size of my wardrobe.  I know where it all came from.  It's the product of 20 years, with only sporadic weeding.  But seeing it all together like that was a little alarming.  Below are 4 of the 7 closets that held my clothes, and part of my shoe collection (note:  a bunch of those shoes are not mine, but you get the idea...) just to give you a taste of what we were up against.

3rd Floor Side guest room

Ball Gown closet

Office wardrobe

Craft Room closet

 

Shoes in the entryway

When we piled everything up, here's what it looked like.  It was crazy.

I hardly knew where to begin.  I needed to work on something discrete and manageable. That turned out to be shoes.  I looked at them all.  I touched them all. I didn't even realize that I had so many pairs of shoes.  I mean, I sort of knew, but not really.  In the end, I got rid of 14 pairs and kept 13, including 3 pairs of dance shoes.

Saying goodbye to my beloved bunny slippers...

Next I was ready to tackle socks and underwear.  It turned out that I had 14 pairs of brand new stripey socks in a plastic bin in my craft room!  The perfect place to forget about them!  Staying true to Kondo's method, we took the tags off of them put them in with all of the rest of the items so I can't continue putting off wearing new items just because they are new.  This was also my first opportunity to try out Kondo's folding techniques.  Sure enough, not only did all of the socks and underwear I was keeping, including the new socks, fit into one dresser drawer, so did my bathing suit and the undergarments I have for formal dresses, which were always hiding elsewhere.  Here's a before and after: 

Sock drawer - before...

...and after

Shirts were next.  I did refold all of them, and sort them partly by color and partly by use.  I will try and keep them this way.  I love the amount of space in my re-done drawer.  I breathe better every time I see it.

Before...

...after

I went on to do pants, work tops, bottoms and dresses, scarves, formal dresses, dance clothes, hats, jewelry, tights/stockings, sweaters, coats, and bags.  In the end I amassed 8 contractor bags of clothes for charity, 3 bags of clothes and accessories for my dance group to pick through, at least 3 bags of trash, some specific items for specific people, and, many thousands of the item that must grow in my house, hangers!  Because I was getting rid of so much hanging stuff, I took the opportunity to change as many of the hangers as possible to the ones I like and get rid of the rest.  My very patient husband not only helped me with this, but bundled up all of the like hangers in hopes they will be useful to some thrift store.

At the end of the day on Saturday, when I was finished going through all of the clothes, but not some of the other stuff, I didn't have a great sense of calm or relief.  I felt mixed - pleased that I had done so much, unsure if I had gotten rid of enough, and really unsure that I had truly used the "spark joy" methodology in keeping what I did.  Also, although the dresser drawers were in place, the rest of the clothes were all jumbled up in the wrong closets.  All of this was unsettling.

On Sunday the first thing I did was reorganize all of the closets - re-hanger everything, and take another look at all of it.  I am now only occupying 4 closets!  I only have to remember where things ended up!  Here are two closet "after" shots.

By mid-afternoon on Sunday, I had gone through everything in the clothes category, and I felt great about it.  Nothing is hiding in a bag on a closet shelf where I forget about it.  All of my jewelry is in one place that makes sense to me.  My closet choices take into account where the cat likes to hide and shed all over my long dresses.  Everything has a place!  I'm excited!  My mixed feelings from Saturday were gone, which was a relief.

I didn't do everything the KonMari way.  Two things in particular:  I didn't arrange the items in a given closet by color, but instead grouped things by type.  Almost everything is black, purple, or red to begin with, so arranging from light to dark is kind of a non-starter for me.  Also, I didn't automatically assume that "maybe" means it has to go.  There are things that I really do like, and wanted to keep and commit to wearing that I forgot I had.  If I wear them and decide I don't like how they look any more, I'll get rid of them then.

I feel like I now have a better sense of my wardrobe and finite choices about what to wear.  This really just makes my like easier.  And I love that feeling of not discovering a pair of earrings in a drawer that I love and have forgotten about, or dislike, but yet trip over every time I'm looking for something else and find them taking up drawer space.  The key will be to see if I can keep up this organization system, and keep things tidy, not add things unless I'm filling a particular gap, and commit to using new things right away.  Overall, I feel more mindful about my clothes, and not over-burdened by that pile I had at the beginning.  As soon as I can get to the thrift shop and get rid of all of the discards, it will be even better.

