Dotting the ( i ) Yi Yi

Have I mentioned that I'm a list maker? Well, I am. At any given time, you'll find anywhere from two to twenty lists of good intention lying around this joint.  I have lists on the refrigerator, lists by the door, lists on the computer, lists in my Bible, lists in my purse...

resolution lists, project lists, repair lists, grocery lists, 

fried lists, boiled lists, list gumbo...

Yep, I'm the worlds greatest list maker. The problem is that I'm also the world's worst list keeper. Half the time, I can't even keep up with the list itself. That's why I have twenty. Ten of them are restarts.

Exhibit A would be the 101 list lurking over there on my side board. I made the list and the commitment when I first started this blog.  It was a list of 101 items taking up space in the Innie Paradises of my home. I committed to either use, repair, restore, repurpose, recycle, or retail them in 101 days.

The deadline was 44 days ago, and no, I didn't finish.  While I am pretty proud of the things that I did accomplish, there are still 10 items remaining.

 I have made a new list:  10 Things to Deal With in Ten Years. 

I think it's doable.

The Duchess, the Farm Sister, and I have a little list game that we like to play together. At the beginning of every month, we create a list of projects or things that we plan to accomplish by the end of it. At the end of the month, we gather again to keep each other accountable.

The Duchess usually puts about 25 projects on her monthly list, and she generally conquers them all. The sister has more of a cultivated list. She gives a great deal of thought to her items and selects precisely what she can and will accomplish.  She's organized like that. I think it comes with age.  By the way, have I mentioned that she's 51... and I'm not?  

I never finish my monthly list. Really, in all the years that we have been playing the list game, I have always managed to come up at least one accomplishment short.

So much for accountability.

Today is the first of February, and we're gathering to go over the lists. As usual, I'm not finished. Personally, I think I should get extra credit for the little valentine blocks I made on Monday and the coffee filter wreath I made   started on Tuesday. Unfortunately, in List Land there is no reward for random acts of senseless crafting.

Most of my items had to do with moving The Practical One to Washington DC, but I did accomplish a few things beyond that.

Whipped up some yellow pillow covers for the porch 

and planted a bunch of yellow pansies

I was only responsible for planting them, people.

The list said nothing whatsoever about making them grow. 

I deep cleaned the kitchen, including all cabinets, the pantry, 

and The Big Black Thunk.  

Here's that after shot I promised

And here's the mirror that was on the list as well. 

You can't tell in this picture, but it has a pale  yellow glaze. 

There were a several other items completed, but I have neither the pictures nor the time to take them. Did I mention that today is February 1st, Deadline Day?

So you can see why my Valentine tablescape will have to wait until later in the week. I've considered posting my upcoming list for February. You know... to keep me accountable. Think it will work?

What about you?

Are you a list maker?

And what's more...

Are you a list finisher?
Any tips for finishing a list?

I love you Mr. Rustoleum Man!

Have I mentioned my love affair with spray paint? I'm sure I have since spray painting is one chapter behind  decoupage in the Makeover for Dummies manual.

Yep. I love a spray paint makeover, and one of my favorite products is the ever popular Oil Rubbed Bronze. I've tried various brands, but I'm just a Rustoleum fan. It seems to me that their spray goes on smoother and the can lasts longer than the competitors.

Until recently.

Recently, our Lowes decided to replace all the regular old aerosols with the Universal stuff. You know, the one with the funky looking nozzle. It's supposed to be better angled or some such thing.

 Bah humbug.

I do not like them. Maybe the south Georgia autumn is just too humid for a topless nozzle or something, but over the past few months, I have had to toss three of them out with plenty left in the can because the nozzle wouldn't budge. 

Finally, I called Mr. Rustoleum Man to complain.

And you know how they say you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?
Well, call me Honey. It must have been a good hormone day or something because I managed to have the entire conversation with sweet cream butter melting in my mouth.

Guess what Mr. Rustoleum Man did
in response to my honey dipped complaint.

He sent me this.

A case of ORB in the regular old cans. I told him that I would give him a shout out on my blog. I could tell he was really excited about that.

I feel like a kid at Christmas.

