Archive for thoughts
Winter Is Coming
I think if I spent half as much time on my blog as I do reading others’ blogs, this could be something great, but instead I spend hours upon hours looking at the posts and pictures that everyone else makes.
I find that I take so few pictures of actually interesting things though. I used to, but now…I have pictures that could be titled ‘What the windows look like when the rotting wood was removed’ (see fig. 1), ‘This is what it looks like when you stick the camera in the cistern, and what on earth is that brick wall for?’ (see fig. 2), and ‘This is what the door looked like when I took off the old lock’ (see fig. 3). But do people really want to see those things? I mean, I would if they then told me how they fixed it (which I also have pictures of!) so maybe there are other people out there as crazy as I am?
I do make pretty things sometimes though, and one day the things in those pictures will be pretty (well maybe not the cistern).
I spent all of Saturday and Sunday working on the house. Working on the front windows to get them winter-ready and I painted outside things (windows that didn’t have rotten trim) that needed painted. I also replaced the handle and lock on the back door (so now it had two locks that have keys! and! I don’t have to knee the door at the point the lock is to get it to lock) which makes me really happy.
I have a whole list of things that need done before winter such as insulate around the windows; insulate and drywall the exterior walls in the utility room; insulate around the circuit box in the kitchen; insulate the incoming water supply to the house; paint the eaves of the house; fix the craft room floor; mortar the fireplace closed; mortar the outside foundation; insulate the inside foundation; install gutters on the backside of the house and stain/seal the fence. I don’t know when I will find the time to do all of those things, but it needs done. September is already booked.
I enjoy this sort of work to a degree-it is satisfying work-when you are done, you feel like you’ve accomplished something and you can see that you have accomplished something. I don’t plan to do this forever. There will be a day when things are finished enough that I don’t spend every weekend fixing, painting, going to Lowe’s or halfway wondering what kind of a money pit I have gotten myself into. I do realize that it is a house and there will always, always be something to do, but I also imagine there will be a point where those things could be put off for a weekend and I could do something else instead-something I really enjoy.
In the words of George R.R. Martin though-Winter Is Coming.
Things
I’ve been thinking a lot about material ‘things’ lately. When I moved out of my rental house I got rid of a lot of junk. I either donated it or just threw it away. I decided that I needed to seriously simplify the things in my life. I am not the best housekeeper in the world and I’ll be the first to admit that. I like to believe if I were home more often I’d be better, but I’m not so sure.
In my new house I’ve done a good job of keeping the bedroom sparse and picked up and I’ve even managed to keep the dog hair off the floor for the most part. (Thanks to this sweeper Mom and Dad got me that can be used on hardwood floors.) That room has been limited to just what is needed there…no clutter.
I’ve done pretty good with the living room too…though it feels too sparse…it has no decorations yet-or at least not cohesive decorations. There are odds and ends things that were in my last living room, but they really don’t fit the scale of the new room. This house has 10.5′ ceilings.
The craft room is the one room that I planned to have ‘stuff’. Art is a big part of my life and art has many accessories. Long term I plan to make built in cabinets for all that ‘stuff’ though.
The bathroom is making do until I remodel it this fall.
The last three rooms are driving me crazy though-kitchen, dining room and mud/laundry room.
The kitchen and mudroom are just getting by. The kitchen has some semblance of order when the dishes are done-but for a person who likes to cook and loves kitchen accessories, two feet of countertop and one drawer just don’t cut it. I can’t fix that until next year. It will be an expensive project. The mudroom will be fixed before winter, but right now it has no electric, no walls and a hole in the floor. (There technially are walls, but they are the exterior sheeting and the studs on one side and the original wooden siding to the house on the interior).
The dining room could be put together though…there’s just all this ‘stuff’. The dining room is where I drop my bags/purse after work, where I sit in the evenings to use the computer, the table where random stuff sits… All of it has a place it could be put and yes, I could try to not put it there as a dropping off point, but I’m not very good at that.
Some of it I am noticing is this ‘stuff’ I’m trying to weed out of my life. On my desk there are little notepads that I brought home from work because I didn’t use them there, so I don’t know why I would use them here? I have six glass globes (for candles or flowers) sitting on the library table that I use as a buffet table. I don’t think I even have places to put six of them, so why do I keep them?
I think there is a lot of worth in having few things that you really love, compared to many things that don’t matter to you. I’m becoming a lot better at that, but obviously I still need to work at it.
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