The past two day’s missions were aimed at making my space a little nicer, more beautiful, and getting ready for things. I swapped the days due to life obligations. But I’m ok with that. I did them both. And That’s enough for me. Making it work!

Wednesday:

Go through all the art/photos and collect the ones to be framed and hung up.

I’ve been meaning to do this for so long. We’ve been back in the house since August and nary a thing has been hung on the wall. But we have all these wonderful pieces of art and important photographs. I want them on my walls. I want to enjoy them. So I went through all the things we had packed up after the fire and all the new pieces we’d accumulated since. I picked which ones I want to display and stored the other (very few) that didn’t speak to me.  Next step, get things framed that need framing. Then get to hanging. It was great to see some of my favorite pieces again. An adorable painting of Roger’s childhood dog, Sugar. And a beautiful print of spices and herbs from around the world. These were among the best finds. For my birthday, Roger promised to get framed and hang all the pieces I want. I can’t wait!

He’re a look as some of my treasures that will soon adorn the walls of my home. I love to collect pieces of art that are important to me or special in some way. I should have made it a priority to do something with those things I treasure. In a box or bag takes away the soul of art. If it can’t be appreicated and viewed, it loses its purpose. And it makes me happy to see.

Next up:

Clean off the dining room table AND clean out my purse

Anyone who has been to my home knows we have what my dad calls a “flat surface” problem. Within days, sometimes even hours, of being cleaned off, flat surfaces somehow find themselves covered in STUFF. This is one of my worst habits that I’ve never been able to break. Come home, unload stuff onto table, repeat daily. So today, I tackled the dining room table. It serves a dual purpose. I feel so good when the table is clean, and we have friends coming over for dinner tomorrow so it would  be nice if we had a place to eat 🙂 Proof my labor. I even lit a lovely lilac candle to celebrate. Well, I think it’s lovely. Roger asked if that smell was going to get better or worse…

 So, I do have a plan on how to tackle this “flat surface problem” moving forward. It may not solve all the problems, but it should help. I’ve been trying to employ the ” one minute rule”. What is that, you ask? The rule is, if it takes you less than one minute to do something, just do it. Don’t postpone it to “later”. Gee, this paragraph has a lot of “quotes”, I should work on that… Anyway, I’m hoping that doing something, particularly putting something away, will help reduce the amount of stuff that comes to rest on the table. The table is not the home for anything. Things should come to temporarily reside there while in use, and then should be removed.

Look how pretty that table is, I need to let it be seen! We actually wanted this table for a long time. It was a treat to ourselves after the fire. I’m so happy to have it1

Part two was to clean out my purse. Like many women, my purse is another dumping ground. Things go in and are lost forever. Or until I take a trip. This is usually when I do the purse cleaning. I don’t want to carry around all that extra junk while I’m traveling. But really, I don’t want to carry all that extra junk around period. But how much junk am I really talking about? I present you my picture of purse shame…

All of that came out of my purse. Plus some tissues and orphaned pills that went straight into the trash. About 1/2 of it went back in. After all, a girl has needs. Purse needs.

But now, I’m in a much better place to travel to New York! Yay, we’re off to explore in a couple of days. And I’ll need somewhere to keep my treasured maps and museum pins 🙂

This week is feeling great!

~Teresa