So yesterday, I finally tackled a project that I should be too ashamed to yak about, the porch lights flanking   my front door.

Gulp

In case you can't tell, they were once antique brass. I knew I needed to change them, but apparently it was easier just to apologize for them every time someone came to the front door.

Which isn't really that often.
Which is probably why I neglected it so long.

Thanks to Mr. Rustoleum Man, I now have a new,free set of porch lights.

I just pulled them off the wall and removed this little knobs on the bottom. 

That let me remove the glass plates.  Then, I washed the glass and the whole ugly thing with some white vinegar. Then, I primed it and painted it.

There ya go. A new light fixture.  By the way, did I mention it was free? 

 I think it looks pretty good.   

Fortunately, reattaching a light fixture isn't rocket science. You just twist white wires to white and black wires to black and then cap them. You can't possibly mess up unless you're color blind.  The hardest part is figuring out which breaker to throw so you don't have an electrifying experience.

The oil rubbed bronze looked so nice that I pulled my brass door knocker off  The 101 List on my sideboard and gave it a makeover too. I don't have a before shot. Just picture this all shiny brass with some icky spots and and a name you could no longer read.

 But then, 

I realized that the bronzed light and knocker

 made the brass door knob look really, well... brassy.

I took it off and painted that too.

Put it back on the door and uh oh...

I  realized how very badly

my front door needed to be repainted.


Off they came again. 

So that's what I'm doing this morning. I bought a shade slightly different than the current one. I think it will look better against all that oil rubbed bronze.

As I painted this morning, I started thinking.  I'm always thinking...

Maybe it's time for a bold new color for the front door. Maybe I'll do it after Christmas.  Of course, a new door color would probably make me think the shutters look a little  lame...

And then a change in the shutters would probably make me want to change the house color...

Am I the only old blogger who swallows the fly?

How Mabel Got Her Groove Back

Woohoo!

 I won the crown!

Of course, you probably didn't know we were competing. I have kept you completely in the dark. I find it's easier to win that way.

The crown of which I speak is this one:

I am the Queen of  Half Complete. 

It's true. One critical tour of the old homestead, and you will discover tiny little touches left undone all over the place. The Big Kahuna of all such projects... the one for which I won the crown...  is a little drop front desk that has been living in my attic half naked for over a quarter of a century.

 It's true.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I started stripping furniture on my first summer vacation from teaching school, way back in 1985. My first project was this special little pine table.

It's special because my very special grandmother gave it to me to use for my very first desk. You see, at a very tender age, I fancied myself to be the next great American novelist, and a great American novelist needs a great American desk upon which to novel, doesn't she? Yes, she does.

Grandma thought so anyway, and so she gave me this little pine number which had been made by her father as a sewing table for her mother.  That would make it nearly a hundred years old by now.

Back then, it was painted black. If memory serves correctly, Debbie Hemingway requested  pale pink. In the years that followed, it went from pink to white to a trendy 70's antiqued orange. When it traveled to our newlywed nest, I stripped her bare.

I was so pleased with myself that I started looking for other family treasures to strip. I settled on a wonderful old drop front desk. This one was given to the Duchess when she was a teen by a maiden aunt.   A little investigatory stripping revealed a cherry-ish finish. I was thrilled. In  my head, it was going to look very refined.

Believe it or not, I even have an (almost)  before picture.  This was snapped in the back yard of our little newlywed nest way back in 1985.  Apparently, I was predestined to be a blogger.

(That's a before picture of my twenty something legs there. Don't expect an after shot....)

Folks, I stripped that sucker of about six colors of paint, and that was back when stripping solutions were neither as effective nor pleasant as they are today. 

I stripped the sides,

 and the legs,

 and even some little cubby holes on the inside. 

Then, I started on the drop front,

 and just guess what I discovered...

Veneer. 

Not just any old veneer, either, but broken veneer, veneer that had already been repaired at least once. Yes folks, my lovely desk was finished in early American putty.  At least I knew why it had been painted to begin with.

I was so disappointed that I began a pout of epic proportions which traveled from home to home along with my putty covered half naked drop front desk.

It moved from the newlywed nest to the starter home. 