I am eager to move on to the next category:  books.  I have part of next weekend to do this, but after that, weekends are a bit scarce, so I envision my tidy-everything-in-the-whole-house-all-at-once will easily expand to fill at least the next 6 months!

Tea party readiness...

Okay, this post has very little to do with tea...

A couple of weekends ago, I hosted my first tea party of the year.  It wasn't really an on-purpose tea party, but a get-together in the guise of a meeting that just happened to occur at teatime.  I needed no more of an excuse to make tea sandwiches and cinnamon chip scones for three.

I love having people over and tea parties and hosting parties in general, and, in fact, any excuse to use all of my tea and entertaining things, of which I seem to have quite a bit.  But other than not having enough time to do it, which is always true, there are a couple of things that make having people over more of a challenge for me:

1)  My house is not in good enough shape.  I know, I know, most people, and friends in particular don't care what your house looks like (except for the ones that do).  But I care.  In my dreams, my house would be neat and clutter-free, which makes cleaning easier in the first place, so that when someone is coming over, it would only require a quick going over to be my standard of ready.  Instead, I either depend on my friends not noticing  (or not saying anything, or not being visibly uncomfortable) or go through a cleaning frenzy which is effective, but exhausting, before I even get to the fun part of making food or setting the table.

2)  I have so many serving pieces, tea pots, sets of china, napkin rings, and on, and on, carefully stored away that I don't remember what I have, where it is, and so don't remember to use it.  Or, I have things I consider to be "good" that go untouched, just as my mother and my grandmother before me never used them ever.

This jumble of thoughts coincided with a book coming to the top of my Hold list at the library that I'd been eager to read for some time:  the best selling book by Japanese author and de-cluttering expert Marie Kondo, The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up.  

If you look on the internet you'll find that people have feelings about this book.  Some have found it transformational, some think it's nonsense, and every opinion in-between.  On a first read, I think it provides a good framework for a task I've been wanting to do anyway.  Here are some of the key points (with some of my opinions sprinkled in):

-Be committed to tidying.  Have a reason why you want to have a tidy house and keep it that way, whether you more time in your life to do other things other than de-cluttering all the time, or you need the mental energy for something else.  Whatever it is, know what it is and why you are doing this.
-Tidy the whole house all at once, not piecemeal, not for an hour at a time, but as an on-going, marathon project until you are done.
-De-clutter by category, not by room - you don't know where duplicates are hiding until you see them all together, and if you tidy by room, chances are you are mainly moving things around, instead of truly sorting through them, and then finding a permanent home for the things you are keeping
-Discard first, and then find storage for everything.  Most likely you already have more than enough bookcases, plastic bins, etc.

-Tidy in the right order:  clothes, books, miscellany, and sentimental items.  You can create sub-categories for each of these broad categories, but follow this order which takes you from the easiest to the hardest things to deal with.
-Keep the things that "spark joy."  That phrase is a bit much for me, but my take on it is a non-judgmental one:  Keep the things you love.  Get rid of the rest.  Don't fall prey to the idea that you'll use it or wear it someday.  Likely you won't.  If you need to have multiples of things, fine, but be purposeful about it, not random.  Kondo wants you to actually pile up all of the things in one category in one place, and pick up each item to help you decide whether or not to keep it.
-It's not only beautiful things that can spark joy.  You may choose to keep things that make your life easier, have a high degree of functionality, or are useful everyday.  Be reasonable - household cleaning products are not going to spark joy, but you still need them.
-Tidying and cleaning are different things.  Tidying has to do with objects; cleaning has to do with dirt. 
-Don't keep things because someone else wants you to, because they had sentimental value at one kind, or out of obligation because someone gave it to you.  Instead, appreciate the moment of acquisition, or the sentiment behind the gift, or the generosity of the giver, and let the item go.
-Tidying is an opportunity to assess your current preferences and tastes.  Focus not on getting rid of things, but instead on keeping only things that you love, use, and want near you.
-Don't tidy/discard things that are not yours - that's rude.  Don't let others sway you to keep things you can let go of because they might want them, or for other sentimental reasons.

So, the project begins this weekend - perfect for the predicted snow accumulation.  As Kondo demands, I'll start with my clothes, including my shoes, which I have scattered in closets, bins, and drawers all over the house (I just remembered that I have two pairs of shoes at the office.  Home they come).

