Pinterest Wednesday- Book Declutter

So remember that time I wrote about 100 ways to improve your life in 60 days? Well, I've been working at it in fits and starts. Not everyday, but as I pointed out at the time, I'm the boss. So ha! Take that, The Man! Or whatever.

Anyway, as a move toward greater organization, I decided to rearrange my books. In the interest of full disclosure, I feel I should tell you this was not a calmly planned initiative. No. Rather it was late on a Friday night and I was bored and sick of sitting down and realized one of my Sherlock Holmes books had been laying horizontally across the top of the other mysteries for far too long and I had an OCD freakout.

So I pulled all my books off the shelves and sorted them into piles. This is toward the beginning or end of the freak out, this is hardly any of the books I have. I've always loved to read and always collected books. I have many, many books. And I love organizing them. There's a reason I work in a library, is what I'm saying. I also love talking to people who love books about how they organize the books in their home. I don't know if I've ever heard two people describe it the same and I love that. It's all about being able to find the books when you want to, there's no right answer. Mine are organized first by genre: poetry, anthropology, art history, crafts, cookbooks, general science, mystery, science fiction/fantasy, women's studies, essays, etc. Then by author's last name and then by title. I have 5 book shelves and I arrange the genres in different areas for different reasons. The cookbooks are on the shelf between the kitchen and the living room, as are the craft books.

But I digress. Basically, you organize your books how you are comfortable organizing them. I have my way, you have yours. No judging.

One advantage to organizing your books late at night is you find books like this and laugh like a loon for far too long because you are tired and wish you hadn't started this big project, but you can't very well stop.

I got everything reorganized and back on the shelf and I even had a small pile of books I was willing to give away. I piled up the books I haven't read and put them by my bed. Then I turned around a saw this:

Ah, that small stack of books that I forgot about that would necessitate massive shifting to put them where they were supposed to go. Isn't that always the way with projects? Why didn't I turn around 20 minutes earlier?! At this point it was about 3 am so I went to bed anyway. Actually I think that stack of books is still sitting on top of a bookshelf.

Oh well, I can't be perfect because then there would be nothing to reorganize!

Pinterest Wednesday (a little late, shh!)

Hello everyone! Today's Friday edition of Pinterest Wednesday is brought to you by my very messy back room:

This is the "craft" room. It's been various levels of untidy during the entire time I've lived in my house. I decided to make it my first priority in my decluttering project because it's the only room in the house that is completely unusable and I find it horrifying. It's not always quite as bad as in the picture above, but it's never been great. This used to be my ex-boyfriend's office when we lived together and when he moved out at first I thought it would be GREAT to turn it into MY office and craft room! Hooray for healing! Instead, I would get tired even looking at it and go take a nap on the couch or knit something. Emotions, man. They'll getcha. But now I'm further away from the breakup and ready to dive in to some decluttering! I split this unholy mess into categories: paperwork, craft supplies, stuff under the table, stuff on the table, the bookshelves, and the closet. And since I have so many days on my 100 days to declutter list open, I can take just about as much time as I need to with each category.

I have some meetings coming up for which I will need certain papers, so I decided to jump right in with the paperwork. I put a bunch of it in a bag and brought it out in the living room to spread out. When I got back from grabbing my phone so I could take pictures, I found Harper inspecting the bag. "Oh, that's so cute," I thought and snapped this picture.

Little did I know she was going to try to help me with the recycling:

 

And with the papers I wanted to keep:

Other than my adorable (and annoying) cat, there isn't too much excitement in sorting papers. I sorted them into keep, recycle, and shred piles. It's still a work in progress but it will be a good feeling when I can all of this organized. Step one toward decluttering is a go!

The beginning of Pinterest Wednesdays

Hello and welcome to Pinterest Wednesdays!

As part of my goal to blog more, I have given myself three recurring blogs to write each week. On Wednesdays, the idea is Pinterest Wednesday. This also incorporates my goal of trying something I've pinned on Pinterest each week. Hopefully, the knowledge that I have to write a blog about it will inspire me to plan on trying a pin (might be a recipe, might be a craft, might be a product, an exercise who even knows? SUSPENSE.) and hopefully actually trying a pin each week will give me an easy blog to write leading to more regular blog writing. Killing two birds with one stone is the only way I kill birds! (Metaphorically is also the only way I kill birds).

So to kick things off, I looked at my Pins I've Tried Board. But I didn't feel inspired to write about any of those things. Some of them, I'd already written about and the rest just weren't doing it for me. So I picked a new pin:

I will be honest, I largely picked it because the mug looked beautiful. And it was such a peaceful scene that it made me think: Heck yes I want to improve my life in 60 small ways over the next 100 days. 

Then I read what the 60 small ways were. Hmmm....not so small as such. At least, not all of them. Some of them I think are great and doable. Some of them I think are great, just not for me. And some of them I just don't want to do. That's what great about writing your own blog and doing your own things: you can do and not do pretty much whatever you want.

Now let's get started: it looks like you're supposed to do all of these things all at once, which I find overwhelming and silly, so I'm going to start one at a time.

Number one small way to improve your life: Create a 100 days to declutter calendar- make a list of 100 things to declutter and do one each day. I typed up my list quickly, mentally moving around my house in a circle. It was actually kind of hard to think of 100 things, so I tried to break bigger things into smaller parts. Even so "Basement" is 30 of the things (mostly because my basement is big, totally cluttered, stinky, and scary, so I'm only going to be able to be down there for maybe 15 minutes at a time) and I left 63-100 blank. As I start this project, I might need to break some of my list items into smaller chunks, or I might think of other things to do. I'll be sharing them here on Pinterest Wednesdays as I go.

What pins are you doing? Are they going well or not so good? Do you have 100 things you could think of to declutter?