The power of de-cluttering

Somewhere on the interwebs recently I saw a blog post that had a teaser that was to the effect of "Are you totally neurotic and stressed about your house?"  Obviously, I clicked on it.  It had a bunch of little pieces of wisdom to help you become less neurotic, and one of them really stuck with me.  It basically said that the world (and blogs and Pinterest in particular) is full of things telling you how to make your house better and what you need to buy in order to do it.  So true!  Spending time on all these home improvement blogs can suck you into this black hole of judging every single thing in your house and then being bummed about not being able to afford to do something about it.  So this piece said instead of dwelling on what you can't do - simply de-clutter.  Just looking around at the stuff that's taking up space in your house and getting rid of some of it can open up space you didn't realize you had, and make the space feel completely new, without spending any money at all.

In that spirit, I decided to tackle a project that I'm sort of embarrassed to admit to.  I moved into my house about 4 1/2 years ago, and had put a bunch of my junk up on the second floor, in the storage area, and also just scattered all over up there.  Much of it never having even left the moving box it came here in.  Since I don't use that space much except as a guest bedroom, it didn't really bother me on a day to day basis, but then when I read this little nugget of wisdom, I just thought "I should really get on that already."

I'm not good at doing these big cleaning projects in big chunks, so I've been working on it for a few hours for the past couple of weekends.  Here's what it looked like when I started.  First, the attic storage area:

Then the main bedroom/office area:

In fact, it was actually a little bit worse than this.  In the second picture above, there were actually about 2 or 3 cardboard boxes that used to sit tin the corner to the right of the desk that I had just cleaned up before taking this picture.  But still - LOTS of room for improvement.

Once I had cleaned those boxes out and gotten some of that other stuff off the floor, I realized that I could maybe be making better use of the space by re-arranging the furniture.  (The de-cluttering principle's first payoff!) I actually tried to be really scientific about choosing how to set it up.  I spent a couple hours first measuring everything and then drawing out to-scale maps of how the furniture could be set up.  Turns out I can't get that creative with the furniture arrangement up here because of where the outlets and phone jacks for the computer are. 

So in the end, the biggest change I made was to move the desk over to the area facing the two floor-level windows.  Not a big deal, but it's amazing how much more open it feels up there.  Then I kind of scooted the futon a couple feet to the right to create more room to put that standing lantern lamp between it and the desk.  That really helped to lighten up a dark corner.  Here's a few pictures of this mid-point in the process - some cleaning has been done, furniture has been re-arranged, but still a ways to go.

I had to let this sit for a few days before I got up the energy to truly tackle the rest of the de-cluttering.  I don't think of myself as a packrat, so I had not really realized how much s*** I have.  Just the most random stuff.  Bacon wallet?  Check.  Ringo Starr hat?  Check.  Collection of magazines about 15-year-old Prince William?  Double check.  (In the interests of full disclosure, these are all items that I have in fact decided to keep for the time being.  I know, I know - I've learned nothing.)

Anyway, cleaning once again resumed this past weekend, so I've got the finished product to show off now.

And the attic:

I'm definitely making much better use of all the space in there now.  Things are organized, labeled, and purged.  There's still this corner in the back where the drywall hole from the gas line installation is.  Once that's fixed up I'll be able to use that corner too.

I'm sure that I'll be doing much more up here.  It's kind of a blank canvas now, with all the crap cleared out.  Exciting!  I'm still mostly focused on the main level, but it's nice to start thinking about possibilities for the upstairs too.

The Elephant (Wo)man

Finally we are in the here and now!  This past weekend I decided to spend just getting s*** done.  And it felt awesome.  One of the items that's been on my to-do list for a long time has been to frame this pretty ink drawing that my friend Amanda brought back from India for me...like four years ago.

Pretty, right?  And is totally something that looks like it belongs in my house (well done, Manders!).  First I went out and got a cheap frame from Michael's.

This was an improvement, but still not finished.  The "mat" behind the drawing is actually just the picture that came with the frame turned around.  Getting it in a frame bought me a few more days to sit around thinking about what to do with it.  Then I had what I thought was a pretty good idea to get some burlap-y fabric to use behind it.  It took me a couple of indecisive visits to the fabric store, but I finally picked out something I liked, this linen:

I really wanted something with a lot of texture but a neutral color, so I thought this was pretty perfect.  I cut it down to the right size, stuck it in the frame, and voila!  A new little piece of art to put on my walls.

I had a tougher time finding a place to put it, since it's kind of an odd size.  A little too small to put on a big wall, and a little to wide for a small corner where I think it would be best.  In the end, I settled temporarily on this spot in between the windows in the dining area.  I might end up moving it at some point if I rearrange some other wall art, but this is a pretty good spot for it for the time being.

Kitchen cabinet hardware

Someday soon I promise I'll start writing posts written in the present tense.  I think I only have one more major project to update on before I get there, and it's my kitchen cabinet hardware.  Here was my kitchen (it has since been tidied up).

It had these little silver nickel knobs on all the cabinets, which were fine, but I just felt like the whole room was in need of an update.  Nothing's TERRIBLE, it's all just a little un-modern-looking to me.

I've got many big plans for the kitchen, but because of the budget I decided to start with a small and fairly simple one: updating the hardware.  For some reason I really felt like I wanted handles instead of knobs, so this necessitated some drilling of new holes in all the cabinets.  Kind of a scary task for a DIY novice such as myself who has never even handled a drill, let alone put big ol' holes in all her kitchen storage.

Luckily, I know Pat Smith, my personal home improvement guru, who took time on a Saturday morning to not only lend me his drill, teach me how to use it, but also made me a template so that I could accurately drill the holes the correct distance from the existing hole.  God bless you, Pat Smith, and also his lovely wife Megan for letting me borrow him for the morning.

Still feeling a little freaked out, I went home, started drilling on some inconspicuous cabinets, and miracle of miracles, everything went fine.  I even ended up making a template for myself to use when doing the drawers!  I wish I had taken some pictures while it was in process, but sorry, all I got are the after shots:

Since the drawers required drilling two new holes instead of just one, I had to fill in the old holes with wood putty, another new skill I just learned.  You can still a little bit see the difference in color where the old holes were,  but it's not too obvious, and I'm still planning to paint the cabinets eventually, so when that happens it'll be totally moot.

All in all, I have to say I'm pretty proud of the way this turned out.  Especially since I did it myself.  If you look realllllllllllllllllllllly closely at a couple of them they might look not quite exact, but I don't think the average bear will ever notice and I'm certainly not going to lie awake at night worrying about it.

With that, I think I'm caught up on past projects, and will now launch boldly into the future with new projects!