I'll use this space to document my progress.  I expect it to take the better part of the year.  But when it's all done, I hope to have more time and more head space to work on crafts, write tea book reviews, and have you all over for a party...

Staying on task??

It becomes increasingly challenging to stay on task with the AT January cure as life intervenes and other priorities assert themselves, but the idea is still a good one, so onward with the progress report...

Last weekend's task:  Deep clean the kitchen, buy flowers, plan and cook a meal

Since I'm a big list-maker, I'd mapped out the entire weekend's to-do items, including all of the above.  I somehow neglected to include the getting sick part that kicked in Saturday afternoon and killed most of Sunday, but welcome to life.

On Friday night I moved a loose Ikea cabinet out of the craft room and into the kitchen.  I was still convinced it could be useful, but it never found its home upstairs.  I cleaned off the stool the cabinet displaced, and mopped under and around all of the shelves and appliances and the radiator in that half of the kitchen.

The cabinet is narrow and shallow and just fits next to the radiator.  It now holds plastic wrap and foil in the cubbies meant for wine, and cookie cutters in the two drawers, now freeing up more pantry shelf space.  And best of all there's this empty space in the middle to hold cookbooks, and telephone books (I know, I am the only person in the world to still keep, and even sometimes use telephone books).  I did some other cleaning in and around the kitchen, but as Sunday was destined to be the big day, and I spent most of it in bed, it's still on the list.  But I did buy flowers on our grocery trip, and I cooked quinoa for the first time for a warm quinoa-arugula-pear-sausage-roasted Brussels sprouts salad.  Yum!

Here are this week's tasks and my progress so far...

Day 9:  Create a Landing Strip

The idea here is to have a place immediately as you enter your home to hang up your coat, put down your purse, keys, work bag, etc., and spaces in which to sort and deal with your mail.  I have long used my front table for all of the mail.  This past weekend, I changed the recycling bin so that it fits under the table, but is still easy to use for immediate junk mail recycling (AKA, most of my mail).  I took old mail I need to save upstairs to be filed (true confessions:  it's not filed yet; office = nightmare), went through the recent catalogs, and generally neatened things up.  I still don't have great solutions for coats, purse, and other bags without using the window seat and newel post, but I'll keep thinking about it.

Day 10:  Work on Your Goal Project

So, I did take a full set of "before" pictures of the craft room, but those are worthy of their own post.  Since then I have put all of the stamps that have a place away, created baskets for the uncatalogued, and catalogued, but needing a home stamps, and generally put some stuff away.  I got back to creating my stamp drawer maps (I've done 16 out of 64 or 1/4 of them), which are also worthy of a separate post, but all in all, there is still too much in there, and not nearly enough days left in the month to tackle it.

Day 11:  Try a Media Fast this Evening

This is by far the easiest task since the vast majority of my evenings are like this.  Because my computer is powered by very old hamsters, I rarely use it at home.  I don't watch TV, only the occasional movie, but since the room with the TV also has the broken radiator and a hole in the ceiling, it's really easy to avoid going in there in the winter.  And after work, my cell phone generally stays in my work bag or my purse.  Last night, I definitely media-fasted.  I went to the dance instead.

Day 12:  Declutter Books and Media

I feel pretty up on this task, because it's ongoing for me.  I love books, but I have been doing myself the favor of getting my reading material almost exclusively from the library for some years now.  And because I'm still out of shelf space for the books I do have, I'm constantly looking for books I can bear to part with.   So the instant a book I own seems less vital to my life, it goes in the outbox.  (And coincidentally, if you have or know a pre-teen or young adult who needs something to read, let me know and I may be able to do something about that...)

But here's the rub:  old cassette tapes.  Realistically, I'm never going to listen to these again.  I keep meaning to make a list of the albums and songs I should buy on CD or download, and then get rid of the tapes, but I haven't done it yet.  Maybe that will be a February project...

Oh, and....

I finally decided what to frame:

Where should I hang it??

2013 House Projects...

So far, I'm still keen on the Apartment Therapy January cure.  It's been fun reading people's Cure diaries after the first week and their lists of projects.  It really does make the month-long project sound possible as long as I stay grounded in the reality of my busy schedule and not even try to take on too much.

Keeping up with the home cure task list, I think I've decided what piece of art to frame.  Besides, Michael's is having a huge framing sale...

