Last week I wrote a bit about how my family is working on bettering our nutrition. Another one of my other goals is to have my house feel like home by finding permanent homes for everything. Clutter and mess effect my mental health pretty severely. It is difficult to feel the thrill of life when as you look around you feel like a failure for not keeping up, which then in turn makes you feel depressed / anxious, which makes it difficult to work away at the thing making you feel like that in the first place.
Anyway, Kevin and I purchased a double-wide mobile last summer. When we first moved in we ensured that we kept the storage locker for an extra time so that we could sort things before they moved in. We knew that things would get re-arranged a few times before we were completely happy with the location of everything. Since then the items that have made it into our home have become rotating/moving piles of things with no home.
Originally when we moved in, we had both of our children in separate rooms. Our eldest daughter chose the smaller room but after she carved up her sister’s closet and drew all over her walls we decided it was best to limit the damage to one bedroom, moving our children both into the larger room. In August, prior to moving Sanura’s furniture into the larger room, I took the time to paint the room the shades of green that Zen had wanted her room to be. We put Sanura’s belongings on one side of the room and Zen’s on the other. It currently feels a bit cramped but Zen has requested a loft frame for her bed, which once in place will open up their floor for playtime.
The space that used to be Sanura’s room has temporarily been turned into a space the kids can use to do their homework, practise music and play on their computer. Eventually we would like to have the girls in their own spaces again. A lot of the office and art supplies will have to be moved at that point. So, once the warmer weather arrives we have plans to change up the shelving in our shed so that our crafting supplies and gardening tools will live harmoniously.
I’ve very excited for this as even though our space as expanded I haven’t really felt as though I had enough room to work on a costume project without having to worry about putting away a half-completed or wet project so the space could be utilized for something else.
The first thing we changed this year was our living/dining room layout. The room felt over crowded (and we don’t have everything in the house yet that Kevin is hoping to grab from his parents’ home). We decided that storage was the most important thing to start with. So we used some white covered boards that I procured over the winter to build a low entertainment shelf / computer desk for our focal wall. We intend to move Kevin’s speaker box beside it and eventually replace the computer monitors with a ceiling projector.
We moved our dining room table to be under a window, our fishtank under another and the third window is behind our living room seating. Our tower garden and some other shelving is also in this space. We want to re-organize our dining room hutch but can’t really give any more ideas towards our plans as we are still coming up with them.
After we made the entertainment stand we decided that we had plenty enough extra boards to make a cat apartment and cat-walk for our newly adopted kitten. We babysat Atticus back in November and fell in love with him. His owner reached out to us in early February asking if we would like to keep him as she could no longer care for him. The apartment we made him has three levels. The bottom houses his litter box. The second is a verticle tower that we keep his food and water dish in, it also has steps up to his upper level hidey-box. The roof of his apartment houses his scratch-carpets and allows him access to the cat-walk.
Yesterday I spent a few hours re-arranging the master bedroom; with minimal help. I spent the afternoon removing both my own and my husband’s dresser as well as a shelf from the space we reside-in. This is not something I suggest that anyone with fibromyalgia does on their own. My body is aching a lot from it but I’m happy with the results so far. With those items removed I went into the office, and removed the three large shelves that we were poorly utilizing, and moved them into the bedroom. The smaller of the three shelves I have put in a corner, beside our mattress (we are still waiting for our bedframe from Christams to arrive). It has a glass door and a few drawers that I set up to display our glass wear and the accessories that go with them. The two larger shelves I have put beside each other between the bedroom door and our en-suite.
There is always lots to do as a home owner. I’m excited to complete some of these projects and work on others as well. I’ll ensure to update as I go along.