Cleaning Day: Where the Hell Are My Sticks?

Today is January 11th. On this day, I am making a few more New Year's Resolutions. Why not January first? Because it is so cliche. So over. And also because this way, I trick myself into thinking my resolutions will not be just a few more to add to the billions that are made and broken each year (... like 6 billion, for those of you keeping track of the world population ...). I want mine to stick.

In some ways, I am easy going. I like to laugh, I don't take most things too personally and I generally--and genuinely--really like others. I'm not hard on my friends when they forget something--hey, I do it all the time myself. And I figure that they are, overall, more important to me than some forgotten card on my birthday.

However...

In other ways, I can be quite intense (enter comments from those who knew me in college here ...). I enjoy assessing situations, organizing and categorizing the information I discover, then creating a goal and ambitiously heading out after it.



This should be ONLY my clothes closet.
Please don't call "Hoarders," I can
handle this. But if I don't come out,
save yourself.

Sometimes this can be a small thing like the time I suddenly decided I really, really needed to know the real endings to all those Disney fairy tales. I knew they were not written by Walt Disney himself. And I knew from a childhood book that the "Little Mermaid" dies in the end. I headed to the library at the center of town on that very day of decision and checked out every book I could find on fairy tales in their earliest forms and read myself sick for days.

Turns out Cinderella was quite the self-starter. Charles Perrault (author given credit for the written story) gave her a sort of wishing tree in her back yard where she would request her gifts--dress, slippers, etc. And those step sisters? They actually "nipped off" a "bit of heel" and toe to make that slipper fit upon the prince's arrival. When the prince saw the bleeding, well, their plan didn't work out and Cinderella still made out pretty well.



My Christmas gift from my husband:
a swift and ball winder. Get ready to wind,
label and stack!

 While the step sisters head to the first aid station,  let me get to the point: You can do a lot of things when you want to.

I completed six years of college with four, then five (after marriage) and finally six children at home. Don't get me wrong, I know all of you likely have some of your own pretty awesome stories of ambition and success that could put mine to shame. And I have some pretty big current ambitions of my own.

I want a clean, organized house. I want to fit back into my old jeans and I want whiter teeth.

While I can sit here right now with my bleach trays in my mouth, the other two are much harder to do. We all complain about frustration over organization and being thinner, but I really want to accomplish these things. Not over night--I have a whole year, right? Isn't that how this whole resolution game is played?

So ... I have analyzed my situation and broken it down into parts. Part I: Organize my yarn stash, needles, books and patterns. I am afraid I have been much better at shopping than at putting things away. When you can't find your needles anymore, or you can find the plastic bag that once contained a pair, but there are no bamboo sticks in sight except the old chopsticks in your kitchen drawer, it's time.

This should be my nightstand.

Today, I begin with my room. My craft room. Which is really my clothes closet, my sewing desk, which is in our bedroom, my nightstand and the area around my favorite overstuffed green chair downstairs. There are bins, baskets, bags, boxes (some still with shipping slips) just overflowing with wooly chaos.

If I am ever going to make a sweater for some imaginary skinny body, I need to know how much fiber I have and what pattern I will use. And where the hell are all my sticks?

Time to dive in. I'll keep you posted. Literally. This will feel like no small task.