Getting these new floors was kind of like getting a whole new house!

The house looks different, sounds different, smells different… and since everything was moved and moved again and some of it moved back to where it was but some not… I’m aching to clean everything, rearrange some furniture, and make the house even more “mine” (sorry, Tim).
It’s not giving me the disjointed, unconnected feeling I was getting when Tim and I first moved in here. Then, it was a new house, and also a new couch, a new bed, and new kitchen appliances. Everything was “mine” in that I lived here, but it really felt for a couple of weeks like staying in a hotel. Sure, I could USE everything, but I didn’t feel connected to any of it.
Now it’s all stuff I’ve had for a while, it’s just in a slightly different place… or in the same place but not plugged in yet… or… well, I’m sure you get the idea.

In moving everything around, Jeff cleared out enough space in his room that he was able to move his computer set-up in there, which means he no longer needs Tim’s office as an office. Right now I’m calling it The Doom Room, and I swear not because the energy of the room is so heavy. More because there are piles of things all over the floor that are all things I need to figure out a place for – they’re basically piles of every random thing I had around the house, and the guys put them all there in that room after that floor was done, so that I could have everything centrally located and easy to find. It’s like a room filled with Doom Piles. Doom Stalagmites. Doolagmites, if you will.
I can see that room eventually becoming a non-HaldeCraft hobby room; a place to store my family photos as I scan them all, a place to work on my dollhouse miniatures, a place to lounge in a recliner and read under a hand-made quilt. But that shit ain’t happening next week, let me tell you! It’s going to be a while.

Meanwhile, at the complete other end of the house, my closet needs some attention. It’s always been more of a place to store shit and less of a place to keep my clothes where I can easily get to them. Because I’m more of a jeans-and-t-shirt type girl (or lets be honest, yoga pants and t-shirt) I’ve mostly used dressers my entire life. Closets were for things like the three dresses or skirts I own, suitcases, shit I never wear stored in boxes, and then just random shit I want to keep out of the way.

Since Tim died, I’ve been trying to buy a nice shirt or two once a month or so. So that I don’t look like a slovenly widow, mostly. But they need to be hung up, and that means closet space, and y’all, that closet is a hot mess. The rods are either crooked or falling off (there are three of them) and there are shelves but in really awkward spots. So I’ve ordered… three new rods and a shoe rack. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but since right now almost everything is out of the closet after doing the floors, now would be a good time to change shit up.

And really, I have more clothes than I need. I still have a good portion of Tim’s t-shirts. I gave away most of his silly/fun ones, but I kept all the con shirts, most of the Carhartt (sp?) work t-shirts, and a few of his silly ones that have sentimental value to me. I kind of justified having so much because I also kept all the dressers after he died (I had one, he had two). I don’t need three dressers. I don’t need three dressers worth of clothes. I definitely don’t need three dressers and a closet worth of clothes. So, it’s time to do some consolidating, some closet reno work, and some dresser re-allocation (to that Reuse furniture place, unless I know someone who needs a couple of dressers).

The living room. I was going to make the corner where the fireplace was, a dollhouse corner. My plan was to buy, as needed, sideboard tables and stack them in interesting ways in an L-shape, and put finished dollhouses on them. But if I’m going to use The Doom Room for that? What if I made that corner and whole wall… the science fiction hardcover wall? It would be directly opposite the wall that has all my mass market science fiction books.

Moving the science fiction out of the front room would free up those bookshelves (I’m gaining three bookshelves that were Tim’s, that Jeff’s now not using) which would make space for all the books that are on the floor in The Doom Room. And it would let me separate the science fiction from the mysteries and general fiction, like I used to have them. And it would let me separate the non-fiction into biographies/history/everything else. Like I used to have them. You can take the girl out of the bookstore, but…. Haha. I’ll probably still have a few stacks, though. I mean. Do real book people ever have enough bookshelves????

It’s starting to feel like the next couple of months are going to be one “I can’t move this until I move this other thing” comedy of errors. What I need to remember is that there’s not a time limit, baby steps are still steps, and that I can’t work as long or as hard as I could before I was sick this year and that is OK. Nobody is grading me on this. If anything, my friends are going to cheer my effort, and love seeing my house come together as more and more “me” all the time.