March 29th, 2012
This, right here, scares me more than anything. It’s not that my house is like this—although if you looked at my garage, living room, or craft/sewing room/studio, at the moment, you might wonder (more on that later)—it’s that I’m afraid of my house looking like this. Okay, not the one with the kajillion cats or the 2500 “pet” rats. O.M.G. But just accumulating too much crap, shit…stuff you don’t need. Frankly, I look at some of those houses and wonder just how…how….when did you start throwing the empty cat food cans in the bathroom, for God’s sake? And now they’re two feet deep? I lknow hoarding is a sickness and not an easy one to tame, but some of these places look like just plain laziness. But, I’m not the expert… (just an ellipsis abuser!)
I’ve always been a bit of a clutterbug. Somewhere, there’s a picture of my room when I was in the 4th grade. Daddy was taking a pic of my little blackboard, upon which I had printed “EXOTIC HAIRDOS” (don’t ask) and in the surrounding area are piles of kid stuff. My brother got the neat genes, I got the clutteriffic genes. There is a reason, though. My mother took the time and taught my brother how to do it, and him being a tractable, amiable sort, took to it quite nicely. By the time I came along, 5 years later, her approach had changed, but also, me being the distracted, stubborn, ADHD* type…she would finally give up and just come in and do it herself. That set a bad precedent, lol, but not at all my mom’s fault.** I guess subconsciously, I just figured someone else would always bail me out of my clutter-prison. Sort of a Cinderella complex.
The weird thing is, I can organize the hell out of things…but let me get started projects? Oh…dear… While I’m working on any given project, I’ll think of a dozen other things I could ALSO do and drag the materials out to look at them, and then lose interest in all of it and move on to something else. The ADHD has the weird affect of making you avoid things. I look at a pile of stuff and literally do not know where to start, so I go read a book. There’s also the perfectionism theory put forth by Marla Cilley. ”You can’t do it perfectly, the way you want to now, so you don’t do it at all.” Between the ADHD and the perfectionism…oh, man.
This past weekend, my mother and I drove down to visit my aunt and uncle. I won’t use her real name, but Auntie Di is one of those pre-programmed, born-organized, never in a fluff kind of women you admire, wish to emulate, and hate all at the same time. There’s never a speck of dust or anything out of place in her house. Ever. You can’t catch her with her guard down. Her pantry is always stocked, her kitchen neat and spotless. She works her butt off in her own business, she and my uncle garden (we had a salad with winter greens they had grown themselves. In Texas!). Oh, wait…I forgot, her myriad plants were still sitting in groups by the garage, waiting to be distributed around the yard in their spring and summer locations–they’d just taken them out of the greenhouse. *sighs*
If you’re like me, you ask, “How does she do it?” Well, I’ll tell you. Aliens. That’s gotta be it. Aliens.
No, seriously. Here’s the secret, as Marla’s site will tell you: Routines. I’d bet you a month’s salary if I sat down and asked Auntie Di about her routines, she’d say, “yep, every day I do this, and once a week, I do this, and once a month this.” Because I know that if you clean before you see the dirt (or pile of crap), you’ll never see the dirt. I also gave a lot of thought to the notion that you’d never, ever find Auntie Di sitting down playing a stupid-ass computer game for hours. She reads, she watches some TV, and she and my uncle have their cocktails on the deck at dusk…well deserved rest time. But I know that lady is up and doing things all day. And it shows. She’s in better shape at almost 74 than I am at almost 60.
So, Auntie, you should be happy, because it’s more you prompting me to get things cleaned up and organized than all those gruesome pictures of houses that should more than likely be bulldozed.
As to the rooms that need the most help, really only the living room has no excuse, except that I used it as a staging area for crap from other rooms while I was working on them…and so it hasn’t gotten cleaned properly in a long time. This is open-heart admission, here, folks…but I still won’t go into detail until I post the after pics. 
*donning deep-shit diving gear now* If you don’t hear from me in a week, call out the Texas Rangers…I’ve most likely gone down in a crapalanche.
*I was not actually diagnosed as ADHD until I was 49…and sure did ‘splain a lot, Lucy.
**I’ve done the same thing with my son, it’s easy to do without realizing you are.
Categories: My House |
Tags: ADHD, cleaning, clutter, My House, projects | 2 Comments
July 28th, 2011
Take one of these. Which is designed to hang on the wall and hold these and these; put it on your laundry room wall and presto!
Categories: Projects |
Tags: Ikea Bygel, IKEA Hack, My House, projects | 5 Comments
August 31st, 2010
First off, I’d like to say how disappointed I was to find that this lady is no longer keeping this blog smoke and ochre. Rats. There are so many nice, nice pictures and all on it. But, you know…a kabillion, bazillion, and 93 blogs on the intarwebs and so little time.
Now that the energy devil is not sucking my aura away every day, I’m finding I have enough get up and go to get a few things done. After we decommissioned the old building on Friday, I skated. R had the day off (LBJ’s birthday, doncha know), so he took me to work, went home, slept in, then came and picked me up. We didn’t do much..picked up Taco Bell and came home. I crashed at some point and foo…what did we do Friday evening. I don’t even remember….OH! Crap, of course! Sylvan‘s party! Oy, such a knucklehead I am. Her first novel is coming out, officially on Tuesday! I’ve read the first…second?…draft, but changes were made after it went to the publisher…anyhoo, her BFF, the self-same Laura of Pushing Furniture fame, threw a surprise party. R, W, and I went. It was fun, and we totally surprised Ms. Author. 
