Keep on moving

The dance goes on. I definitely feel like my health and welfare has improved over the last month, so that has helped me stay positive about the processes involved in reclaiming and maintaining.

I need to gear up for another push soon. Not sure where I am going to target. I'd like it to be the kitchen.

I spoke to my counsellor this week about what's been going on and how I do feel quite encouraged and empowered by how things have been going. He suggested that I do the kitchen one item at a time, and that may be how it has to go. The place is a bit like a tidal backwash - the things that end up in there I am either avoiding or I don't know where else to put them. Maintaining is a lot harder to do in the kitchen too, for some reason.

I need to get my washing put away and to tidy up some more yet from having a visitor to stay at weekend. I am lucky to have people who love me enough to still be able and willing to be in my home when it is such squalor here !

It's hard to have visitors. I feel bad because I wonder if they feel I don't love them enough to tidy up before they come. That's not at all the truth of it, though; usually I have tidied up, it just doesn't look that way because what for me is 'better' is still pretty awful to anyone else. I love them all the more because they don't judge me or demean me for being the person I am right now, and are willing to know and to trust that sometimes I can and will be a more organised and tidy version of who I am.

Small Steps 2

I'm delighted to say that the area of living room I reclaimed has held ! It takes vigilance not to fall into old habits, though.

Tonight I cleared the first surface in my kitchen. This is a real landmark, as my kitchen has lots of emotional baggage associated with it. The only thing is that the newly reclaimed surface is now 'showing up' the rest of the room, making it seem even more unsightly than before, even though I have part-cleared some of the other surfaces as well.

I seem to have a lot of crockery, and I don't know where to store it all. Mostly it is glasses and microwave cookware. Very few of the glasses match, and the whole thing about needing a range of glasses for different purposes is causing me to find it hard to throw any out. For some reason these items feel quite scary, though. Odd to be 'afraid' of crockery !

There's clearly some underlying significance I am attaching to the idea of not having so many of those sorts of pots. I think it might be tied into my stick-carrying - the pots may be there as a stick, reminding me that I am not very good at dealing with cooking and getting the food I eat 'right'.

Small Steps 1

Well, I've been on holiday for a week now, and feel I have made a deal of progress ! I have cleared four or five large bin bags worth of stuff into the trash. I also took a similar number of carrier bags of books to various charity shops over the course of this week, though they didn't seem too grateful for them.

My attempt to clear the top of my chest of drawers didn't hold - it's re-cluttering already, but I do now have three drawers out of four which actually contain clothing, and the clothing is folded and in some sort of order, with spare space in a couple of those drawers even ! The washing bags got emptied within two days of the wash this time, never even making it into the kitchen. I cleared the upper shelf of my airing cupboard and sorted out all the linen currently in use.


'Appropriate home ?' has been a question I have had to answer a lot whilst I've been clearing this week. I really do have a lot of stuff that I have obviously attempted to leave 'on the surface' simply because it either doesn't have a home or I couldn't get it to the place it should be at because of other 'stuff' being in the way of getting it there.

One of the amusing things is that whilst I've been clearing I discovered I already own Julie Morgenstern's book and didn't know it - it appeared from inside a cupboard earlier today ! Glad now that I didn't buy it earlier this week when I went to Borders; in fact I was very good when I went to Borders and didn't in the end buy anything. I was probably there about two and a half hours, though, first browsing and then talking myself out of the large number of titles I had pulled down with a view to buying them.


I spent most of last night and today working on increasing my living space. I tackled one of my largest and most enduring piles, and it had a knock-on effect that kept me at it most of today. A lot of stuff from that pile is now in a sorted box or in a cupboard, which in turn had been housing stuff that should have been in the kitchen. The stuff from the cupboard in the lounge is now where it should be, in the kitchen cupboard, or in the bin.

I actually read quite a bit of Julie's book whilst I was in Borders thinking about buying it (for what would have been the second time), and that has helped me a lot over this week. I haven't followed her plan religiously, but for instance when it came to doing my kitchen cupboard I felt better placed for completing the task that I ever have before.

I do still have some of the original lounge pile left - though right now it's more of a layer, spread across the lounge floor for reassigning. I figure, though, that you can have too much of a good thing - I know from past exerience the danger of a burnout at this stage, but also now have the experience of finding a space to prompt me to complete the job. Fingers crossed that I really am making the improvement in mental health that I think I am and that the job will get finished, hopefully either later tonight or tomorrow morning.