Bedroom Cleanup
I recently had to have a minor surgical procedure done, and I knew I was going to be bedridden for at least a week afterward. I knew there was no way I’d be able to relax and heal while my bedroom looked like the disaster area you see here:
After deep cleaning much of the house, our bedroom had become a dumping ground for all the stray furniture and homeless items. Hubby and I finally said enough is enough, cleaned up, cleared out, and rearranged. Our bedroom is long and skinny, so we decided to divide it up into two areas. I had already started rearranging in the picture above, which is why part of the bed is totally inaccessible. The area you see below is the other half of the room, that we decided would be our “living room area”.
Random stacks of things, like picture frames, finally got stowed away where they now belong.
You can see we still have a random mix of stuff, but it’s much cleaner and more usable now.
On my side of the bed I have my night stand, book shelf with only unread books, and a cabinet that has snacks and craft projects. Hubby got me the big Jack Skellington for Christmas years ago. Isn’t he sweet?
Our mini living room still needs a little work. If somebody (hint: Hubby) would let me get rid of some stuff organization would be a little easier. I mean, I got rid of my box of sticks; time for you to step up!
Here we have our armchair and poof footstool for seating. Most of this area has been left open so Hubby can do his yoga kickboxing DVDs. He also ended up sleeping on an air mattress there while I was recovering, because the tiniest shake of the bed was painful, and I screech really loudly.
The carpet is atrocious, and this is one of the few places we still have it in the house. At some point it will be disposed of in a fittingly violent manner, but we have to endure it for now. Stupid car payments. While I wish this was a “big reveal” showing our newly remodeled room, I think this shows that just rearranging furniture and decluttering can make a big difference, and costs you zero bucks.
Hang Stuff Up
I am just covered up with jewelry I love. I have filtered through and gotten rid of some, but the rest is mine, and I’m not sharing. One of the downfalls of jewelry is that we rarely get to see our own; when you’re wearing it, everyone sees it but you, and the rest of the time it’s in a jewelry box, purposely tangling itself up with all your other jewelry. Well, no more! I decided to make a necklace holder, not for charms since I already have one, but for necklaces and bracelets.
I went to Home Depot and bought a pretty piece of wood that was 6 feet long, 2 inches wide, and a half inch thick. It was about $3. I measured it into 1.5 foot segments. I also bought nails, which apprently only come in boxes of 18,000 nails. Fortunately, they were about $3 also, although it was slightly embarrassing asking if Home Depot had any “prettier” nails.
Fortunately, we have a saw, and I have Hubby who protects me from my own clumsiness. Now I have 4 short boards, and all my fingers! Hooray! I marked where I wanted holes drilled in the corners to hang these up:
You can see again, my sweet Hubby does quality work. I was literally headed outside to do this myself when he saw me with the power drill. He gave me his “disapproving look”, and said “Where are you going with that?” I said “Outside. I just need to drill holes in the corners”. He sighed and took it from me, and said something about accidentally drilling through my own hand, and how he didn’t have time to drive me to the hospital today, and then he did it in about 4 minutes.
So you can see I tried to do it myself; he just has more first-hand experience with my clumsiness than anyone else on the planet, other than me, and he prefers to prevent trouble before it starts. My brain seems to be in denial about the constant injuries I inflict on myself. And Hubby. And the pets, sometimes. And friends standing nearby.
I used a measuring tape to space my nails out evenly.
I space mine 1.5 inches apart. When measuring this out, take into account what you’ll be hanging on this rack. For necklaces, fairly close together is fine. For belts or purses, not only should you get longer nails, spacing them further apart makes them easier to use.
Look! I hammered a nail in! By myself! Because Hubby wasn’t home to protect me from myself. Let’s all pretend I didn’t smash a two fingers, then swear like a sailor. Let’s also pretend I hammered that nail in securely, and it didn’t fall out when I hammered the next one in, and this did NOT happen repeatedly, like a freaking cartoon.
Finally! Success! Although it took awhile to find an angle for the picture that wouldn’t show how horrifically crooked my nails are. They appear to be doing the wave.
I spray painted it glossy black to go with the frame it will be hanging next to. There are lots of design options, though, to make it match your style and tastes.
