I am feeling slightly high on success. It turns out that, if you have a terrible, terrible list of perfectly ordinary tasks, and that list fills you with inexplicable dread and despondency every time you think of it, you may feel SOMEWHAT BETTER if you accomplish even one thing on the list. And furthermore: feeling somewhat better may encourage you to tackle just one more small thing the next day. (Not the SAME day. No. Not when you have already made it over the tremendous hurdle of STARTING THE LIST.) And if you can just do ONE SINGLE TASK each day, just ONE, going along MUCH slower than it seems as if Everybody Else would be able to handle it, the list will NEVERTHELESS decrease. In ONE week there will be SEVEN fewer items on the list! And when you think of the list, you will feel seven items’ less dread and despondency! Well, you will if “you” is “I”/”me.” Second-person is a dangerous tense to fool around with.
I got stuck for a couple of days even after deciding on this approach, because I felt like I wasn’t allowed to choose the easiest item on the list first. Two days later I realized that was ridiculous: it wasn’t as if by forbidding myself the easiest item I was making more progress on the harder ones. So I did the one that was easiest to make myself do, and I crossed it off, and the next day I picked another item. And then today I made myself do one of the worst/hardest ones, which involved a phone call, so now I am sitting here with Reward Coffee and a Reward Snack; and when I think about the list I get noticeably less of that sick adrenaline feeling than I did before, which is its own additional reward.
There have been requests for an update on the New-House Feelings. I was just talking about this with Paul the other day. It came up because we went grocery shopping (he has started coming with me, which is…odd, and more on that another time, perhaps), and they had the $4.99 bunches of tulips for the first time this season, and I did buy some, but I commented that I didn’t feel the same DESPERATE NEED for fresh tulips/daffodils as I did last year, and that the winter didn’t seem so never-ending, either: it already felt like we could be thinking ahead to spring. We agreed that part of this could be attributed to the atypically mild winter, with far fewer snowstorms than last year (and only dealing with ONE snowy driveway per storm instead of TWO—at this point last year we still owned two houses), but then Paul added, with a little hesitation: “And also…you’re more used to the house now.” And I do think that’s so. That is: I know I’m more used to the house, and I do think that contributes to feeling less of a dire need of bulb flowers and warmth and spring.
We’ve had a full year in the new house now, and that really helps. We know what winter is like here; we know what to expect in the spring. We’re getting used to which vents to open/close for heat and a/c, and we’re getting used to which are the best windows to open on nice days. Things aren’t so OVERWHELMING all the time. We have a nice view out our windows, and I am appreciating it in seasonal ways. I knew where to put the Christmas decorations this time. We know what the ice-maker sounds like, and we can tell who’s awake based on where we hear the footsteps above, and we know what it sounds like when snow falls off part of the metal roof and lands hard on another part of the metal roof (it sounds like we are all about to die).
However, I still have hung up virtually zero wall stuff. I put up two calendars, one poster, and two arts, and they are all in places that already had a nail. There are no further nails, so I stopped. My New Year’s resolution was to keep going, but I have not yet done so.
Nor have I bought furniture for this house, with the exception of an inexpensive folding bookcase for my personal sunporch room. The furniture from our old house does not work well at all in the new living room, and other rooms have insufficient furniture, and yet have I bought anything or even started researching? I have not. I am too overwhelmed. I tell myself it does not matter, but I do feel a little embarrassed when people come over and see our old ripped-up furniture still crammed awkwardly into the new smaller living room, and another smaller room with, like, one recliner, two bookshelves, and several assorted chairs just sort of up against a wall along with a filing cabinet. It feels like when other people move, they get settled in a lot faster.
