Getting It Together – The New Master Plan

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What I’m Into – July 2014 »

Getting It Together – The New Master Plan

July 27, 2014 by Suzanne

Last year, I started making a cork board out of wine corks. It’s as tall as I am, which isn’t very tall for a person, but it’s an impressive height for a cork board. I haven’t gotten very far on it. I have, however, asked a handful of friends to save their corks for me, and because my friends are outstanding, they have supplied me with many corks. The result of their outstanding nature is that I have several jars of corks sitting in various places around my apartment.

I like the look of these jars. They’re good for decoration. They’re also good at reminding me that just because everything isn’t perfectly finished, that doesn’t mean it can’t be perfectly lovely in the process.

I need that reminder.

I’ve taken the last two weeks off from the Getting It Together project to breathe. It turns out – I’m really good at taking time off. I have eaten sandwiches and raw veggies and fruit salad (minimal prep/minimal dish-dirtying). I have gone out to eat with friends (zero prep/zero dish-dirtying). I did not do my 30-minutes-a-day cleaning schedule. Today was the first day in a week that I washed dishes, and I only did them today because I needed to kill time while the hashbrowns were cooking.

Taking a break from the project completely has been good for me. Not only did I get a little rest, I am also excited to reorganize and start again.

I am also excited to report that, for two weeks of having absolutely nothing productive done to it, the apartment doesn’t look that bad. So either I have become a tidier person who straightens and cleans without thinking about it (which would be AWESOME), or I have very helpful gnomes living in my walls. I’m gonna guess it’s the former. YAY.

A theme that appeared in my journal during the time away was recognizing priorities. I have come to terms with the fact that keeping a neat home, while somewhat appealing to me, is not anywhere near the top of my to-do list. I have jobs to do, words to write, friends to see, books to read, and recipes to try, and all of those things are more important to me than keeping an organized home. And I’m okay with that.

It makes sense, therefore, not to put a stringent time limit on the project. The only way this becomes a workable habit is for it to fit into the life I’m living. I’m not going to try to force ten extra hours of work into a week that does not have ten available hours.

The plan this week is to get back into my daily cleaning routine. That part was working just fine. I’m also going to continue to cook and share recipes as I come across things I think people will enjoy.

After that, I’m going to go area by area until it’s finished. I will keep an update of how it’s going.

Then, on December 20, I’m going to throw a cookie party. Maggie and I did this a few years ago. We baked an absurd amount of cookies (I think our final list was several dozen each of 14 different cookies), we set up testing stations, and we invited pretty much everyone we knew to come over with cookie tins and take some home. It was a lot of fun (for the most part…there were a lot of people there at certain points…we clearly didn’t think that through). Maggie is in Houston now, so I’ll be recruiting others to help, but it’s going to happen. That gives me a soft deadline for getting the apartment to a place where it’s conducive to a sea of people (and cookie stations), even if there is still a little work to be done overall. I think that’s reasonable.

Another thing I decided was missing was a master list of posts in one place so that it’s easy to follow. So here’s that list.

Revamps:

Welcome:

Sustain: