I've just been reading the latest blog post on Yarn Harlot. This is where Canadian knitting teacher and writer, Stephanie Pearl-Mcphee, blogs. I've been following her blog for a long time as she takes us through her life with knitting, her family and, more recently, her part in the annual Toronto to Montréal Bike Rally - that last is a 600 kms bike ride. Makes my eyes water just thinking about it.
I love knitting so that's where I first got interested in her blog where she posts patterns and a commentary on what she's currently knitting. She also doesn't shy away from the joys and sorrows of her life so we got to share the sadness of her mother's sudden death and the grandmotherly pleasures of a small grandchild along with her struggles and successes in other areas.
Today though her blog post really resonated with me. She's had a hectic year and this time she's talking about chaos in her home. I've heard of the CHAOS acronym, otherwise known as Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome, before. It was invented by The FlyLady, Marla Cilley. Truth be told I've been living it for sometime. Before health issues - both mine and Pisces' - disrupted our lives we had started on much needed renovations. When you've lived in a house as long as we have - and I'm not going to tell you just how long that is - things wear out. So far over a few years we've renovated the bathrooms, laundry and kitchen - and very nice they are, too. The final major job is to put in engineered flooring and, before everything went pear-shaped, I had pulled out the existing carpets and packed up a lot of the house contents ready to move on to the next big step.
That's when Pisces got sick and with the worry over that and the time it devoured - it was serious involving a number of hospitalisations but now several years on he's recovered well - neither of us had the energy to focus on things other than survival. Then I came down with a debilitating and still undiagnosed illness that had me bed-bound on and off for well over a year and I suppose I should also factor in a slow healing broken bone in my foot, not to mention that we've both had multiple surgeries that took much longer than anticipated to recover from and things ground to a halt as far as the renovations as well as everything else.
When all these sorts of things happen something has to give and housework is definitely one of the things that suffers. Did I mention clutter build up? No? Well that's the other thing that gets too hard. Stuff I had packed had to be unpacked and didn't get properly packed up again. It just sat there because I was going to need it again soon and other things accumulated as well. Sometimes I swear things breed around here and it's not helped by some folk having the habit of picking things up that might be useful - no, we don't need a beanie with an advertising logo on it just because it's free and the same applies to the plastic poncho and so much more. It all just got harder and harder.
Now, though, we're both as good as we're ever going to be I suspect so it's time to deal with the mess and with that in mind I've signed up again for the 100 Day Goal. The major goal: to declutter with a view to getting the new flooring done early in the New Year. As well I'm going to find time to write, garden and keep up with my studies every day. Gulp. With daily micro-actions I might even succeed. Wish me luck!
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