Well. There really is no rush. There is no moral imperative to have all the right furniture, especially when there are two children in college. And one day perhaps I will just START WORKING ON IT. That is what happened in the old house, though it happened…sooner. But! But but! In the old house, that was our FIRST house after living in an apartment! So that was different: we needed a bunch of house stuff, so we went out and acquired it. This time, it’s more like I have all this furniture and all these wall hangings that worked in the OLD house but look weird in the NEW house, and I just don’t know how I want to approach that problem yet. It’s not like when we moved into the old house and spent the first night sitting in partial darkness because our previous apartments all had ceiling lights so we owned only two small bedside lamps, but our house had ceiling lights only in the kitchen and bathroom and hall and we didn’t fully realize that until the sun went down, and so then the very next day I went out and bought four lamps. It’s not like that this time. We can make do just fine with what we have, so I’m lacking the motivation I need to GET GOING.
And also, I am not good at choosing furniture and have made many mistakes in the past, so now I hate furniture decisions and find them stressful. I so so so so so so so so so so so so wish the previous owners hadn’t gotten rid of ALL the furnishings before trying to sell the house. I probably would have bought a LOT of whatever furniture they’d had. Like, maybe all of it. I’m so grateful they did leave the curtains.
One thing I think about with mixed enjoyment and stress is what to do with some of our weird little kind-of bedrooms, the ones that are BETWEEN other bedrooms so you’d have to go through someone ELSE’S bedroom to get to yours, and so we’re not using them as bedrooms. We initially set one up as a music/art room and the other as a Legos/games room, and neither is being used much, so we need to rethink. Right now they feel like inaccessible luxury: EXTRA ROOMS, how decadent! but…we can’t figure out any good way to use them!
Possibly sometime I will take some photos of various parts of the house and show you the weird spaces I am working with. Right now when I think of doing that, I do that thing where you slump into a chair and feel as if a task is so inexplicably insurmountable, you don’t know what’s wrong with you. (That’s again if “you” is “I”/”me.”)
I’m glad to hear the update on the new house.
If you want to feel better about not getting furniture, I’ve got a story for you: I bought a couch last week. My current couch is big, so I didn’t measure. I found one couch that seemed good. It was ungodly expensive but I wanted high quality. I special ordered it and picked out fabric. In these situations I tend to get overwhelmed and just pick something. So I did.
After I paid and acknowledged that 25% was not refundable, I began to worry that I picked out the wrong fabric. Was it more white than cream? Why did I do pillows with trees? The next day I looked at the picture I took of it and noticed it said “large sofa”. I measure it and it is slightly bigger than my current one. My living room is small and while it will fit, I worry that it will look too big. And since I paid an ungodly amount it needs to last for 20 years! Today I realize it might not fit through my front door. My other couch fit but those extra few length and depth inches might matter.
So to recap, I’ve bought a couch that might not be able to enter my house, might be too big if it does get in the house, and might be a bad color. Oh dear!!
And I’m hosting a shower the week after all of this and if the new couch doesn’t fit my old one will already be gone!
Um, please update us when it delivers, Jenny!
We unexpectedly hosted Christmas one year without a couch because of the same situation – old one was gone, we were waiting on a new one. The house felt roomy for entertaining! And we just dragged around dining chairs to sit on :)
I love that image!
This made me instantly want to shout, “PIVOT!”
I have so many insurmountable tasks right now that I am asking myself DAILY “WHY AM I LIKE THIS?!” (srsly, why am I LIKE THIS?). Will I never be a QUOTE UNQUOTE MOTIVATED PERSON?? It’s not looking good, tbh as I’m now (*checks watch”) 41 GD YEARS OLD. Well, anyway. Solidarity.
You are saving all of that furniture to pass along when the older ones move out. You are being CHARITABLE by holding on to this furniture! And then when one moves out, you can buy what fits for that room.
Also, if you are paralyzed with indecision there are companies that let you send pictures and tell them what you like and they will create mock ups of the room for you. Yes, first world opportunities but it helps! (I think its Modsy??)
