New Starts

Yes, I am making changes in August instead of January. Why do you ask?

So my room is a pit - and has been as long as I can remember - because I am a slob have issues with executive function and getting started on a project this large is a big issue for me. And then there's the enormity of the project itself, the weather, the fact that there's a bunch of little crap from my desk at AT&T (from which company I was let go in November 2017), me not wanting to erase the last vestiges of Laston from our bedroom, a dust allergy, blah, blah, blah.

Excuses? Sure. Most of them are reasonable ones, though, and the weather actually helped in this case, but still, excuses.

How did the weather help? I'll tell you. You see, when Laston died, nearly four years ago in August 2016, I had trouble sleeping in our room. Lots of trouble. In early 2017, during the Great Cleanathon, I was convinced to make it mine instead of ours with him missing by getting a nice cushy mattress topper and changing the sheets and blankets and all that to blue (my fave) from brown (which was his). I also bought curtains but never got around to putting them up, so I was still using the temporary paper curtains from late 2013 when we moved in.

It worked for a while. About three years, assisted by the Calm app, therapy, and better sleep hygiene.

Then came 2020. And all it entails, and now it's not enough to have different sheets and a softer mattress because of all the stressors added - Covid-19, 45, the world at large, perimenopause, etc... I need a bigger change. Actually moving furniture, a change in perspective, space.

So earlier this week, in a fit of householder responsibility, I ran the sprinkler in the front garden. I remembered to tell Lizzy to keep her window shut. I forgot that I had opened mine a bit in the middle of the night. That paper curtain disintegrated entirely along one edge.

Now I have lovely dark blue curtains in my room. Lizzy helped me assemble the super skinny table I'm using as a headboard now (it's basically a shelf and a baseboard-heater guard), we moved the bed across the room to under the window; I have the cute little teddy bear I got from the Museum of Flight (see pic), a wooden tray full of reading glasses, and a small wooden bowl of lip balm on the shelf/headboard. There is a small table with a lamp and more small wooden bowls next to it, and a tall, skinny, oscillating fan near that. That - plus laundering sheets I haven't used in years and making the bed with them - was what we managed on Day One of the Great Bedroom Redo of 2020.

This project is gonna take a lot longer than the two days I estimated. This morning I have done yet more laundry, cleaned the blue bookshelf that has been outside the bedroom french doors on the (covered but still dusty and cobwebby) porch for ages (and will go over it again with disinfectant wipes this afternoon), and gotten rid of a bunch of scraps like empty shipping boxes and naked wrapping paper rolls. 

This afternoon I plan on taking more junk out and playing store-pitch-keep with it, cleaning the giant headboard, and swapping the headboard for the bookshelf. I may also do another garbage run, and rather than giving away the big-ass headboard or pitching it, I'm going to use it and an outdoor chaise lounge I was given for a reading/chilling nook on that porch. Oh, and I'm putting up fresh paper curtains on the french doors (black instead of white this time) before bed. The neighbors don't need to see into my bedroom, and neither do the assorted raccoons, chickens, coyotes, rabbits, cats, and other critters we have around here. 

I will post pictures when I'm done. There are not before pictures because, well... no. Just no.

Then? Then I'll have my space.