It moved from the starter home to our current home.

And then, it moved to The List

You know... the one that sits mocking me on my sideboard.  

The one with the completion date of December 18, 2011.

Yikes. 

And so, after I finished the daughter's project, I pulled it back down.

I finished the stripping.

 I peeled away the putty and fixed the veneer.

And I did what I should have done to begin with.

I painted it. 

Black. 

That would be the bottom color under those layers of paint.
(She's actually not as shiny as the picture shows. I was trying to get a decent light.)

 I've named her Mabel, after the old maiden aunt.
I think Mabel looks rather nice in basic black, don't you?

I put Mabel in my living room and paired her with a handsome Hitchcock chair. I think Mabel and Alfred make a nice looking couple.  I'm currently working on dressing her jussssst right. If you don't see a follow up post, feel free to assume that it's going as well as my wall decoration.

*****

Sharing this on Met Monday

and with Laura at Decor to Adore

Seven Days of Purging Makes One Weak

Wooohoooo!

The Great Garage Sale Adventure is
finally
a thing of the past.

 I’m here to report that it was a moderate success.

I had settled on this past Saturday because they say the first of the month is the best time to have a yard sale. Lucky us… our oppressive drought was predicted to last well through the weekend so we took the plunge.

We ransacked both attics and every other conceivable innie paradise and brought anything we even remotely considered selling out to the garage. 


Did I mention that daily temperatures reached 100 degrees all week? 
They did. 

Which make this a hot mess...

Sorry, that's the best picture I have. I forgot to factor in lens condensation from the sweat balls on the end of my nose.

And do you know what we discovered? Junk. Seriously, there were very few big ticket items.  To be honest, I would have tossed in the towel right then and there had I not been using it for a sweat rag.    

In addition, I raised a tenacious android for a daughter who wouldn’t let me quit. She got the bossy gene from her grandmother and an organizing clean-freak gene from her aunt.  The good news is that bossy organized androids get things done.  

And we did.

She put that schmancy college education to use and set up a spread sheet upon which to log our schtuff, which she called inventory. 

We went through every single piece of inventory. A few items snuck back up the attic stairs.

Others took a long overdue ride to the dumpster. 

Most of it was listed and assigned a price. Stuff too goofy to deserve a price was boxed together.  

Baggies were filled with small stuff. 

Other stuff was given both an individual price and a box bargain price.

While I listed, they piled like-priced items together in various corners of the garage. Then we they she made sure it was all clean and complete with necessary parts. Then we tagged it.

Then, we divided it again, 

this time with similar items for display.

On Friday afternoon, we set out all our tables.  That’s just about when it started to thunder.

That thunder rolled for most of the evening, and since we’re in the middle of a serious drought, I would have gladly taken the rain.  Unfortunately, it was just another false alarm. We never got a drop. All we got was a mutant strain of hair spray resistant Georgia humidity.

We got up at 4:00 to set out our inventory.

I had planned to get a better shot, but early birds arrived a full hour early. I have an opinion about that, but I'll have to save it for another yakabout.

And we sold...

And a whole lot more.

Someone made us an offer on that sideboard
 that I've tried and failed to fix all year. It doesn't  have doors and hardware, but off it went.

I think I'm glad...

Before the end, we were close to empty...

I had followed advice and had a plan for the leftovers. I'm glad that I did because the free loaders came by after it was over. I have an opinion about that too, but I'll save it for the same yakabout where I cover the early birds...

In the end, we made exactly $333.00.  

$37.00 of which went to advertising.

Considering the hours worked multiplied by four workers from beginning to end, I figure that we would have made more money by hiring ourselves out as onion pickers.


I'm still calling it a moderate success since we did get rid of all that inventory.  For those of you cheering me on in the hoarding rehabilitation, I'm proud to report that I didn't bring a single thing back in the house.

I brought several...
Baby steps, folks, baby steps.

*****

Linking this with the other anti-procrastinators @ New Nostalgia

Get- R- Done

Wooohooo! It’s the last day of August.

Tomorrow, we get to usher in the month of September, the first month of my very favorite season. I love fall and can hardly wait to fill this house full of the sights and smells of it.