I for one would love pictures. I am the weirdo that looks at all of my neighbors houses through Zillow. am i the only one?!? :O
Nope. I look at everyone’s house. I’m kind of sad that Zillow has stopped leaving the for sale pictures up after the house is sold. I understand it, but I’m sad.
What a wonderful reframing exercise for the furniture! I know I’m ridiculous, but I still get furniture at IKEA. My kids are so hard on everything. It’s just easier to know that it is inexpensive. Really, I type this on my EKTORP couch which has survived over seven years of abuse and it is holding up really really well. Also, we had it delivered (along with a chair), which cost us $200, but when I saw how many boxes there were and how big they were it was worth every penny.
I moved about 18 months ago and so have followed your move. I left a place where we had painstakingly selected all the paint colors and moved to a place where all the walls are créme brûlée. Slowly but surely we’re making plans to paint and change some furniture. It’s a many year plan and I’m mostly ok with that.
We have an “adulting” list and we only have to do one per week. Dentist appointment, call Amazon about a refund that isn’t going through, etc.
I think I’m going to make a less severe list, and have a once a day chore.
I’ve lived in my house nearly 8 years and all my art is propped on the mantel because committing to a wall space seems too hard.
Ha ha ha- I made a list TODAY with the heading “Adulting” and it is so boring. Snake sink, do taxes, get oil changed, pay rent, contact landlady about changing lease.
I like to have multiple to do lists because some tasks make me not even want to look at the list. Like, if there is a Disheartening Call to make, I have to write it on a paper that can be recycled after, not in my planner, lest my planner be rendered permanently Disheartening. I fact, I don’t really use my planner, but write my daily to dos on little slips next to it… whatever it takes, ladies! Git ‘er done!!
I have some relatives who moved into a house 7 months ago. They have many things on the wall and all the furniture they need.
I moved into my house 7 years ago. I have stacks of things that need to be hung, and at least one room that needs to be furnished.
I’m working on being fine with this. Your blog post helps
I have been paralysed with overwhelm for months now and am hating myself for it. My flat (which is small, certainly by American standards) is a mess – it needs both radical tidying and radical cleaning – my professional accounts for 2019 haven’t been done since 31 January last year, I have a new semester of teaching starting up next week and I have very little prepared, I have so, so, so many things to do, and I just… can’t. Can’t make the appointments I need to make, can’t do my accounts, can’t grade exams, can’t prepare classes, can’t get my flat into a presentable state… All I want to do is curl up in bed and sleep for about 4 months… I do like your list idea – just one thing a day – but fear that even that is beyond me right now. I am glad, though, that you are feeling better about your new house. And I, too, would love to see some pictures because it sounds fascinating!
Thank you for this update! I was one who asked for it. Could you break up rooms like you mentioned tasks in the first part of this post? Just address one room at a time instead of looking at the whole? What if you devote spring to the living room? Then in the summertime do two of those unknown-use rooms?
I have an extra bedroom and we use it as a Cat room. There is a cat tree, litter box, food and we decorated the walls with cat photos and cat puzzles that we put together. It has been really useful when I have to confine the cats for some reason – when one was injured, when we were cat sitting and wanted to separate them, if you have to have the doors open or a party where you don’t want the cats. Of course it may just make me look like a crazy cat lady, but it is easier than going to the basement to clean the litter box every day.
Oh the furniture! I am the exact opposite side of the spectrum from Jenny above. I buy nice, not trendy CHEAP furniture (I can’t even say “inexpensive” because it generally is indeed cheap). Why? Because I change my mind a lot and don’t want to be tied to furniture because of the money I put into it. I refer to it as my disposable furniture and shoot for about 5-7 years of use. I recently purchased 2 couches, 2 chairs and a footstool for about $1900. If I use it 5 years, it costs $32/month or $380 a year over it’s lifetime. And at that point I’ll be able to send some of it to college with a kid perhaps? Don’t stress. Don’t worry about lifetime commitment heirloom furniture. Just get function…it’s a baby step and may make you feel more at home.
