The things we keep

Going through the boxes in the attic I came across pile of old notes my first boy and I exchanged throughout our first couple years of high school. We stopped dating in 2002 when I graduated yet here they have remained with me for the last 10 years. They lived in a box at my parent’s house until sometime after I moved back to jersey, and have been living with me for the last 4 years, having 3 different homes total.

Going through things you saved from the past can be a bit like re-watching a tv show
you loved as a child. Not nearly as awesome as you remembered them to be. 

Since I broke up with this said former boyfriend, I have not read a single one of these letters. Prior to us breaking up I had not really read them either. Just collected them in a pile and then shoved them in a box and forgot about them.

Missing images

I futzed with some settings on my flickr account and now all my back post images are missing. (On this blog but not my art blog... which is good I suppose *knock on wood*) I will be going back before the next post and fixing it. Fortunately, there aren't that many pictures that it should take me forever but it will still be annoying. Arg.

Moving On and Pomodoro

MOVING ON

Long time no post. Things have been busy here in the cluttered land of Christine. Long story short- I'm moving.

Max likes moving because it means he can play in the attic and lay on that nasty ass carpet.

ATTIC PART 1

Last week I began the probably what is going to be the worst part of my purging project. The attic. 

OMG!! Where do I even begin???

The attic is where it becomes terribly obvious that I have too much stuff. The moment you walk up the stairs what you see  is a sea of boxes- often times filled with a random array of stuff with no particular organization. I went through about four of these boxes last week and attempted to purge and give some semblance of order to what was in them. This resulted in one large box being put into the car to go to goodwill (though hasn't quite made it there yet.) Another having most of its contents given away to friends and the rest will be sent to goodwill. I have yet another box filled with old computer parts that need to be recycled and the start of box where all randomly found art supplies will be placed. I also threw out a ton of ancient water based silk screen inks that were over 7 years old and mostly hardened into a gel or even something resembling the consistency of cat food.

So far so good. Eventually however we are going to hit the part I really don't want to address which is a the boxes upon boxes of sketch books and old art projects. Picking through those are going to be difficult, but it needs to happen. 

 As far the rest of the apartment- I finally sold that Besta Ikea cabinet I really should not have bought. I had grand dreams of turning it into a litter box cabinet, but it wound up just sitting in my apartment taking up room and never was modified. Its nice to have a little bit more space again. 

I also decided that I didn't need the huge old tube tv I have and have placed that in the free section of craigslist with no bites so far. I barely ever used it as my imac is nearly as big and far nicer. When I eliminate the tv though I realize I don't really need the wall unit. It was only about half used and the other things in it could easily be stored elsewhere. I decided I didn't want to quite complete get rid of it yet thought, so it was added the sea of things in the attic. As a result from space freed by both the besta cabinet and the wall unit, I keep rotating furniture around trying to figure out where things best belong. I will settle on something eventually... i hope. 

FRESH START 2012 Part one: BATHROOM

So, it has been a long time since I updated this blog. A lot of stuff kind of collided at once making blog worthy cleaning and purging difficult. One, I started to panic about a big deadline, which took up probably more time than it warranted but c'est la vie. Two, there was a apartment drama involving my chimney, which left me without heat for a few days out of fear of risk of carbon monoxide poisoning and workers going in and out my apartment for several weeks. Three, the holidays hit which is always a ball full of chaos.

However, now I am back and more ready than ever to tackle this problem. I had the week between Christmas and New Years off, and I used it to take care of errands, clean and organize to get a nice fresh start to the new year. I also had the generous help of my parents to get more done this week than if I was to tackle this project alone. So let us review the improvements.

Enough chit chat! On to the bathroom!

Why? Just why did they choose that color?

GOAL WEEK 4: KITCHEN PART 1

This weeks goal was to start working on my kitchen, which I knew from the get go, was probably going to take me at least two weeks if not three.

Yup... this is my kitchen... 

Goal Week 3: Coat/Hall Closet

So this week I picked a smaller project as I was away this weekend. I decided to clean out and organize my coat/hall closet. This closet, like so many places in my apartment, became a catch all place to shove things during rush cleanings and the home to odd objects I just didn't know where to put. Everything from paint rollers and trays from when I first moved in, to my decorative vintage skies were residing in there, along with a pile of coats, shoes and clothes. 

Oh My!