I have been very busy recalibrating my body and mind but I have come to a roadblock.  There are a lot of tools I have for dealing with my mental illness which is the thing that must be managed above all else or nothing else happens.  Among the tools for managing my mental health (aside from the life-saving psyche meds) are gardening, cooking, making things, making POTIONS, taking photographs, arranging flowers cut from the garden.  Canning.  Writing about it all.  I have an exhaustive list of projects I want to be working on in addition to writing book 2 of Cricket and Grey.  But until my house is organized and cleaned up I can’t work on these other projects because I can’t GET AT STUFF.  I can’t FIND STUFF.  I can’t CLEAN STUFF when it’s all such a mess around here I don’t even know where to begin.

The theme of this year seems to be recalibration.  Changing habits.  Cleaning up.  Cleaning out.  Rebuilding.  Rewriting.

I have a great house.  Plenty of room for things.  It’s got a lot of awkward spaces and so my living room closet is actually my kitchen pantry.  It’s okay though.  If I work at organizing my rooms better I can make it all work better for me.  I need to make it so that it’s easier to put stuff away.  I need to clean out more stuff – just because I like getting rid of stuff.  Feels good the way rejecting infinite loops of negative thought feels good.  Maybe you have room for old records in your head but why keep them in there if you can make more room for fresh air if not fresh thoughts?

As I work on losing another 20lbs in the next 3 months I need to be getting my house organized and cleaned out so that I can write better and more and also do more fun things in my kitchen and learn more apothecary skills.  To get my household polished up and running more smoothly I need to do the following things:

Clean out all bookshelves – pare down books and DVD’s and anything else that lives on my bookshelves.

Organize bookshelves – in particular my reference books.  Cooking, preserving, and gardening books need to be grouped together for easy locating.

Clean out and organize the living room closet – it’s gotten hairy in there with empty jars.  I may need to store some empty jar boxes in my office.

Clean out canned goods from laundry room – I don’t use canned goods when they’re difficult to access.  That cabinet in the laundry room could hold empties and canning supplies like screw lids.  (The things living on top of the freezer?)

Clear off everything living on top of the big freezer – cause it just hurts looking at that pile of crap.

Organize the kitchen cabinets better – tough job, this.  Too bad.  Find a way to make it work better.

Plan rearrangement of kitchen to fit the old stove – make an actual plan on paper of how I will fit the vintage stove into the kitchen and how I will fit a dish washer near the sink – will I find a cabinet on craigslist to put next to the one we have or find one to replace whole sink cabinet and everything or build something myself?

Clean off all the things I never clean off – fridge, big freezer, washer and dryer, doors, mouldings, window sills, stair railing, and cabinet fronts.

Make bathroom curtain – because that sitch is kind of depressing.  It’s a small window and I already have the fabric and trim to do it.

Make curtains for office – because the blinds SUCK.  Admittedly this is a huge job because I’ve got a ton of windows in here.

Hang my weird crap up in the office – because I like looking at my weird crap.

All of these things will make it easier to clean my house efficiently and access all my stuff for projects when I want to instead of avoiding projects because it exhausts me thinking about all I have to do before I can even start.  My head will feel better because my space will feel better.  I’m going to give myself a deadline to finish ALL of these things.

That deadline is July 9th.  The same deadline I gave myself to lose my next 20lbs.  These goals are not unrelated.

What kind of household projects are hanging over your head that you need to finish so other things run more smoothly?  Want to join me in getting shit done?!  Let’s do it!