This sounds like an approach I might be able to take. My parents are the “buy something and keep it in beautiful shape for 35 years” people—but my furniture doesn’t last that long. It just doesn’t. Thinking of it in shorter-term (rather than “WHAT WILL I STILL LOVE WHEN I RETIRE!!!!”) might very much help.
And then you’ll have things for apartment having young adults!
Definitely! and you can change things around if you are tired of them instead of feeling like you have to make the perfect purchase now!
Treat yourself to doing a room on Modsy! I think I paid like $45 or so and got two different suggested layouts for the room with furniture. There is no obligation to buy what they suggest, I sort of combined the two mock ups and sourced less expensive versions of the items. It was so so fun and turned a strange little room off our entry from an Amazon box mailroom into a reading room the children aren’t allowed to enter without asking! The other thing is that I bet doing one room will help you see what pieces you might like for other rooms.
I agree it takes a full calendar year in a house to feel settled. We are at 15 months in this house and it sort of feels like home now.
“It feels like when other people move, they get settled in a lot faster.”
Only if those other people aren’t me. I’ve lived here for about ten years, and there’s still a lot of make-do furniture around and things I hold on to “just in case”, which you shouldn’t do, but among all the other things that one shouldn’t and that I do anyway, it kinda doesn’t even make the top ranks. I’m working on it, but I’m also a master procrastinator (putting a “master” in front of it makes it sounds so much better than if I were to use a “chronic” or “incorrigible”, doesn’t it?), and those two things don’t go together well.
I also haven’t put up any pictures, though some are standing on furniture and leaning against the wall, and of the three mirrors I’ve hung (hung because I had them and a mirror lying around and potentially breaking apparently felt more troublesome than hanging them up, not because I actually want to look at myself all them time, quite the contrary), one used the single existing hook in the wall. I’m not sure why new nails seem such a commitment, but they do, and also the walls here are old and made of unpredictable materials that may require a drill after all or have the nail fail and fall as soon as you try to hang something on it, taking nail, it, and a piece of wall with it. Now that I’ve written it out I think I know what makes it a big commitment.
Anyway. I keep thinking how other people could easily have lived in five different places in the mean time, decorating and intentionally placing (or replacing) furniture each time, and then alway get to the point where I find that comparing myself to people who are not me isn’t helpful if it doesn’t also include a plan of how to make them come to my place and do whatever it is they do. Instead, I remind myself that there is the nordic style of decorating where bare walls are all the rage and sought after, presenting calmness and clarity. And then I pretend that I absolutely have a fusion style of nordic+cozily lived in, and keep my bare walls together with the too-much-stuff and the not-quite-right furniture, in the somewhat misplaced hope that the clarity will still persist somehow. Sometimes, it works, especially when I sit on the couch and direct my gaze upwards and ignore the lower third of the room.
Regarding shopping for furniture: sometimes, I get myself to do things I feel apprehension for for whatever reason by not planning to do them, but allowing myself to stumble into them. The stuff is around, and when I feel like doing a tiny bit, I do it (but I don’t plan it, it has to happen as if it’s been someone else’s idea), and then often once I started with a tiny bit it feels easier to keep going than it does to stop. That can occasionally lead to building Ikea furniture at 2am or vigorously scrubbing a presoaked in oven cleaner super encrusted cookie sheet at a time when I was just finished brushing my teeth and planning to go to sleep, but the things get done, and that is what matters.
