Catching Up

I've been using the hot days of the last week to do some catching up. Sorting and actually shredding paper is one of the most boring task sets in the universe. Be sure not to mix the-goes-in-the-shredder-pile up with the goes-in-the-recycle pile. There is a sense of accomplishment when it is done that almost makes up for the time.

I have chores in every room of the house--grateful that it isn't a bigger house! Oh yes, I am. Too much paper, too many books, too little time. Never thought I would reach the point of too many books, but I have. I am glad for the public library and the Special Outreach Services Program that brings books to me. Fewer books would have come into the house if I had known about this earlier.

The sewing room, newly painted in the summer of 2007, may emerge this summer. That would be wonderful. The living room might be visible again before my family comes to visit. it has been a default sorting space and knitting accumulation space, with its own accumulation of books. I should take before and after pictures. Then this could become a decluttering blog!

Some of this blends with Using What We Have. A storage bin was cleared to put my new store of herbal products and supplies away where they would not make me sneeze. I was very pleased to consolidate and use a bin I had rather than buy yet another bin to stack into the clutter. More of that to come.

Reading books that are old friends that I haven't read in a decade is another example of using what I have when the library books run out. Last week I unraveled a shoulder shawl that I had knit two years ago that had not worked out quite right. In the meantime I found two more skeins of the yarn, a deep, luxurious purple color of a somewhat bulky wool yarn. I got it from someone on the Internet and had it put away. It is now two skeins away from becoming a new, warm triangle shawl for me to use come cold weather. (As hot as it was last week, it is hard to believe that it will ever be cold again. Of course, it will!) There is already a hat made from this yarn, just have to sew up the side.

This is the summer for finishing lots of small projects and then finding space to store them properly so that they can be used. It is fun to put the things from one season away and take out those for the next season. Much for fun than just letting it all clutter in bags stuck around the place.

So even though it is sometimes only one object at a time and it seems mortally slow, I am catching up. I am grateful for the return of the cool weather--it is in the 50's outside as I write this and 67 in my office. The pictures of the fog surging through the Golden Gate that are shown on the weather forecasts are some of the most beautiful that I ever see in summer. Sometimes, as I remember to take a deep breath, I am simply grateful to be alive.