I feel like I have finally taken the first real step towards the new more organized me. Kitchen has been my focus point for quite a while already and I've thus far managed to declutter all the lower kitchen cupboards, most of the shelves in the tall cupboard beside the fridge (which is a really bad clutter zone) and the top of our old wood burning oven (another clutter dumping ground). I am making progress, but that's not really why I'm feeling like I've finally succeeded in something.

Yesterday I wrote a lot in my organizing journal and it really hit me that this clutter madness that is our home is the creation of two young adults both battling with depression. Now that I'm feeling better and have some energy to deal with this mess around me, I can see how much of it reflects the mess that I had inside me not so long ago. And since neither me nor my partner had the strength to deal with every day chores, this really was the only reasonable result. For so long it felt like a struggle to even put the dishes in the dishwasher and press the Start button, not to mention the laundry that kept piling up into high towers that subsequently fell on the floor and got walked over. The papers took over one table surface after another and I could never find anything I was looking for.

Tidying up and taking care of my home have never been things I'm good at. My mother has never been good at those things either and I think I've never been given the example to how to keep things looking nice around the house. I've always thought that some people just know how to do it and others don't. Now I realize that those some people who know how to do it, have always invested some time into cleaning whereas I've given up before I've even tried. Now that I'm tackling one room at a time and allowing myself to go through the decluttering slowly, I feel the similar sense of triumph and control over the process as I do when I diet and the scale begins to show a slow but steady decrease in the kilograms I weigh.

Our house is not by any means like those in the Hoarders tv show, but rather there's this one layer of clutter everywhere that's always there at the back of my mind, making me feel like a bad mother and a wife. Everytime either my mother or my mother-in-law visit, the very first thing they do is cleaning, even if I had just cleaned myself and that makes me feel like even worse mother and a wife. Even my mother who has always hated cleaning and rarely does it at home, feels the need to pick up the broom as soon as she enters the door to our house. Is it really that filthy here? No it isn't. Our house is not that dirty, but the amount of clutter everywhere gives the air of total lack of cleaning skills. Which I suppose isn't far from the truth when it comes to me.

So now I'm learning all these organizational skills and finding out that there really is a secret behind all succesfull housewives and that is a lot of hard work. But regardless of the work that is not always pleasant, I'm feeling surprisingly happy while cleaning up. I think it has something to do with seeing the results immediately and realizing that my thought processes have started to change. Before I saw a pile of papers as a clutter zone too difficult to tame and now I see a challenge waiting to be tackled and I immediately begin to think what needs to be done so that this pile of papers won't be coming back as soon as I've cleaned it up. That is what I call progress!

Labels: organizing

Before I get started with posting about my actual craft projects, I feel the need to write a little about another project that has been nine months in the making.

I have now two days to go to having a baby and not to the due date (that is still four days away), but to the doctor's appointment preceding the C-section that will most likely happen on Thursday. It feels weird to go to the hospital knowing that I will most likely stay there and when I come back home, I'll be returning with the baby.

My hospital bag is still not packed and I have quite a bit to do before Wednesday and my appointment. I've been having contractions every single day for a week or so and on Saturday they got so bad that I thought that we would have to leave for the hospital, but they subsided eventually. I know that I'm kind of toying with the uncertainties as I really can't know when I'll go into labor. All the signs are there and it could happen any time now.

I still have the baby's crib in progress. I'm hoping to get that done tonight. I also have one baby's cat hat order that must be ready on Friday and I really should've already done that, but I haven't. I've planned to do that tomorrow. Here's hoping that I won't go into labor tonight.

I have many things to post about. I've recently finished several knitting projects for the Ravelympics 2010 and I've even taken photos of them already. I've also taken photos of my crib project, because it is quite an interesting piece of recycling. I've ordered and received some super-pretty quilting fabrics and we've painted a tree in my daughter's new room. It's not finished yet, but "in progress" photos are great too.

I also want to gather some photos of my interior design inspiration into one post (or several) because I'm thinking that I need to organize my thoughts and find out in what kind of a house I want to live in. Not in a cluttered chaos like it is now, that I do know.

But all of this has to wait until after the birth. For now our life revolves around the moment of birth and the arrival of our new family member. We'll see when I get to post again. Perhaps from the hospital if I get my fiancé to borrow me his iphone.