Tag: housework

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Pillow Talk

Photo by Andrea Davis from Pexels

There’s all kinds of pillow talk. Mr. Honey goes to bed well before I do but I went to bed early (before midnight) and he wasn’t fully asleep so I felt free to talk. The conversation went something like this:

I’ve decided how to sort the yarn.
Oh.
Well, it decided for itself. It’s being sorted by brand/type. But I’ve run into a snag.
A bag snag? (Followed by laughter because he cracks himself up
Do the remnants get their own bag? I think I need a bag for miscellaneous yarn. Yarn that I don’t buy regularly or will never buy again.
Do you actually use remnants?
Sure. The afghan downstairs is being made with remnants.
Wow. (He is impressed with the falling leaves afghan.) I approve.
You approve?
Of the way you’re sorting.
But do the remnants get their own bag?
Yes and the miscellaneous yarn, too.

Don’t envy me what happens in my bedroom when the lights go out. Do your own pillow talk.

Today’s decluttering uncovered a package of medium yarn bobbins still in their packaging. These were purchased on my last trip to Denver or the previous one – which means they were purchased about four years ago. Which is probably the last time I saw them. They were just sitting on the floor underneath another tote bag filled with yarn. I’ve learned to just forgive myself and move on. 

I also rediscovered the doors to my bookcase. I have a really beautiful bookcase in the yarn room. This is the bookcase that doesn’t have yarn books but regular, normal books on the shelves. I am sure some of these books can make their way to the Economy Shop when the other books finally start going there. I say this because I also rediscovered two boxes of books Mr. Honey brought up to the yarn room a few years ago. My books had been living in the garage and he thought 20 years of that was enough. He set me up outside and made me cull down my books. I think a quarter of the books went away, a quarter went back into the garage (because he ain’t the boss of me) and the rest ended up in the yarn room. This weekend will find me dealing with books instead of yarn. That will be a nice reprieve and maybe I will find this book I’ve been wanting to reread.

Is it weird I’m a little excited about getting this stuff sorted? 

 

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Let Me Explain

Let me explain how this whole office/yarn room purge works.For the record, this is not my office, either. Mine is way worse. But I am a little bit heady with success at the moment. I finished the hat I was working on and started the new design for what I was gonna call the ski bum hat. But have decided it needs a new name. Because I am making with colors from the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority (no, I am a member of Alpha Psi Omega) and because it is a beanie suited for a guy, I am calling it the Sorority/Fraternity Beanie. I know, it’s not the greatest name and I am open to suggestions on a name that will suit the intention..something like SoFra.. hey that might work, let me think about it.

I also have had some success in my happiness project. My body is my happiness project and I’ve been moving more. This week – Sunday to Saturday – I’ve managed to get in more than 100 minutes of exercise. Considering I used to play more than 4 hours of tennis a day, that is nothing. But given the stuff my body has been going through, that is a lot and I am not vain enough to not know it. I see my doctor this Thursday for my annual, and I am determined to have the 100 minutes that took seven days to get, done by then.

So, what does this have to do with the purge or even knitting? Well, I would be bored to tears if all I had to do was come into the room and just clean. The idea was to do it for 15 minutes and then put it behind me for the day but I asked Cortana to set the alarm for an hour and then I mixed in the cleaning with reading a knitting blog and moisturizing my ankle which needs massive amounts of coconut oil. 

The end result is that I have found more books to go to the Economy Shop. I discovered a couple of knitting books I haven’t seen in a while and was wondering where they got to. My ankle is feeling softer (still got some work to do there) and I am catching up with the blog. I have another strange quirk. I started at the very beginning of the blog I am reading. It is 15 years old and because I know what the blog writer has been up to recently, it’s like being in a Star Trek time warp.

And there’s a shelf that clear. Or it will be when I remove the last five books/other stuff on it and determine if they are keepers or goners. I then imagine me taking the books from the floor and putting them on the shelf in a neat order. I have no illusion that all the books will fit on that one shelf. Though they should, there are less books going back than came off but the universe has a way of mocking me. I tread lightly.

This is how I know my life is blessed. This is the stuff that brings me happiness. There are things that bring me low but in the scheme of all things, this is a pretty good life when clearing one shelf of a five shelf bookcase can make you breathe easily and deeply. 