Unfortunately, I have a bit of a problem.

It seems that in the past months of moping, whining, sewing and crafting, I have developed a bit a mess around here. It’s the little stuff  I've left unattended.  Little stuff, however, has an annoying habit of congregating with other little stuff to become big stuff. Can anyone relate?

It moves from counter...
to shelf
then to a box.
and then to a bigger box.
and then to a decorated box to be camouflaged as part of the décor.
Finally, it takes up residence in what we call a banana box in some Innie Paradise. If it resides there for 6 months, it gets permanent resident status and the right to vote on domestic policy.

It isn’t commendable, people. Though visitors might not know it's there, I do, and it puts a pooper on my fall decorating party.

So my Next Thing is to take a cue from Suzanne at Southern Inspiration. She's hosting a Get It Done Challenge  and has asked us to join her in posting a concrete list of goals for the month of September.

Mine are as follows.

1. A good old fashioned fall cleaning which will include every single nook and crannie from port to stern, pillar to post, and all metaphors in between. I plan to organize my kitchen cabinets, laundry/sewing room, craft area, painting/DIY supplies, seasonal supplies, and the home office. After the leap off Tablescape Mountain, I also need a better place to store dishes, too.

2. With the two days I’ll probably have left after that, I plan to repaint the front door and do some fall front porch decorating.

3. I will also pull three items from The 101 List which sits mocking on my sidebar and give them a facelift.

A few candidates:

 or

or maybe...

or how about...

If I do not complete their facelift, they will be put in a yard sale which I am planning for the first weekend in October.  (Now October, you see, is not September. Therefore, if that part doesn’t come to fruition, it doesn’t affect my September grade.) I’m always thinking ahead…

So there you have it. I have put my September list out there. Is anyone else willing to join the challenge?

What are your plans for September?

Adventures in the Fiery Furnace

Woohooo! I’m so excited to have made little dent in  The List!

I shall call it The Great Eave Purging Adventure. 

Work is so much more fun when you give it a name.

Try it some time.

That's tip #1

One of the reasons that we loved our house on sight was the variety of nooks, crannies, closets, and other Innie Paradise options. Two of my favorite ones are the cubby holes with little elf doors off of our bedroom. Among other things, these eaves are home to old shoes, shoe boxes, and baskets which had found a home on The List.

Now, that eave clutter was placed on The List  in January.  It was an easy fix… an afternoon purge party… a free make over…a motivational starter. And the perfect time to have completed this task would have been during the winter season, no? After all, those eaves are under a roofline beneath a piney stick forest in southeast Georgia.

It’s hot in there.

So hot, in fact, that I had to solve the problem of radiant heat in the master bedroom by tacking pieces of insulation to back of the doors.

It may not be pretty, but it works.

That’s tip #2 .

Yet there they sat, right through the long winter of 2010… right through the temperate southern springtime… right through the unseasonably cool month of May…

All the way to the southeast Georgia June.

A good time, I decided, to tackle the fiery furnace.

So I opened the oven.

It felt kind of like stepping on the scale.

Good grief.

First, I tossed out all of the boxes.

What a mess. I felt the need to inspect each box for buried treasure.

I just found more boxes.

I played that little game of “I’m going to need these” for about ten minutes before the heat got to me and I just started bagging. I took 5 bags and 47 boxes to the recycling center that day. If I find the need for a shoe box, I’ll just buy a pair of shoes.

I tossed shoes as well. For some oddball reason, I had saved a large box of the girls’ old shoes in there too. I think, in my defense, that I intended to give them away but had not found a recipient.

Ebenezer was loaded again, this time with items for Good Will. Along with the shoes and some other items which will remain unyakked, I bagged baskets from the other side of Innie Paradise.

This wasn’t so easy. My baskets are sort of a Debbie Land retrospective.

I had stiffy bow baskets from that phase and crafty baskets from that one. I had repurposed peach baskets from my peach phase and heart shaped ones from the trim-it-with-lace era.

I sorted out the ones that I thought useful or beautiful.

I sent the rest to Good Will…

...where they wait for some clever blogger to showcase as her Thifty Find  of the Week… right before she transforms them into matching wicker plate charges for eight and a stunning summer tablescape.