Here's the Cure task update and report:

Yesterday's task - plan a party for the end of the month
For this weekend - deep clean the kitchen, plan and cook a meal, buy flowers

Report:

I started thinking about my annual valentine-making party yesterday.  I think I skipped having one last year due to my outrageous travel schedule.  This year it will likely be a small evening event, so all two of you who are reading this, let me know if you want to come.

A deep kitchen cleaning is long overdue.  The oven has had a can of oven cleaner sitting next to it for a couple of weeks now.  I am frightened of the space between the refrigerator and the wall.

Here's the big list of house projects for the year:

Front Porch

Hang original front door

Add window boxes or shelves for summer plants

Move empty pots and soil to the backyard

Replace non-functional doorbell

Living Room/Entry

Organize landing strip; file or recycle all papers

Finish tacking up sofa skirts

Alter window seat cushion covers so that they fit properly

Make a designated space for purse and work bag

Dining Room

Paint small patch of wall under the thermostat

Inventory the corner cabinet

Label all china cases with permanent marker

Kitchen

Repair water damaged ceiling

Re-think spice shelf solution so that there is room for all of the spices

Organize the loose recipes into a box, book, or electronic resource

Organize party planning recipes and ideas

Re-pot the Christmas cacti

Paint kitchen cabinets

Clean oven

Laundry Room

Re-hang clothes drying rack

Corral the endless supply of plastic grocery bags

Repair washer hot water supply

Garden

Stabilize wisteria trellises

Prune roses and hydrangeas

Create a garden care list

Create outdoor storage for mower, potting soil, pots and tools

2nd Floor Parlour

Repair radiator

Repair bay window roof

Repair ceiling

Freecycle telephone table

Office

File or shred all of the papers!

Create a full inventory and index of dance books

De-clutter the doorway shelves

Repair water-damaged walls

Craft Room

Streamline craft room storage

Paint and hang wood shelves

Continue to make stamp drawer maps to enable quick clean-up of stamps

Create zones for different items

Move outbox to another area of the house

Put everything away

Bathroom

Wash shower curtain and liner

Wash mold from ceiling

Repair water-damaged ceiling

Re-paint peeling areas

De-clutter the cabinets

Repair the sink drain/stopper

Bedroom

Keep dresser and trunk clutter free

Repair damaged ceiling

Review scarves and only keep the few I wear; create new scarf storage

Third Floor

Repair hallway roof

Replace damaged hallway ceiling

Keep guest beds made and covered with king size sheets to keep clean

And this month's special focus project:  the Craft Room!!!!

In a future post, I will share the scary "before" pictures with you...

Five minutes a day...

Every January the design blogs I read are full of hope and resolutions and solutions to help you freshen and reclaim your living space.  They take advantage of the new year as a time of beginnings to help motivate people to do what they should be doing all of the time.  This is not new.  And, I pretty much buy into this philosophy, at least in intention.

The creator of ApartmentTherapy wrote a book around the idea of a home cure, saying that you could take control of your living space and transform it into what you want it to be, or at least begin the process, over the course of a month.  They've created steps, and daily tasks toward this goal to make it be manageable, and possible, and encourage folks to join the Cure through their website to create a support network for participants, and induce some accountability.

Although I think the Cure is a great idea, I haven't been ready to commit to the online deal.  Still, I'm following with interest, and even trying to play along a bit.  I forget exactly what day they're on, but the major steps so far seem to have been:

1. Go through your living space and make a list of all of the projects that need doing.  It needn't be exhaustive.  Stick to 3-5 projects per room.
2. Create an Outbox, or a place for the things you're considering donating or trashing to live.  Consider your outbox as a waiting room.  You are not committing to get rid of anything in there, but simply creating an area where things will live while you're considering their fate.
3. Buy flowers for yourself and your house.  Do this every Friday so you can enjoy them all weekend.  You and your house deserve it.
4. Sweep and mop your floors.  Do a thorough job.  Move the furniture.  Vacuum the rugs.  You will feel better.
5. From your list, pick ONE project you will work on this month.  
6. Frame a piece of artwork you've been wanting to hang for a while.  You could do this yourself, or have it professionally done.  Don't put it off any more.

My progress...