Then we came home and I was kind of sick at 4 AM. Nauseous…and for awhile didn’t know which, erm…end….would be a problem (hoping that it wouldn’t be one of those, ah…double-ended things. I HATE that). But as soon as I “went,” the nausea went away and I was able to go back to sleep. Got up about 9:40 yesterday and spent a good bit of the day washing dishes and general clean-up, then went to Lowe’s and Tar-Jay. Spent way more money than I should have. Dammit. But I had most of the $50 GC Laura’s BF gave me for my birthday left. I bought a composter thingy. Now to get it set up. I had made a really cool FREE composter out of hardware cloth and a hula-hoop, but the dog can knock it over too easily to eat the scraps and eggshells. I’ll use that for grass and weeds before adding to the bin.Dorky dog. I got some plastic potted plant pans, a nifty cobalt blue glass mister (on clearance for $1.62!), and some hose parts to repair hoses. At Target, I got some groceries, another pair of black leggings, and a few items of make-up. Yeah, make-up. Gotta problem with that? 
I also picked up a metric-ass-ton of paint chips at Lowe’s and then sat on my bed and played with kitchen design until two AM!
One of the reasons I never get anywhere is…well, it’s a many-layered thing…like an ogre. It is my decorating ogre. I can’t make up my mind…then I have no money…and I change my mind…things go out of style…I have no money….I get more craptastic hand-me-down furniture that needs “fixing” (refinishing, etc.) and just looks like early Salvation Army meanwhile….then I change my mind…and I can’t decide on a color scheme…ad nauseum.
I’ve gone from warm, earthy tones in the great room to working off the grey and charcoal palette in a print I have, back to the warmer tones. I want a mind of Mexican feel to the kitchen and since the two rooms are, um…rather linked, to suddenly go to greys and blues would be weird. Also? I have this olive fabric, like 22 yards of it, for a slipcover for the sofa, and it wasn’t fitting in with the greys in my mind. Well, it would, but there are tones of blue, charcoal and a deep, deep red-brown in the painting. I dunno, it might still work. Otherwise, I’m not sure what to do with that piece. Feh.
So anyway, here’s the latest grouping, sort of, of colors. It seems a bit washed out on my monitor. paint link
There’ll be more of this, but I started this post three days ago, so I’m posting now.
Categories: My House, Projects, Week in Review |
Tags: Kitchen, My House, projects, remodeling, Self | Comments Off
August 15th, 2010
Each one of these is a project–and a story–unto itself, and will engender a list, or lists, of its own.
- Repair pavilion
- Sort, organize,purge bedroom and closet
- Build my bed
- Build outdoor cat run
- Build and install catwalks, hidey-holes
- Tear down roof over back deck
- Demolish existing deck
- Build new deck cover, screened in
- New deck..patio…?
- Landscape front yard
- Landscape back yard
- Repair drain in hall bath
- Replace tub, surround in hall bath
- Floor in hall bath
- Repair or replace dryer….or put up permanent clotheslines?
- Replace garage door
- Build kitty loo
- Finish sewing/craft/studio/office…room…space
- R’s bedroom…paint, floors, etc.
- Kitchen…OMG.
- New curtains in bedroom
- Rework wall’o'books in living room
- Finish purple desk
- Finish washstand
- Finish “buffet” chest for kitchen
- China cabinet project
- Dining room table and chairs
- What to do with family antique chairs?
- Table for deck/patio
- Coffee table madness
- Slipcover for couch and Loveseat
- Paint and attach plant platform to top of dog crate
- Crabitat project
- Tame the jungle in the kitchen
- Finish building R’s chair (I’ve only had the wood–already cut into the proper pieces–for 11 years…ELEVEN)
- Put a coat of wax on Big Dot’s bookcase
- New colors for bedroom?
- Scrape that GOD-AWFUL popcorn texture off the ceilings. Can you believe my Auntie J LIKES that shit? I’m thinking of sending it all to her in a box when I’m done. When they remodeled the house they’re in now, she asked for that crap, on purpose, and had sparkles added…. >.< This is a woman with exquisite taste in everything…except, apparently, ceilings.
Categories: Garden, Lists, My House, Projects |
Tags: My House, projects, remodeling | Comments Off
August 15th, 2010
Was supposed to Had told bossman I would go in and finish the library this weekend. Just don’t have the energy, thank you very much. My house, never in the best shape to begin with, has REALLY been suffering from my lack of energy and being in such pain when I get home (damned move). Now that things are settling down a bit a work, I might be able to muster up enough steam to get my kitchen back in order. It’s amazing how quickly R & W can mess it up. You know…if they paid for that talent…
In other news, R has been commenting a lot on some website about smart phones or something. First he won a mouse, then a keyboard, then a $100 GC from Amazon, then another one… Then this past week, they emailed him and invited him to take part in some conference or other in Bellvue, WA. All expense-paid weekend AND he comes home with a prototype Win 7 phone. How fleeping cool is that? Finally, his writing starts to pay off! *gigglesnort* ETA: and then he won another $100 GC after all that!
Figured out how much money I had left. If I don’t pay one bill (a certain credit card that’s now really past due) I can get us by with cheap bread, bologna, beans, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches…with the odd potato something thrown in. Going in to start a pot of beans in a minute and will make some kind of bread to supplement.
It’s just so bloody hot out. The A/C struggles to keep up and if you go outside, your core heats up and it takes forever to cool off. I hate the heat; why am I in Texas? Why?
Half an hour..then I can go turn on the sprinkler in my front yard.
Classic scene this AM…letting Abby out…she dashes in her run, bounding six feet in the air, chasing the birds out of her territory. LMAO. They love the seeds in the overgrown wild sunflower jungle out there. I cut one down…with a tree saw! it was easily ten feet or more (I couldn’t tell because it had fallen over) and the stalk was almost as big around as my chubby wrist. I think I will pull them up next year and plant more sedate hybrids in a controlled area. Geesh.
Categories: Daily Bull |
Tags: about me, Daily Bull, Family, My House, Self | Comments Off