I just know it...

But I’ll risk purger’s remorse and delight in my recovered spaces. Now, I can actually reach the shelves with goodies which won’t fit in any other place in the house. You see, behind the stash, those eaves were actually organized.

I can scour through my totes full of fabric orphans and tackle THAT item on The List.  In fact, I’ve made a good dent already.

I can detour down memory lane if I want to. Yep. Did that too.

I can retrieve my luggage and tote bags and space bags...

I can use the baskets that I did save.

Maybe I'll  make a new cover for my old picnic basket.

Maybe, I'll  plan a picnic.

I'll call it The Great Picnic Basket Adventure.

A little list update and a table for two

#90. Needlepoint tablecloths made by my grandmother

When we were younger, my grandmother began making tablecloths for each of her grandchildren. We would thumb through her little book of patterns and choose the style and color scheme that we wanted. When it was our turn, she would make it. In 1982, I chose mine; it was a forget- me- not pattern. That year, Grama was diagnosed with colon cancer. By the time they found it, it was too late to save her. She died just a few months later, never finishing the tablecloth that she had intended for me.


My forget-me-not still sits in a box, unfinished. I would consider finishing it myself were it not for the fact that I am the uncontested world’s worst hand stitcher. Oh, I’ve tried -repeatedly- to master that art, but either because I’m predominantly left handed or (likely) because I’m expedient and careless, my handiwork never quite follows the desired pattern and ends looking somewhat like those self- interpretive little ink blots on a rorschach test. And that's the front of the piece, not the back.

Being the baby of the family and the only tableclothless grandchild, everyone took pity on me. For Christmas that year, my brother gave me his own table cloth. Mom gave me one of hers as well, and when Grandpa died a few years later, I got the only one that Grama had ever made for herself. It’s my favorite.

I love my made~with~ love tablecloths, but I have never- not a single time - used one until Saturday.

Aside from the obvious fear that I would stain or ruin them in some way, the main reason that I haven’t used them is that, frankly, I have never been able to set a pretty table with them. I may not be the world’s best cook, but I do love to set a pretty table. Since Grama’s table cloths were made in the 70s, they tend to be those quirky colors from that era, colors like orange and avocado and turquoise.

My eighties era dishes have colors like colonial blue, sage, and rose. I’ve tried using my simple white dishes, but they just look drab and pathetic against those tablecloths.

And that’s how Grama’s linens ended up on THE LIST.

Saturday, when the husband and I were home alone for the evening, I decided to try a table for two with Grama's tablecloths…my favorite one, the one (of course) with all the orange in it.

I tried setting off the white plates with gold chargers, but I still didn't like it. Since my chargers are just cheapo ones that I scored for a dollar apiece when junking at Big Lots, I decided to sacrifice two of them for the cause. I thought about painting or decoupage but chose instead to make them semi- reusable by applying the same principle that I would use if starching fabric to a wall.

So I after I traced a little pattern, cut some fabric, painted a few coats of Kilz and some gold paint, and starched some orange fabric to the inside ring, I ended up with a bright orange and gold charger to set off those plain white dishes.

I think I like this. When I want to remove or change the fabric, all I have to do is peel it off and apply a new one. I just may have found one way to use some of the other fabric on THE LIST too, especially all of those seasonal fabrics of good intention which sit unused… in a box… behind a door in innie paradise.

So I set the table.

And then, the husband helped me out 

with a little Scottish tablescaping.

Oh yes, he did. Bright yellow butter wannabe and store brand parmesan pretender… right on my whimsical orange table for two…. with candles no less…

Men.
Sometimes, they just don’t get it.

101 in 101

So here it is, in all its glory. After my week of shut down and inventory control, I made my list of things to simply deal with in the next 101 weeks. It was fairly easy to make a list. After my inventory adventure, I had pages and pages of ideas. What wasn’t so easy was editing the list to a mere 101 items. I could probably have listed 1,001 things in less time than it took to make the edit. But edit I did. Then, manic lister that I am, I felt the need to divide and conquer… to categorize and sublist… well, of course . I have divided my 101 items into 10 categories. (Because 10 is a nice, round number) Basically, my categories represent the reason that said item has been living a sad little shelf  life…unused, neglected, forgotten, or broken.


