pruning – Page 4 – Deborah Makarios

May 12, 2017October 19, 2017

The Furniture 15-Puzzle

I love rearranging furniture. I moved frequently in my childhood and youth, and even then I still found myself rearranging my room, or swapping rooms in order to effect a change. And I’m sure it’s not just me. No, rearranging the furniture is a deeply ingrained human activity, at least in those societies which use furniture.
When we moved in to this house, some eight months ago (I have just about recovered from the tea trauma, thank you), we carefully figured out what appeared to be the perfect living-room furniture arrangement – nay, more than that, the only workable arrangement. There were so many variables to take into account – electricity, heating, lines of sight, lines of movement, space for storage access etc etc.
I resigned myself to never moving the furniture again – in that room, at least, which is where the largest part of our furniture resides. But as time went on, I grew increasingly frustrated with the blinding sunlight bouncing off my desk, and decided that changes could and would be made.

The prospect of moving the furniture is very invigorating – to me at least. On the other hand, the execution can also prove tiring, which is why I made a scale map of the room and its furniture and decided on the layout by proxy first. (Because a little slip of paper weighs considerably less than a large desk, a shelf full of books, or a steel-based armchair.)
There was another constraint to bear in mind, however: I don’t like sitting with my back to the door. I can do it if I have to, but I tend to stay wary, which doesn’t work particularly well for getting into ‘flow’. Side on is fine, even three-quarters I can deal with, but having my back straight on to the entrance makes me uneasy. This may seem silly to you, but tell it to Wild Bill Hickok.

IMG_20170422_175730 — Excellent defensive construction, but difficult to move around in.

I went through many many frustrating iterations before deciding – rather selfishly – that since the main reason for the rearrangement was to have my desk in a better location, I should decide that first and work everything else around it. Given the size of the desk, it would have to be facing a wall, or it would ‘eat’ too much of the room.

Wall #1 has a fireplace in it – no go. Wall #2 is where the desk was to begin with, and while I could slide it along so it wasn’t entirely under the window, the sun problem would still be in play for at least part of the day – the part when I do most of my writing. Wall #3 is directly between the front door and the door to the rest of the house – good for keeping an eye on things but who gets anything done in a corridor? Wall #4 it would have to be, but there was a problem: Wall #4 faces the front door, so anyone facing the wall would have their back to the door. Twitch, twitch.

I tried to re-deal the paper slips to come out as anything but a dead man’s hand. It wasn’t working. Eventually I left the graph paper and tried out some reality. I went around the room, scrunching down to chair height and staring glassily at the walls. The Caped Gooseberry either didn’t notice or tactfully decided to say nothing.

At last, I found a spot I felt comfortable, half-way down Wall #4, where the front door was not right behind me, and the sun would not interfere. Bonus: it was near a source of electricity.

Once that was in place, the rest of the room wasn’t too hard to arrange. I even managed to place the Caped Gooseberry’s desk between me and the ‘corridor’ – thus giving my subconscious another reason to relax.

IMG_20170422_184301 — Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!

After that, of course, there was nothing to do but spend the next three hours or so shoving furniture around. (I like shoving around things that are bigger than me.) Happily the two heaviest bookshelves and the steel-based armchair didn’t need to move for this new plan.

I admit that it would have been more sensible to wait a day or two to begin, rather than start moving things around an hour before bedtime, but when I get the furniture-moving bit between my teeth there is no stopping me. As Nicole Holofcener said, “If a woman gets insomnia, you never know where you’re going to find her furniture the next morning. It’s primal.” I would add that while insomnia can be a cause of furniture moving, it can work the other way, too. Too busy moving furniture: sleep will have to wait.

gothic-1378352_1920 — Must… move… furniture…

Well worth the loss of sleep, too. The new arrangement is much easier to get around in and a much more relaxing space to be in. I can sit at my desk without being blinded by the sun, and my notes don’t fade so fast if I leave them out. So why, I found myself asking, didn’t we find this layout the first time? Probably because of the one defect this plan has: in order to watch something off the computer on the TV, you now have to run a cord from one corner of the room to the opposite corner. First world problems. Doesn’t bother me.

As another added bonus, I am now feeling the urge to purge rising again. Opening up the space has made it all too clear just how much stuff there is in this room (and let us be frank, this isn’t the only room). Bring on the katharsis!