So for the furniture, maybe there are some blogs you already follow or that you could keep an eye on that point out sales and sometimes even preselect stuff, and when one of those posts come up just go on those pages to look at the pretty stuff without concrete plans to buy anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if then, sometimes something catches your eye, and you begin to entertain phantasies of what it would be like to own said pretty thing, and then you realize that, oh, you actually need a thing like that for your house. And then, getting up to measure and see what size you might need in that corner of the living room can fill you with positive excitement (because the potential reward is that the thing you already like might fit!) instead of being a dreaded first task in a row of similarly unpleasant tasks (pondering where to shop, what style you might like, looking at endless variations of [thing] until they all look the same and you can’t make up your mind; etc.). Two blogs that I know have regular-ish roundups of sales are yellowbrickhome and chrislovesjulia, but I’m sure there are more. I never can use them as I’m not in the US, but I’ve often seen things I’d have really liked to own.
I don’t know if this would help the wall-art inertia or not, but I’ve found it really helpful to do paper mock-ups of art arrangements. I just cut newspaper to the size of the art and tape to the wall. I’m terrible at spatial visualization so I want to see the arrangement before committing to holes in the wall. When I did a photo gallery wall, I photocopied all the 5×7 and 8×10 prints (in their frames) and used those for the mock-up.
I really, really like the one-item-per-day idea and I’m going to adopt it immediately.
I’ve done mock ups too! I really helps.
Occasionally, my mock up art stays on the wall. I blew up a picture my daughter had painted through Staples Blueprints service ($13 for a 3 foot by 4 foot print) and now it’s just…part of my wall decor.
My husband and I remodeled his existing house before we got married to make room for our combined new family which is comprised of children from previous marriages. The larger square footage is awesome but we were left with some problems: A. blending two (smaller) houses of furniture which didn’t necessarily coordinate together (contemporary-ish vs. southern traditional) and B. weird spaces from the physical remodel that wouldn’t be normal in a new build (like an oddly shaped family room with bizarre window placement). We were at such a loss with where to start, what to buy, style, colors, you name it and it was So. Overwhelming.
We were approached one day by a salesperson in a non-fancy CHAIN furniture store while we were browsing and through our conversation, she mentioned they have complimentary design service! This may be common knowledge but we had no idea and to make a long story short, we now have a fully furnished home using mostly all our own pieces with the addition of a few big items, rugs and some artwork and I LOVE IT. Two ladies showed up at our house, looked around, we talked about what we liked, didn’t like and the functionality of our home, lifestyle, etc. and Voila! they turned our ramblings and half-ideas into a beautiful home! It was amazing.
Anyway, just wanted you to know that that may be an option for you. Obviously, we bought furniture from that store but there was no extra charge for the design service.
Another option, as long as the price is affordable, is to visit a furniture store like Rooms To Go and just . . . buy a room. They have whole setups of living rooms and TV rooms and dining rooms and there’s no shame in buying a whole set, or however much of that set you need. They had professional designers put those sets together! And no one will ever know that’s what you did; if they think anything at all, it will be how nicely your furniture goes with the rug. :)
I do this one-task-per-day type of thing for larger things I want to accomplish, like your wall-hanging resolution. Last year one of my resolutions was to organize our house, which was a huge and overwhelming task on its own. But I broke it down by resolving to organize one thing (not one room, one THING) per week. It could be a cabinet, or a drawer, or my stash of ribbon, as long as I could say to myself, “there’s that thing organized” then it counted. And it worked! I stuck to it most weeks, and by fall the whole house was much tidier.
Of course, as I type this so-called helpful comment, I’m procrastinating on my own task list which includes at least three separate phone calls. Ugh.
I have the same task paralysis, especially re: furniture purchases! Just bought a couch that fits after 7 years in our house. One thing I find helpful in this type of situation (which feels swistl-ish, so I may have stolen from you), is trying to figure out what is the particular source of the block in taking action. For example- is it a lack of excitement? Cost? Risk of buying wrong thing?
Once I can pinpoint the particular block (rather than a swirling mix of ennui/ dispair/ self-loathing) it is much easier to address (lack of exicitement- would Elizabeth’s Christmas decoration enthusiasm extend to a couch, buying wrong thing- a design service (though then ugh- phone call needed, could Paul make the call?))