I’ll address the categories at a later time. For now, I’ll just commit the plan in its entirety to cyberspace. Based on my calculations on the day the list was complete, my Day Zero is

December 18, 2011.

When I realized that Day Zero fell just a week shy of Christmas, I admit to being sorely tempted to just put off starting until a more convenient date. But since that pesky little putting off is what got the items on the list to begin with, I will take a deep breath and stand firm.

I think…

101 Things to either USE or repair, refinish,recycle, repurpose, retail, or retire in 101 Weeks

Because it will be beautiful once I…


1. Toy chest in den
2. Drop down desk in attic  Woohoo! Mabel got her groove back!
3. Side board in garage -currently working on it
4. Dining table at White Hill
5. China cabinet at White Hill
6. Side board at White Hill
7. Dining room chairs White Hill- waiting on seats
8. Old nightstand in attic
9. My green vanity table
10. Ottoman in attic
11. Iron/brass vanity stool
12. Cricket chair
13. Free Standing Oval Mirror finished after deadline...

Because I saved from the jaws of certain death…

14. Inserts/panes for windows
15. Huge,  plexus glass/skylight
16. Railing thingies
17. Old Storm door : I've OFFERED it to the newlyweds...
18.Old French Doors
19. Empty little orphan drawers from blue/green dresser
20. Windows in attic -  three down; one to go!!
21. Old paper napkins that I feel the need to save. Now that's just hoarding!
22. Old magazine “collection” (see above)
23. Box of old wallpaper
24. Primitive picture frame in upstairs closet
25. Mirror in upstairs closet
26. Old curtains (Just hopin' the 80s come back in style?)
27.The notorious shoe box   collection under the eaves. The valentine box days are long over, Debbie, really...
28. Old shutters with fabric inserts
29. Plaster sconces - two to go

Because I just had to have it… but I don’t use it like I should...
30. Iron plant rings 3 down so I'm counting it after deadline
31. Lawn lantern and post
32. Mailbox
33. Silver and glass coffee server
34. Tandem bicycle - moved to a different storage so I'm counting it
35. Bell collection
36. Butter spreader collection
37. White monogrammed tea towels
38. Blue Denby glasses
39. Kilke coffee pot
40. My sterling flatware
41. Those red plates that I just had to buy 
42. The green plaid mugs AND their matching plates
43. Shenandoah china
44. Moonspun crystal
45. Pasta maker
46. Electric vegetable steamer
47. Soup tureen- actually use it for soup
48. Teapot
49. Piece of carpet and padding in attic
50. My gift cards- working on them so I'm counting this as complete
51. Silver tea service
52. Claudia stemware
53. White “ruffled” casserole dish
54. Skirt pattern… which will be out of style if I don’t make use of it!
55. Every decorative flag    
56. Engraved door knocker
57. Tiered cup and saucer stand
58. New door bell Can't figure out the doggone thing!
59. Porch lights

Because the minute I get rid of it… I just know I’ll need it
60. Extra TV
61. Filing cabinet in attic
62. Custom made desk organizer
63. My OLD crock pot
64. Teacher stuff (5 boxes… one full of border alone)
65. 2 fish bowls
66. Small TV with VCR (Not even DVD) attachment
67.Large brass planters (2)
68. Big gold basket under skirted table in living room
69. Random make-up, canvas, and computer bag collection
70..Fabric in attic and eaves - made a big dent!
71. My (old) sewing machine
72. Coolers: 3 large, 3 small, 3 thermos styled, 1 soft
73. Wall mounted television apparatus
74. Decorative baskets under the eave -
75. Box of unused picture frames

Because it might be worth something…
76. Roseville vases
77. Fire alarms
78. Rainbow vacuum
79. (Non sentimental) old books from attic
80. (Non sentimental) books from trunk in den
81. Old electronics in attic... making progress...