1. List made.  Man, it's long.  And not do-able in one year, most likely.  Long.
2. I love my outbox!!!  I've had one for a while.  It's not in the right place in my house, but the instant I get the notion that something can go, I try and put it in that area right away.  Chances are, I will never miss whatever that item is.
3. I didn't buy flowers last Friday because I knew I was going away for the weekend.  This weekend I will for sure.  Flowers are something I love, but a treat I rarely afford myself because it seems far too extravagant.  But Produce Junction will sell me something lovely for less than $5.
4. Okay, I haven't done this step at all.  But I agree that it's a good idea.
5. I picked my one item!  Ack!
6. This one just appeared today.  I did trim and frame my January calendar page, but I don't think that counts.  This is a good idea though.  I will have to consider...

In my next post I'll share with you my LONG house project list along with my project of choice and the scary "before" pictures.

Let me know if you want to play too.  I'd be delighted be a part of a not-necessarily-published-on-the-internet support system!

And then there were...

Curtains!!

On the hottest weekend of the summer so far, I finally decided to take my fancy, tea-dyed fabric and do something with it. I set up shop on the marginally cooler first floor of the house, reminded myself how to use the sewing machine, and got to work.

There are no pictures of me sweating and schlepping back and forth between the iron and the sewing machine. But simply imagine the swearing as the bobbin runs out of thread. Again.

Just as almost every house project requires a trip to Home Depot, this one was no different. I took a heat and sewing break to run to Bed, Bath and Beyond for curtain hardware.

Finally on Saturday morning, the panels were done. With the help of a friend, the rod went up and the first panel was hung to test the length. Good news: the pattern of the fabric is running straight across!



I knew the hardest part would be to get the two panels perfectly aligned. I knew it would bother me if both weren't straight, and if the writing wasn't continuous from one panel to the other. I measured and hemmed, and for some reason, it worked!



The good news is that you can't see the bottom hems because they are behind the sofa.



I like them! I'm thrilled they worked out. They give the room a warm feeling without being dark or heavy.



Next up, trimming the sofa hems and a windowseat cushion...

Tea-dyed and gone to heaven...

One of my summer projects is to make curtains for the large window in front of the house. Over the years I've played with various curtains for that window - black velvet, an old shower curtain in a floral pattern, and most recently, a heavy, white cotton job making use of binder clips to keep it from dragging on the floor. But finally, I hit on some great fabric at Ikea (of course).



Just one problem. It's so very white. I thought it would be too stark of a contrast with the more neutral and burgundy living room palette. I wasn't up for regular dying, but tea-dying seemed just the thing. I just wanted to take the edge off the white, and I just happened to have a ton of extra tea bags in the house.



Theorhetically you can use a pot on the stove filled with boiling water to do the job, but I wanted to do all of my fabric at once to keep the color even. So there was only one possible place - the bathtub.

In go the teabags!



When the tea was fully steeped, it was time for the fabric to take a bath. In it goes...



I made use of a random, wooden kitchen implement to submerge it.



I sat in the bathroom for over an hour swirling the stuff about so that it colored evenly with no mottled affect.



The color is getting close...



Out of the the dryer...



...and onto the ironing board!



Done!



Next, to turn long pieces of fabric into curtains...



Stay tuned for the next thrilling installment...

Deaccessioning...

Maybe it's something to do with my longing for spring that's brought about this urge to clean house. Not scrubbing, mind you. Though I do that from time to time, I never have the longing to...

In my never ending process of de-cluttering and actually putting things away from the places where I've dropped them, I will suddenly come across an object I no longer want or need. Without hesitating (lest I have second thoughts) I try and put the items in one particular place - my outbox, to borrow a term from Apartment Therapy. They sit there until the next chance I have for a thrift store run. And almost always, once they are in the outbox, I really never think of them again.

This weekend, I had a chance to get several bags of stuff out of my house, including:

-clothes I was given but couldn't use
-clothes I never wore
-VCR tapes I replaced with DVDs
-some CDs I listened to and hated
-4-5 random mugs
-some fuzzy critters from my distant youth or not so distant past (it's tough, but slowly I am able to let go of ~5 per year)
-rubber stamps (gasp! But not that many - maybe 10 - I will hardly notice...)
-plastic bags taken to recycling in the grocery store (I know, how could I. But not to worry, I still have more than enough.)

And, of course, I had no sooner returned home when I found, in my kitchen cabinets, the next pile of things to get rid of. Thus the cycle starts again...

Work weekend...

Next weekend I have the great fortune of having friends come up to help me with some of those house projects that I never quite get to on my own. My list of things, is of course, endless, but I need to focus on small things that are do-able in a weekend time frame (i.e., not painting the kitchen cabinets), not too expensive (i.e., not blowing in insulation), in our skill-set (i.e., not fixing the heat), and slightly glamorous/satisfying (i.e., not cleaning the refrigerator).

