The great room makeover

Or cleanup, anyway. My room has a tendency to be somewhat of a mess, always has been. Having very little energy or motivation to spend on it thanks to my illnesses has led to it being worse than usual, especially since my family (who share my system of organisation) decided to clear the piles out of a few room of the house. Which meant all my stuff got dumped in my room. And it looked...like this.


- Just behind my door (at the foot of my bed)


- straight across from the door


- my bed


- diagonally across the room


- the window wall

Ugh. So... I decided, after taking all those photos, to work on it in 1/2 hour stints with breaks in between (or my body would mutiny more than usual) and take progress photos. Hey, it works for stitching!

So after the first half hour:


- the window wall, straight from the door


- diagonally across (look, some of the drawers actually close now!)


My bed - this is more of a mess than when I started, but that's because I use it to organise things before they get put away. The doritos were from lunch, leftover from my sister making nachos last night. My laptop has my timer on it, and music :)


Here's the middle of the room, too, which I didn't get a photo of before.

I won't post this 'til I'm done, I'll just add updates to it until either I stop for the day or I finish up. Fingers crossed for the second one. *clicks save now*

Update #1 (1hr total)
It's starting to look reasonably livable now. Partly that's because there's a lot that's been sorted into piles of 'this does not belong in my room' in the hall outside (neatly!) but there's a lot been put away too. I'm attempting to be ruthless - I am a notorious packrat, and I want to change that because having 'stuff' tends to make me feel like I'm choking.

Koukla wanted to 'help', but ended up being more underfoot than anything. She kept attacking the clothes basket...so I put her in it. She didn't like that much, but at least it stopped her...


after I let her out she helped me clean out and organise the big drawers in my dresser...


and then ran away when I started the vacuum cleaner :)

So, wanna see progress?

- across from the door. You can actually see my desk now (at least the front of it) and those horrible drawers...they're a stopgap, currently holding my patterns and charts that I'm not using. They're ugly, big, and falling apart. I don't want to keep them, and if I can find something else to take their place (maybe the brightly coloured ones that are currently holding 10yr old junk?) they will be out on the curb with the next rubbish collection. For now they're under my desk.


- diagonally across. You can see the middle of the room is basically clear now, yay, and vacuumed - I managed to vacuum a boot lace and the charger for my phone in the process (doh!) but I rescued both and all's good now. The bookshelves don't have my normal books on them (I've been boxing them up over the last few months - there is a plan to move the furniture out of my room at some point soon when it's clean so we can tear up the carpet and replace it with floorboards. They're in another room) but they have a few books I have been using, books that haven't been boxed yet (mostly the bottom two shelves) and my school things (all those folders) Oh, and my arabic stuff.


- my bed. This only seems to get worse! There's a lot there in terms of clothes that need sorting, or to be hung up/put away when I can get to my closet again. There's too much stuff in the way at the moment!

As I end and go in search of food before starting work again, it's 4pm :) *clicks save*

Update #2 (1.5hrs total)
This will be the last one, I think. I happily pretended there was nothing wrong with me for a few hours while I worked, but my body is now laughing at that, so enough's enough. I have a few last photos for you though before I end and go see if my hands can cope with stitching in front of the tv for a few hours.

I took the first photo not long after I started work again because I wanted a picture while it was still reasonably light outside.

It's winter here, and at half past four it was already starting to dim. We got the curtain tiebacks when we bought my bedspread and curtains ten years ago (I had good taste, if I say so myself - I was ten when I picked out the colours and things for my room, and I still love them!) but have never put up the hooks to use them. I got sick of them hanging around and finally decided to do something about them. So I just knotted them around the curtains, and it made a difference :) So nice to have all the light in my room, and besides me liking the look of them like this it's also easier on my arms to tie them back than to pull the cords.


- the window wall. I cleared the desk, but it's got stuff on it again that was on the floor in the corner and needs sorting. The fabric-y thing is actually my oldest likely-to-be-finished UFO - it's on 14 or 16 ct Aida (I forget which!) and it's a band sampler, sorta, all with Australian birds and flowers etc. Really quite pretty, and it only needs the backstitched border finished and the beak and legs given to the birds. If I can dig up the chart sometime soon and find the DMC it calls for in my stash I might finish it up soon, I wouldn't even need a frame to do what's left, especially given it's Aida. It really needs a wash though! This is the project that actually got me back into stitching after getting incredibly sick of kits and not being able to find charts I liked. I started the mate to it, but it's less interesting and I don't think I'll ever finish it. It looks fine on its own :) It would/will be nice to get it finished and framed.


- diagonally across. You can basically see the floor in that corner now. The baskets are full of fabric scraps, a UFO quilt that I've been hunting for a while (and really needs finishing up already - the blocks are all pieced it just needs sewing, it's been in that state for two years...) and a doll whose dress I've never made (again, just get some fabric and do it already Kyri!) The cords etc are a mess but I'm not really sure what to do with them, I can't really hide them easily.


- my bed. Which is still a mess, and I'm sitting on it at the moment. None of the stuff on it is heavy though so it will probably just be shoved to the end for the night and I'll deal with it tomorrow. Too tired to do much more than that.

-- so that's the end for today. It's still a lot better than it started off being, even if I haven't got finished yet. I wish my body hadn't conked out on me, I'd still be working if I wasn't sick. Oh well. TV it is now.