Because of an odd sentimental attachment to an inanimate object…
82. Umpteen old school projects and dioramas
83.The matching sister dresses - making progress... making progress...
84.Maternity clothes
85. Girls’ outgrown shoes
86. The Ballet Box -good grief, I tried! 
87. Bottles of wine from Germany
88. Beige Wool cape that I wore when I was expecting…22 years ago
89. My set of world book encyclopedias
90. The needlepoint tablecloths made by my grandmother

Because I paid good money for that…
91. 35mm camera

Because it doesn't belong to me anyway…
92. Box of borrowed books
93. The Hummel plate gift for my sister from Germany
94. The baby gifts that I keep forgetting to deliver. 

Because I don’t abide by the one in/one out rule…
* Here, I will commit to wear/use all of the following at least once in 101 days or OUT they go. I know, well, of course .
95. Every nightgown  (... and this would include those which are a quarter of a century old...)
96. Every piece of jewelry from my jewelry box
97. Every cookbook on my shelf
98. Every Christmas ornament/decoration. All. Every single one.(see #95)
99. Every pillow/cover for front porch -
100. Every decorative wreath for my front door-


And finally in a class all its own... Just because...
101. The playhouse.   No, I will not play in it, although the thought is tempting. I will repurpose it for a better use than its current role as Catchall Cottage.

101 Things...

So there we sat, knee deep in  Project Paradise  ...

As the practical one  and I sorted the attic plunder, we laughed at the number and nature of things that I have felt, for some oddball reason, to save. One of the worst things about being an innie is that you often have no clue what you have. Had I known what I had, for example, I might be able to explain why I had saved the bright blue, fish covered, paper decorations from  a VBS which took place the year my now senior was in the 2nd grade. Seriously.

And what we discovered was this:  I don’t have an organization problem or a storage problem; I have an inventory control problem.

And I thought....Back in the old days when high school and college kids were still hired by companies for summer jobs, my brother worked for a local business. Every July, when the plant had its "shut down", my brother would tackle the task of inventory, crawling into their creepy old warehouses and detailing every item crowding the crevices.

So I declared this first week of January to be Shut Down. Yep, I embarked on my own creepy crevice mission of inventory control.  Cue the Jaws music...

I crawled into the attics, I roamed about the house, I opened the closet doors, I pulled back the curtains, and I peeled the lids off of the boxes …


…and I listed. I listed everything I spied that had been banished to a lonely back corner, waiting to be used, repaired, rejuvenated, repurposed, recycled, resold, returned, retired… I called it my “deal with it” inventory. These are things that will commit to deal with, one item at a time… first things first and next things next. 

Things like this...

And this...

And these... Maternity clothes, Debbie?  Really?

And this...

Why did I keep this?

It was a challenge to resist the sentimental side trip down memory lane. I avoided those boxes and trunks completely. It was a challenge to resist the urge to drag wannabe treasures, once discovered, downstairs to the garage and dive into some re-purposing project for which I have neither plan nor materials. That’s the kind of thing that I tend to do. And frankly, it was a challenge to resist the urge to just pull it ALL out, front and center a la outie, and begin a massive Project Purge. I’ve done that. And frankly, it hasn’t worked for me.

It hasn’t worked for me because tossing items which obviously need to be tossed or recycled is not my problem. I can deal with the flat-liners. It’s the stuff with a heartbeat that I can’t shake off. That stuff sticks as if super glued to my hands in a project purge. It also hasn’t worked for me because the job is just too big and I am not, as I’ve said, a long term look kind of gal.

So I decided to make the list, and then practice the art of the edit by culling the list down to a limited number of items and giving myself permission to leave things off the list.

Inspired by Jennie at one of my favorite blogs, Though there be madness, yet there is method in it , I have created my own list for the Day Zero project.

101 things to either use, repair, repurpose, give away, sell, or toss

Unlike Jennie, I can’t handle the long term 1,001 days that she set for her list completion. Frankly, three years is just too much of a long term goal for me....

I thought about 101 days, but that’s just too much of a short term goal for me. After all, I have some projects on my “deal with it” list which will take time and money, like a dining room set that waits refinishing…

So, after careful consideration, I chose to set my goal for 101 weeks. That gives me roughly two years. Not too long. Not too short. Just right.