Here are some of my ideas:

-put window film on the living room windows
-tea-dye, sew and hang living room curtains
-hang pictures in the dining room
-re-line the kitchen drawers with non-skid stuff
-fix the sofa hems so they don't show beneath the slipcovers

Other more-remote possibilities

-inventory the corner cabinet in the dining room
-start stripping paint off of the corner cabiner (a project you can start and stop)

Oh you who have been in my house (all 2-3 readers who have not given up on this blog), what should I add to the lists??

Going green...

...the dining room, that is!

In what seemed like a fast decision, some time in May I made the bold leap of having the dining room painted. As I've never painted a room even one color, much less two, nor installed a chair rail, I forked over the big bucks for someone who had availability (i.e., needed the money right then) and knew what he was doing. Here are some pictures I took of the event:



Brian moved the furniture away from the walls, covered it over and got to work patching the old plaster, making surfaces event, etc.



He discovered cracks in the plaster I had no idea were there and made them disappear.



Please note the thermostat on the wall with the open cover. This will be important later...



More covering and patching.



At last - a chair rail! Brian and I had a bit of a miscommunication about the chair rail. We had agreed that it wouldn't go on every little corner, nor on the angled bits of the bay window. He took that to mean that it shouldn't go to the ends of the wall everywhere. Luckily I asked about it and he was able to patch it before he finished painting. It's not perfect, and it did require another trip to Home Depot, but at least it's much closer to what I had in mind to begin with.



I came home one day and the walls were green! Amazing!



Brian worked over Memorial Day weekend and finished that Monday. It was great to get the furniture uncovered and back in place. Here you see the chairs against the wall which were the catalyst for the chair rail in the first place and how we knew exactly what height to make it. The marks on the wall made that so simple.



I was upstairs at one point when I heard Brian calling for me. As he started to move the breakfront back, it became unbalanced and the top part threatened to come crashing down (this happened once long ago, early in its life with my family, when it did crash and all of the glassware within broke). The top was securely bracketed to the bottom, but the top part became separated from its base. Brian and I got it back against the wall and left it at that for a while.



In my eagerness to really finish getting the dining room back into usable condition, every so often I would open the upper doors to the breakfront in hopes I could refill it with the glassware decorating my living room. But every time, the situation was the same: I opened the door, the top part began to tumble towards me. A few weeks and another trip to Home Depot later, I came home with some brackets that a friend help me install. The breakfront is now more stable than ever, and once again full of breakables.



Notice how the back of the chairs are just the height of the chair rail. It's so beautiful. The picture also shows the chairs in all of their ripped, orange glory. This is a project I hope to tackle later this week. Stay tuned for more about their transformation...



It was several weeks before I discovered the final point of humour to getting the dining room painted. It seems the cover to the thermostat was flipped open at just the wrong moment. Brian, who is extremely careful in his work, missed a crucial bit. For now, I can simply keep the thermostat cover open, but I think it's time to drag the rest of the green paint up from the basement and finish the job.

Changes afoot...

One exterior, one interior...

In the apocolyptic storms of last weekend, the backyard went from essentially this:



to this:



and then finally to this:



The section nearest the house comes down this weekend, once I figure out how to get it unbolter from the decaying fence that's sort of still on my neighbor's side. If nothing else, at least I'll have a little bit more sun for a while. And while a new fence wasn't in the plan for the immediate future, this forces me into thinking about what kind of yard surround I really want back there. At least until the folly goes in. Maybe something like this:



And now for what's new in the house. I have a small list of purchases I want to make for inside the house (well, okay, I have a gigantic list, but only a few that a even remotely realistic in the near term). I made the first of them yesterday - a cabinet for the dining room. I need just a little more storage space for bottles of wine and other serving pieces I don't want sitting out collecting dust and/or on a bookshelf in the living room that could be otherwise holding books! So I troll Craigslist and ebay waiting for just the right thing. I wanted a piece made of solid wood, but one that wasn't heavy in volume, something made of cherry, or at least a wood of similar coloring to the dining room set, and a piece small enough to fit along a wall no wider than 50". Here's what I found...

What was there:



What is there now:



Now to clean and fill it! I'm guessing the latter won't be difficult...