You could glue beer tops to the end of each nail!
You could use tops from your favorite brand! Here I have several varieties of Shiner Bock. You could use all the same kind, or use only tops of similar colors, or whatever you like.
I don’t know about you, but I have buttons and pins galore at my place. You could glue some of those bad boys on there, or use ticky tac if you don’t want them on there permanently.
Here’s an idea of what this would look like with beer tops. You can see that they make the space between the nails rather small. If you were making this to hold ties, belts, scarves, or purses, you should probably space the nails out some.
Here it is, in all its sparkly glory! You can see I very cleverly hung bracelets on the left, so I still have access to the outlet.
Variations:
For kind of a country, quaint look, you could either leave the wood as is, or paint it white and sandpaper the edges a bit. You could glue buttons to the ends of the nails to “class it up”.
This one I completed as a necklace holder. I plan to make the others into a tie/belt holder for Hubby, a key/leash rack for the front door, and a scarf holder for the hall closet. For all of those I will space the nails out further than I did on this one. I definitely won’t decorate the nails on the key rack, since that will make it hard to get the keys on and off.
When you are making something like this for yourself, think about what your needs are, and plan accordingly. If you’re going to take the time to make something for yourself, you may as well make sure you’ll want to keep it. Don’t make something a specific way because you think you should, or because that’s what you’ve seen before. You can just get a piece of junk at Wal-mart if that’s your goal. Make something that will meet your needs, be nice to look at, and that you’ll be proud to show off to people.
Deep Clean with a Vengeance
So I bet you thought I gave up on Deep Clean Week, that I was going to simply wuss out and hope you forgot. That was my original plan.
But then I discovered that some people we know are moving to our area, and need a place to stay for a couple months. I offered the guest room and my craft room. Both are soon going to be occupied, so I have been cleaning like a mad woman. My plan now is to pull everything out of the craft room, sort through it diligently, get rid of things, and then store the remainder upstairs in our bedroom.
So far I have learned a few things:
1) It helps to start with “before” pictures. I totally neglected this, and now I only have “during” pictures, which mostly just show boxes and piles of chaos.
2) It’s a lot easier to store boxes in Hubby’s closet while he’s at work.
3) I am taking a hard look at my craft projects, and narrowing down which ones I want to bother completing. If a project starts to feel like homework rather than fun, decide if you want to dedicate your limited time to completing it, or if you’d rather work on something else. Do you even want to own the finished product? I put this half-finished denim quilt on freecycle, and 20 minutes later someone came to my house and got it, along with the denim to complete it.
4) I keep finding things I didn’t even know I had, which means I don’t need them, and won’t miss them.
5) It takes way more trips up and down the stairs than seems humanly possible, and I still don’t have amazing calves. I really should, by now.
6) The sound of cat, dog, and even ferret snores are insulting when you are exhausted from working so hard. You can see Mushroom at the bottom of this picture “helping”.
You can see I’ve made some progress; the closets are mostly empty.
The way all this stuff accumulates just shows that I have too many ideas and not enough time.
I have no idea where I will put all my Batman stuff, or my giant Jack Skellington. I also have several thing I’ve crafted over the years that I feel like I have to keep because I made them, but they’re not necessarily practical or useful anymore. That colorful disc at the bottom of the picture is a table top I decoupaged in college. The table has not been assembled since we moved here, but I can’t decide what to do with it. Let that be a lesson to you all: once you craft something, you maybe stuck with it, so make sure you work on projects you’ll want to keep around.
I found this in some of the yarn my Grandmother gave me, and I thought it was funny.
I also found this! I always wanted a parts price list for a Remington Pump Action Shotgun!
I’m very proud of myself, because this is all the yarn I had, and the container and sack on the left are both going to a better place.
That’s as far as I’ve gotten so far. I have sorted through and discarded fabric, art supplies, construction paper, and scrapbooking stuff. Some of it has gone to friends, a huge pile will go to Goodwill, and a bit may go on eBay. I am exhausted from moving so much stuff, and I just want to chuck a ton of it. We’ve made a lot of progress, but we’re probably only halfway done, if that. Stay tuned for more progress reports, or to watch my descent into madness, whichever comes first.