Anyway, assvice and all that, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all, but then I reason that the problem obviously isn’t bothering me that much so I can take a short break from feeling bad about not dealing with it!
Your comment section is the best. You’ve assembled your people and they are also my people so thanks! House pictures please. It would be so fun.
I have lived in my house for 15 years now, and I have purchased exactly one piece of furniture – a crib. All the rest was left at the house when my husband bought it, or we were given as hand me downs. Also our bathroom is still Primer White. I. Hate. It. But, I am super cheap and indecisive, so new furniture is probably not going to happen soon. We really do need new kitchen chairs though, as some are pretty wobbly. But everything else is functional, and 2 dogs and 2 kids, so I have a hard time justifying new stuff. SOLIDARITY.
I have lived in my house for twenty (20!) years. I have pictures up in the dining room. That’s it.
My room, the dining room, and my son’s room are painted. Everywhere else is builder’s grade eggshell white.
The office is furnished with a couch from my late mother-in-law (Very 1990’s. Pastels); a desk we’ve had for 26 years, made from a door; and five folding tables.
The living room is from Ikea. We built our dining room table ourselves before our son was born.
You’re doing fine, is what I’m saying.
I read the first sentence of this of this post and decided to JUST DO IT before I read further. The one task that’s been dogging me for a week is done!
I also have furniture/deco issues. My sofa is shot but I still love it and would love to get it recovered, but need to take that first step to find someone to do it.
I have been kicking around replacing or recovering our living room sofa for years. I couldn’t find a sofa I like better than the current one but didn’t want to spend a fortune on reupholstery. But it just seems so wrong to throw away an expensive sofa. My husband finally took the decision out of my hands by giving me a gift certificate for a reupholstery shop for Christmas. But I could have bought two lower-quality sofas for what we’re paying to recover it.
Left up to me, the couch would have crumbled into dust before I made a decision is what I’m saying.
I still have a list on my phone of things I was going to accomplish during the boys’ spring break last year. I was going to be teleworking, so I could take a 10-minute break and do a minor task. (Yes, I could just do a minor task when I got home from work if I went into the office. Shut up.)
I still have at least one item on that list, waiting to be done. For some tasks, my hatred of the task is stronger than the thrill of checking off the little memo box.
But I have gotten a bunch of things done, and I have established systems to get things done regularly, so . . . progress? I don’t think I’ve actually become more disciplined and productive. I just no longer have little ones taking up all my time and energy.
We do have mostly nice furniture now, thanks to an interior designer. But within the first weeks of having a pretty rug in the dining room (elegant! responsibly made! taught me what “layering” means in interior designer speak!), one of my kids dropped a bowl of taco meat, so. There are reasons not to bother.
I do love all these comments. We just had some interior walls painted — they used to have a fairly nice collection of art/photos etc., a “gallery wall” if you will, but I fear that now I won’t want to ever marr them again with holes. Husband says I should use Command strips. I’m also loathe to do that to my pretty new smoooooooth Sherwin-Williams Ellie Grey walls. Plus, indecision (it’d be fun to “mix things up” but how?)
I would love to see photos of your odd spaces. They sound so fun to me.
We just painted my teen daughters room in Ellie Grey and I LOVE it!!
Before I put up any pictures when we first moved, I cut out wrapping paper in the sizes of my frames and taped them all over to see what looked good to me. It was helpful. I need some more of that ambition after the flurry of decorating activity when we moved in. It’s been 5 years since then and we haven’t painted a hall and the stairwell. And we picked out the color! Also, this post helped me pull the trigger on buying some frames for my kids’ rooms. So thanks!
What if you combined your hanging things problem with your bonus rooms problem and created a quiet haven full of things you liked to look at. A little pre-bedroom gallery sitting room.
That’s a cool idea! Also, “ruining” the wall is lower stakes because it’s relatively unused.
