Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Why does more space feel like not enough?

It's so frustrating that we got rid of about 4 car loads, 6 book cases, 8 huge garbage bags of clothes before moving in and we still have way too much stuff. One thing we have working against us is the lack of storage in the house. True we have a garage but only certain things can be stored there. Most of the basement is taken up with the suite. It's been a week of unpacking and ten hours of hard purging with a professional.

But today I saw my kitchen counter tops for the first time since we took posession in May. Finally I feel a little hope. At last I am seeing the potential of the place and the possibility of living in a decluttered, organized and totally decorated house. Finally! I can get on with the business of living. I'm very excited.

So for the afternoon we took a bunch of measurements and went to Ikea. Normally I am hating Ikea but now there are a few things that would solve specific problems. It's nice to buy things that you know are going to be used and you have a place for them. Today I decided to replace my bath towels for all white ones. I got some gadgets for hanging the vacuum cleaner and the iron. Then what I am really really excited about is the picture rails we will use as a spice rack that will run the full length of the wall above the stove and I have these fabulous old fashioned spice jars. I hope it turns out as fab as I picture it.

Now I have the makings for an amazing, really awesome garage sale. Not just junk but really good junk. Cute useful junk. I'm going to go all out and advertize it and put up flyers. It will be interesting to see if I can pull it off and sell everything. I promise it will be good garage sale prices, like clothes 2 bucks a piece, magazines 25 cents, books 1 dollar.

My lightbulb / aha moment came today when Jada said,

"You want to hold on to the space not the things".

So true.

Restore your teak! Go to the paint section in Home Depot and get some steel wool and go over the surface then put some tung oil it let it sit over night and voila! The steel wool worked great for cleaning paint and grunge off of our tiles.

some of this ended up in the garage sale stuff


Unpacking


You can't tell by looking at it but there's some really good stuff in there


Booze, vases, platters, trays, good china etc.

Peter built this shelf in the back to maximize the space using scrap wood from the garage

Seeing more potential


I've got space in my cupboards!

Still a work in progress, all the mail and bills from our summer in limbo

I haven't seen my counter in 12 weeks!

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