Jessie: In New Hampshire where the leaves are gone and the birds are visiting the feeders.
Like pretty much everyone else I find myself spending more time at home more than ever. And like so many others, all the little things that are easy to put off or overlook when one spends time rocketing about in other locales become glaring upon daily inspection. This has led to a not unique flurry of home improvement and decorating projects.
In the spring my husband built a new overhang for our back door and ordered a new screen house canopy so we could enjoy the outdoors more easily. I reorganized the pantry. In September we booked the installantion of some long overdue fresh caprpeting and purchased living room furniture as a way to mark our youngest heading off to college. In October we tackled the last room in our home to be redecorated, my office. We peeled down wallpaper dating from the previous owner, painted the walls, changed the overhead lighting and jacked up the house so that the doors close. I pulled down the curtains and hung prisms in the windows and added a bunch of new houseplants.
We moved bookcases to the upstairs hallway, bottomed out the second floor linen closet and built an outdoor fireplace for the patio. I swamped out the sewing room/ studio. I purged my wardrobe. The spice drawers got a hard look and a bit of a buff up. I purged old paper files.
But all this brings me to the bits where there is less certainty. Or perhaps simply less enthusiasm. Every layer of that comes off, or each project that is completed seems to reveal another one beneath it like a never ending set of Russian dolls. The catch-all drawer in the kitchen now seems intolerable compaered to the realative calm exhibited by the spice drawer. My closet no longer contains things I don’t wear but the items reamining seem to be calling out for better organization. What does one do with scarves and purses?
The linen closet in my own bedroom could use an hour’s attention. What about the family photos I keep meaning to frame? The cabinet that holds leftovers storage containers and the one devoted to baking pans both whisper at me but I feel daunted and tell them to wait a bit longer. The dog toys need a bit of a going over and tough decisions need to be made. The bins of hats and mittens in the mudroom are surely not the best solution to that particular problem but I have not yet made myself seek out a better one.
I suppose the only thing for it is to look forward to the long winter months ahead and the days spent at home with no excuse not to pick away at the to do list. Maybe by the time we are all free to roam about the planet once more I will have reached that last little Russian doll in the center of the stack!
Readers, have you been finding yourself tackling jobs around the house over the pst few months? Any suggestions for what to do with scarves, handbags and food storage containers?