M. Suzanne Terry

My original schedule for Getting It Together had this week being Adorn – the week I clean out the closet.  I decided, however, to switch it with Rest because:

1. It’s our week of silence in Story 101.  We are to have a daily practice of silence – whatever that looks like for us.  Traditionally, I would use the week to be off Facebook and Twitter, but that’s not feasible for my work week (both at the workplaces I get paid a salary and my writing/other pursuits). My week of silence will be spent devoting at least 15 minutes every day to each of these restful practices – being quiet and still, reading (this one’s so going longer than 15 minutes), stretching or doing Pilates, writing poetry, and dancing. I’ve put aside specific times every day for these practices. If we’re being totally honest here – this is my favorite week in Story 101.
2. Life has been stressful lately, and freakishly so, given how easy my summer was meant to have been. Life is really barreling over me. I need relief now.
3. My bedroom is so full that I can’t really clear out a space around the closet to clean it anyway. It will all be easier and will require less cursing if I just do the bedroom first.
4. I’ve stopped going to church.  Well, not officially.  I still mean to go.  I really do mean to go, sometime right up to the moment that it’s time to walk out the door.  Then I stop. This doesn’t have anything to do with them.  They’re wonderful. But my hiatus from church has taught me Sabbath. It has taught me what a day of rest really looks like, and now I require it.  I need a day of rest.  Before summer started and I began to move things around (read: into the bedroom), I could go to church in the morning and still come home and rejuvenate. My room is in chaos, though, so being home isn’t so restful. I end up stacking or moving or feverishly cleaning. Or I avoid stacking and moving and cleaning but spend the day with the knowledge – that all those things I need to do are lurking right behind that closed bedroom door – hovering over me like a cloud. This, too, is exhausting. I don’t have time for my weekly rest to require more time than it already does. I need to nest.

So this week is Rest.  The plan for the bedroom is twofold, because honestly – if I can just get the room clean and organized this week, it will be a miracle. So some of the fancier things I want to do will have to wait their turn.

Short-term goals:

• Clear out. Go through all the boxes (some still packed from the last time I moved…two years ago) and get rid of everything that I don’t need or can’t realistically expect to use within the next year.
• Organize.  Put whatever is left after I have cleared everything out to place.  If it doesn’t seem to have a place, reconsider if it’s really something I need to keep.
• Clean. Dust and vacuum. Control the allergens that make me wake up stuffy every morning.

Long-term goals:

• Make curtains out of the blue sheet set. 
• Make a headboard, covered with the material from the fitted sheet of that set. I thought about making it to fit in the holes that my dad left in the platform frame, but after searching for DIY instructions on the subject, I ran across this gem.  I like the way it looks, and it seems to be a lot simpler to make than one that actually fits the bed frame.  So for my first foray into headboard-making, this is the one I’m going to go with. I also like that it includes instructions on how to make your own piping, because I’m totally doing that with an old, holey blanket that I was just going to throw out.
• Rearrange so that there is room for my little blue chair somewhere in the room.  
• Possibly get a chest (more drawers?) to hold linens to put at the end of the bed.
• Put up coat rack behind door.

Whew.  I could have spent the whole summer just on my room, it seems. We’ll see how this goes.