January 6, 2017October 19, 2017

Prospect and Retrospect 16/17

They say the older you get, the faster time passes, and by the time you’re eighty you’re having breakfast every five minutes. (Any octogenarians out there like to confirm or deny?) It appears to me that by the time you’re thirty, you’re looking at the year in review every few months.

Antigoneleigh — It’s behind me, isn’t it?

A year ago I had 2015 laid out on a page, and rather depressing viewing it was. I expected the same from 2016, given how disrupted it felt, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I’d thought. Quite.

A quick note on how the analysis works: each day gets one cell in the spreadsheet, which mentions one thing I did. So if it says ‘blog’ it means I worked on my blog, but not my WIP, though I may have done other things as well. It’s a subtle hierarchy of achievement.

Of the 366 days with which we were blessed in 2016, I actually spent 112 days working on the WIP rewrite in some way, shape or form. A lot of it felt guiltily like time-wasting when I looked back from a short distance, but months later, I can see that that was the time that the story most changed form, from the first draft to the second.

On at least 62 days I worked on blog posts. Writing a puppet play was my sole occupation for one day; another was devoted to writing a newsletter for family and friends, and two days I worked solely on a sermon (for this coming Sunday). There was also one day I focussed on a book about writing (The Irresistible Novel by Jeff Gerke), which I shall charitably include in the writing tally. Ditto the three days I pondered whether to do a sort-of NaNoWriMo, decided I would, and prepared accordingly.

By my count, that’s 182 days spent on writing in one way or another – almost exactly half the year. (Though, rather depressingly, 17 fewer than last year.) So where did the other half of the year go?

Leaving aside the 52 Sundays and concentrating on the remaining 132 days, it is easy to see where a lot of them went. The big distraction of the year was housing: trying to buy a house, buying a house, working on the house (toxic linoleum, anyone?) and finally moving house, unpacking and settling in.

There are 38 cells marked ‘house’ in the spreadsheet, and 22 marked house which was my attempt to make up for the big empty space around moving day when I didn’t make any notes at all. I may have done some writing work, I may have done nothing but lie on the couch and read Agatha Christie, we’ll never know. The presumption is that I was working on making the house habitable, since when we arrived you couldn’t see from one end of the living room to the other, let alone walk across it, and it is now entirely habitable.

Plus one ‘moving day’ makes 61 days spent on house-related things. But wait – there’s more! There were also ten days of Grand Purge in February, four days marked ‘housework’ and one marked ‘garden’ – the day we pruned the apple-tree. That makes a total of 76, leaving a mere 56 to be accounted for. (Mere! That’s over nine working weeks we’re talking about there…)

I had ten health days; all, with the exception of a visit to the dentist, between the 15th and the 21st of their respective months. Obviously that is the week to get sick (or go for eye check-ups). I also took three days in bed (half last year’s total) and a rest day. 14 in this section, leaving 42.

Seven days were marked ‘guests’; three were used for planning of various sorts; travelling or being away occupied eight (a third of last year’s tally). Eighteen, leaving twenty-four.

The largest section of the remainder, is, I’m afraid, blank – eight days on which I failed to record what I did, and therefore can’t count for either woe or weal. Five days were devoted to handwork, two to reproofing an oilskin coat. Fifteen, leaving nine.

Nine one-offs.

Five were in January: the day when we pray through the year ahead; the day we charge through the ensuing one-off to do list; the day I got my fountain pens cleaned and refilled with the appropriate inks for the coming work; the day I analyzed 2015; and the day I made plum sauce (ripe fruit waits for no man).

The remaining four were: a day when I got a lot of exercise but didn’t have energy for anything else after that (exercise is energizing, but only in the right proportions); the day I disassembled and cleaned my typewriter; Good Friday, and our fifth wedding anniversary.

Fewer writing days, yes, but also fewer sick/rest days, fewer travel days, and fewer holidays. Also – and I feel this is important – fewer blank days, even if I count the house days as blank.

Shows improvement, in fact, but Could Do Better – particularly if we don’t have to move house again this year (ohdearGodpleaseno). And now that I’ve done my PseuDoNaNo, I know what I am capable of, although I don’t think I could keep that pace up year-round. Not without a permanent cook-general.

If you recall, 2015 was my Year of Finishing Things, during which I not only finished things, but grew to regard finishing things as a natural outcome of starting them. 2016 was my Year of Trust, and I think I have made progress in that respect. No doubt I still have further to go, but I find I am less anxious than I used to be, which is a welcome change.