It is so much easier – so much – to fill an empty house with new furniture than to replace existing furniture. We have had a couch for nine years that I hate with every atom of my corporal self and every glimmer of my consciousness. It is uncomfortable. It is saggy. It has feathers that poke out of it and hurt people. I am allergic to it (FEATHERS). It has ten million uncomfortable pillows that are always all over the living room. I HATE it. NINE YEARS. I have been living with this thing for nearly a decade. And I hate it. And yet I have not replaced because it is so much easier to live with it than deal with the horror that is shopping for and paying for a new couch.
(This is supposed to be commiseration and not, like, confirmation that buying new furniture is so awful. I mean, I presume it is. But “do as I wish to do, not as I actually do” and all that.)
We’ve lived in our house for 10 years. Pictures have gone up and come down and gone back up; one room became my quilting room and i took the kitchen table so what to do about a kitchen table and so on and so forth. Swistle, I wouldn’t worry about it because all I’m trying to say is that things probably don’t stay the same anyway! Just enjoy the process of living and the rest will fall into place!
Here is my hard-earned lesson on furniture: I used to believe in buying solid, quality furniture that would last practically forever. You know what that has resulted in? Dated looking furniture that’s no longer my “style” but is still in too good shape to justify getting rid of it. And some of it is indeed a bit awkward for the house I live in now which isn’t the house I lived in when I bought it. I find myself thinking “I hate this boring, brown sofa” but can I justify getting rid of it when it looks practically new even though I bought it over 15 years ago? Not really. It’s a couch. I can sit on it just fine.
I am really, really good at planning and designing all permanent built-in changes to the house – kitchen renovations, converting an old closet into functional mudroom cubbies, etc. – but I can’t make our house look properly furnished and decorated. I haven’t even hung up much of our art and we’ve been here… maybe 5 years at this point? I think I may need professional help.
Oh and for tasks: I make a list in my Google calendar and put it in a free hour on the weekend, either Friday night or Saturday morning usually. Every week I duplicate it, take out the stuff I got done, and add new stuff. Some things have not moved off it for years, but some stuff has and it feels so satisfying to delete things! As a bonus, all the family can see it on their electronic calendar so if there’s something for someone besides me to do I point out its existence to them and then they may actually do it!
Regarding comments – I am perpetually running behind!
I didn’t see anyone mention Houzz.com for helping furnish/visualize your rooms. Register for an account; it’s free. and make one post about one room (including pictures) and ask for help. Most of the people over there are extremely helpful and give great ideas. There are a few professionals on there too that will often throw in their advice.
YESTERDAY I called and ordered contact lenses and TODAY I put away the boxes of Christmas shit in the storage room, so it’s like your voice was in my head even before I read this. And I still don’t feel entirely settled into this house after twenty years, and we’ve desperately needed a new couch for at least five, so… well, I don’t know what I’m trying to say, I don’t want to be all “at LEAST you’re not as bad as me”. We’re grownups, I guess is the thing. We’re allowed to do it however we want.
Here is something I find fun, and maybe you will, too! After 8 years in the same house, we still have zero wall art in our bedroom.
Instead of hanging something up, I enjoy looking at wall stickers and filling up carts with wall stickers and then not-buying them. I consider this is a worthwhile exercise; it’s range-finding. I’ve discovered that searching for “plant wall stickers” is a better idea than just “wall stickers” because it leaves out large, wall-sized inspirational quotes or photographs of sunset beaches or whatever, and shows only . . . well, plants. Like this!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/731713658/hanging-tender-branch-dark-green-leaves?ref=pla_similar_listing_top-1&frs=1
(Oops. I meant “I consider this a worthwhile exercise.”)
It took me 16 years to put window coverings on the kitchen window. It is a southwest facing window and for 5-6 months out of the year I would be blinded by the sun coming in while making dinner/ cleaning the kitchen. SIXTEEN YEARS. I bought throw pillows last summer for our couch, the couch we bought in 2012. So maybe I’m getting faster with things.