What has two thumbs and likes to de-clutter?

As I mentioned in my last post, I did a little bit of re-organizing this week in order to free up some space for Zelda the Pig.

I had these cookbooks in a cart in the bay window area, and as you can see in the picture, it was kind of a messy situation.

Not great.  In moving the cart out in order to clear space for Zelda, I had to find a new spot for the cookbooks that were there.  I happened to have this IKEA hutch on the other side of the couch that has housed this ancient stereo ever since I moved in here 7 years ago.  (And I don't even want to know how many years before that, when it was in my parents' house!)

Cassette player - I know!  OLD!!

It got even worse recently when I started clearing out my VHS tape collection.  I had probably at least a hundred of them stored in my big white bookcase in the living room until several months ago, and then decided to clear them out of there and update my media to something *not* from the last century.  (Honestly, though, I think this was actually a 2013 New Year's resolution, so when I say "recently" that's really just to cover for my embarrassingly slow progress on this work.)

Knowing that I was most likely just going to trash most of them, I thought it would be actually helpful to not have another storage place to put them, and to just keep them kind of stacked around - you know, as a reminder to do something about them.  This approach sounds sort of weird, but it's worked for me before; if I just make myself crazy enough with a particular mess, eventually I'll be motivated enough to do something about it.

And in this case it worked!  Although clearly it took a looooooooong time.  I tried a bunch of different things to dispose of the VHS tapes.  First, I tried selling the Disney ones online through Amazon.  I sold a couple, but it actually cost me money to do it because of the high shipping costs.  So there was that.  A huge number of the commercial movies I had I donated to a nursing home run by the husband of a friend of mine.  Apparently the old folks really dig my taste in movies :)  There was a third group of tapes that were old Berg home movies - mostly dance videos - and I couldn't bear to throw those out.  And let's be honest, the world would probably be a worse place without those things floating around.  So this morning, I took action.

That's right, I got rid of ALL of it.  I took the stereo to an electronics recycling location, and dropped it off.  And the home dance movies I took to UPS to ship them off to this website which will digitize them for me and put them on DVDs.  The result is freeing up an amazing amount of space, both in and around the hutch. 

That corner feels so much more open than it did before.  I think eventually I'm going to get an iPhone or iPod dock with a CD player to put on top of the hutch, so that I can still have some kind of music-playing device with better speakers than my computer.

But for the time being, I'm just delighted to have finally been able to check a few major items off a longstanding to-do list.  Productivity rules!

Some arty updates

Since I finished the cabinets, I've had a bunch of people asking me what the next big thing I'm going to tackle is, and to be honest, I'm not sure.  There's a bunch of stuff that I'd love to do, but it all costs money, so for the time being, I've been contenting myself with some less expensive updating - mostly adding art and decluttering.

First up was finally hanging up some pretty sea glass art that I bought when I was in Barbados in February.

I know, I know - a ridiculous delay.  I have no excuses for why it took so long.  I bought it there with the express purpose of hanging it in my bathroom, which, as it turned out, worked great!  Only thing is that I didn't end up hanging it where I thought I would.  Originally I was thinking I would hang it up as part of a larger gallery wall on this big, blank wall.

But when I put it up in context, it was clear that it was just too small, and it would take way too many pieces to make a gallery-style wall work very well.  But!  On the other wall, they fit perfectly.

So I still haven't solved the problem of the big, blank wall, but I'm enjoying this little addition.

Meanwhile, on my trip to San Antonio a few weeks ago to visit my friend Alex (HI, ALEX!!), I had the pleasure of visiting the fiesta store (not sure what it's official name was).  This store, you guys, was amazing.  All kinds of insane Mexican art in fun colors.  This little cutie grabbed my eye right away.

I named her Zelda, after my new best friend (Alex's daughter), who I met in San Antonio (HI ZELDA!!!).  Both the human Zelda and I were immediately drawn to this little blue flying pig.  I dig the colors, and the recycled metal aesthetic.  Kind of like if you went to a junk heap and just happened to magically find all of the pieces that would perfectly fit together to create an adorable pig.

Zelda is now hanging out in the area near the bay windows in my living room, which used to look like this:

I had this rolling TV cart thing there, which I used to store cookbooks mostly, but it also became a repository for whatever other crap was floating around.

Not cute.  You know what IS cute, though?  This guy.

I'm enjoying having her sit here kind of near the couch where I can stare at her all the time. 

Anyway, so to return to the un-cute TV cart, I've been thinking about moving it out of that nook for a while, because it's kind of a crowded area.  Having that there, plus the ottoman and the tree, was a little much and felt kind of messy.  I would actually love to have another place to store the ottoman, because I actually don't use it all that often except when I have company and need more seating.  Haven't figured that one out yet, but I took one step in the right direction by getting rid of the TV cart and putting all the cookbooks and papers elsewhere - more on that another time.

So the end result is nice, though these pictures don't totally do it justice because of the bad lighting (sorry about that).  It feels a little more open, a little less cluttered, and a little more piggy.

Perfect.