One step closer to an organized yarn room/office. Love it.

 

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The Project

Let’s get something straight off the bat: this is not my office/craft room. My room is dark and cluttered with books, papers and free range and caged yarn. There are two desks, two bookcases, 30 bins and countless bags of yarn. Along with the papers and books. None of it is tidy. 

I love a tidy room. I just don’t like doing the work it takes to get it there. The downstairs is passably clean for me. Which means I would let someone come into the house. If I knew they were coming. Don’t come by my house unannounced because unless you’re family, that door ain’t opening.  As an aside, I am convinced when they train people to come your door to sell you a new window or internet system, they tell you to knock on the door urgently like it’s someone telling you they’ve got a lost child or your car was just buried under a fallen tree. That’s happened a couple of times where they ring the doorbell with Sheldon like obsession and then knock on the door.

I’ve gone to the door expecting to lend assistance to someone in trouble just to have someone say, they want to help me by letting me know they just opened a new office five miles away and want to handle my finances. Which I will need because someone will need to handle my money and make sure I have money on my boks while I’m in prison for killing them.

Anyway, the downstairs is now passable and I’ve decided the project that needs doing is my yarn room/office.This is going to take a long time to accomplish because there is a lot to be done and I am giving this 15 minutes every morning and that will be it unless cleaning the office comes up on my schedule. It is on my schedule, so it’s possible I will have two cleaning session this week.

I’ve selected one bookcase as my 12 o’clock – couldn’t choose the other bookcase, it’s blocked by dozens of free range yarn bags. I will start with the bookcase and work my way around clockwise. 

I am sorting through the books that are massed there. I’ve already decided some knitting patterns books are no longer needed. I won’t throw them out. I gave a brief thought to selling them online but that would mean holding on to them. I will be donating them to the Economy Shop in Oak Park. The books are in very good condition and have some great patterns. I’ve made a lot of them – I just don’t want to make them again. There will be some great finds there. 

The project doesn’t have a deadline. I will get after it and do it until it’s done. There’s no goal, either. I have the plan to keep the downstairs as neat or neater as it now. So, no regressing. The same with the upstairs. I am starting with the most difficult room and then will tackle the bathroom and bedroom. Mr. Honey will help with those two rooms but even though he uses my laptop in my office, this mess is all mine. But he will appreciate it. He is one of the people who like to clean – he just refuses to enable me by cleaning up my mess. Let it noted, that on those rare occasions that he leaves a mess, I will clean it up if I happen to be cleaning that day. Just sayin’.

Though there is no deadline, I don’t expect there to be anything discernable for a month. There’s a lot to do and with the time I used this morning, I went through about two dozen books and decided about seven of them were on the good-bye pile.The others are piled neatly by the bookcase, The books I went through weren’t even in the bookcase. Don’t judge me. OK, judge me.The project will be successful. It’s gonna be great.

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Work Hours

I try to keep work hours but that hasn’t really worked out well. So, I put little activities in between work sessions but yesterday, Mr. Honey told me to put the knitting aside and clean up the living room so the new refrigerator could go through easily. So, I did. I don’t come from housekeepers so it took me all day to do it but I did not pick up my knitting until the living room was what I would pass off as clean. I’d even open the door of someone came by; that’s how confident I am.

But ignoring my knitting wasn’t easy. It was bad enough to have all the yarn piled up in one section of the living room where they could actually organize but then to ignore the cowl design I’m working on. And the bobbles. That took a force of nature I didn’t know I possessed.

So, it’s livable and passable and I have vowed never to let it revert again. It is but a springboard to better cleaning and better living. Then Mr. H announced we may not need a new fridge. He noticed ice was blocking the vents and now he’s doing an experiment to see if the fridge is cooling again after clearing them.

The yarn is saying it was an attempt to come between us. But that doesn’t sound like him. More like a trick to get me to finally have a significant cleaning session. That makes more sense. The poor guy as something of a clean freak and I was a lot better pre-Etsy. 

But now, there can be peace again in the kingdom. Just have to do the living room and kitchen and he will be one happy camper and I will be a happy camera’s wife.

And the yarn won’t have to suffer separation anxiety anymore.