2017 is my Year of Persistence. I know what I need to do. I just need to keep doing it. Some unknown person once said (or wrote), “Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s little nut that held its ground.”

I am a little nut (ask my husband if you don’t believe me), and this year, I’m going to hold my ground, put down roots, and – hopefully! – thrive.

August 19, 2016

Round 2

Yes, it’s round 2 of the fling-along, and today I encourage you to throw in the towel!

Which is to say, today we are going to look at rooms involving towels, i.e. water-related rooms: the bathroom, kitchen and laundry. More than look at them, we are going to leap on them unawares and rifle through their pockets for loose stuff. Beginning with the bathroom.

Depending on your personality, worldview etc, your bathroom may be crowded with every cosmetic aid known to man (or woman), or it might be home to nothing more cluttery than a stash of toilet paper. Whatever the case, it’s worth going through the room – flat surfaces as well as storage spaces – to see if there’s anything that can be dispensed with. Bottles of hair stuff you know you’re never going to finish, expired medications from the medicine kit – whatever it is, biff it out.

If you finish under 15 minutes, you ~~qualify for the next round~~ can have a rummage through the linen cupboard or wherever you keep your towels, flannels etc and fling out anything that is no longer of use. Tip: flannels make great rags, and towels no longer fit for human consumption can be used to dry off wet pets as they come in from the great outdoors (or donated to an animal shelter for bedding).

Ready with a timer? Fifteen minutes: on your marks, get set – go!

I thought our bathroom was pretty clutter-free, but I came away with two old mostly-empty perfume bottles, one sunblock ditto, a comb (bought as part of a set and surplus to requirements), three expired medications and a couple of pieces of recycling, including an empty liquid soap dispenser. Also a bathmat from my fossick through the linen cupboard, itself recently denuded of two single sheets, two single duvets, a duvet-cover with matching pillowcase and a single electric blanket. (We have no single bed.) Score: call it 6.

Next up: the kitchen. Again, it depends on what kind of person you are whether you can immediately think of half a dozen things in your cupboards you don’t need, or would be hard-put to it to think of a single thing in your kitchen that you don’t use. If you find yourself with time to spare, have a look through your pantry for items past their use-by date (not to be confused with the best-before date), bulging tins, groves of leafy potatoes etc etc.

Or you may find that you can spend fifteen minutes just clearing off the benches. Like me. (Blush.) I collected a stack of recycling, put a few things away, and put a few more things in the bin. To donate: one squeezy bottle, one bud vase (originally a salt shaker) and a pair of salt-and-pepper shakers (once emptied of ageing contents). I also need to decide what to do with a large bottle of fish sauce which has passed its date but a) is still unopened and b) contains about as much salt as the laws of chemistry permit a liquid to do. Call it 4, running total 10. Decidedly, I will be spending more fifteen minuteses in the kitchen over the next few days!

Last up, the laundry. You may not have a separate laundry – it may be part of your kitchen, or your bathroom, or the business down the road. (Try not to declutter a laundromat unless you own it – may easily lead to misunderstandings.) It may be a cupboard just large enough for a washer (and maybe dryer) or it may be a hangar of a lumber-room which happens to have a washer in it (somewhere…). If nothing else comes to hand, you can always clean out the lint trap and fish the half-pegs out of the peg-bag/basket/apron.

Ready? Allons-y!

Result: some recycling (including a quantity of batteries waiting to be taken for a trip), some rubbish (including a bag of things I sorted out the last time I cleared out the laundry – you should have seen it when I started!), and a remarkable number of things not in their proper places. (What is it with pegs??) Also a number of items which I not only do not want or use, but cannot even identify – possibly from earlier ages of the house. There were a few things which could be donated: a placemat, a sock hanger, a medicine-measuring cup, and a small assortment of toy mice.

Call it 6 again; running total 16 – thus beating last week’s record by 3 items! Should I go with the Olympic theme and say PR? I’d take a lap of honour, but my cup of tea isn’t big enough. On the other hand, I still haven’t dealt with all the things which I purged last week (the shame!) so perhaps I should postpone the victorious cuppa until those are out of the way – and there’s a motive if ever there was one!

Do feel free to share your own progress, PRs or problems (what do I do with the fish sauce?) in the comments. See you again next week for the third and last round!