Natalie from MI's Profile

I would also have loved to have gotten a better sense of the space, but I love that cork board map -- fantastic!

You totally won me over with your description of yourself as a novelist who wants the room to tell a story -- that blanket may "ruin" the color scheme you had in mind, but it is a story-piece! It makes a person curious.

I have vintage chairs that I've put new fabric on several times, and the one that lasted the longest and looked the best was vinyl. In fact, that's what's on the chair right now, looking as new as when I stapled it on five years ago. I have kids and the chairs gets a ton of use and food spilled on them, etc. There are lots of choices in terms of color and texture with vinyl these days. But if you go with regular fabric, get upholstery or outdoor fabric; anything else will loosen and rip.

Great post and a comment section really worth going through (I join the others wishing @glasseye the best as you seek a life both stable and creative). I've done a lot of the stuff mentioned above, but also this: I no longer get things because they're a bargain. Even if I'm talking about a beautiful silk scarf for $1 from the Salvation Army, after all the "would I really wear/use it?" questions, I ask myself, "Would I pay $100 for that?" If the answer is no, then I don't get it. Nothing is a bargain if it goes unused and unloved.

Great closets; count me as one who put the dresser in my daughter's closet. However, it does crack me up a bit that all these closets are for toddlers and younger. I've got two middleschoolers, and their closets, no matter how well organized and planned by me for their particular storage personalities, are giant messes. All the time.

Score! I did the magazines between Christmas and New Year's, the CDs/DVDs last week, and the bookshelves got a major purge (6 bagsworth out of the house) this past summer. I do need to clean up the shelves a bit, move stuff around and see whether there's anything else I can be brutal about, so the books I got for Christmas will fit.

So maybe I should take the cue of some people above and work on my recipes. I've shoved all my regular recipes plus some magazine cut-outs in a binder, which worked well for a long time, but needs help now. Okay, that will be my version of this task, since I've mostly done it already.

Which is good, because my version of the media fast last night was to not be on my computer while I watched Top Chef; I did a puzzle instead.

Pegboard looks good so far. My project was to deal with my kids' toys. I've sorted and purged and organized the remainder. The garbage toys are gone, but there are a number that will be passed along to friends and family with younger kids, and others we're going to try to sell. So today is for the follow-through of the previous organization -- without that, the job really isn't done.

No, holliemonster, it's not wrong to be excited about that -- or, if it is, at least you have company. I use the kitchen every day for cooking family meals and baking (just pulled brownies out of the oven 45 minutes ago), and I've got teenagers, so it gets a lot of use. I've done several organizing jobs in there in the last two months (excavating a deep corner cabinet and unearthing 32 water bottles dating back to kindergarten!), so I can really go for the picky cleaning -- running a dishwasher load of platters and rarely used glassware; cleaning the open cabinets on top of the workaday cabinets, having another go at the fridge and freezer. For the recipe, I'll try Joy the Baker's Maple, Chocolate and Oatmeal Cookies.

I'm going to deal with my basement, both the storage room and the toy situation. At 13 and 11, there are a lot of toys that are gathering dust, so today I'm going to put hands on all of them and group them, keep some (so visiting friends with younger kids, as well as our future grandchildren, can have something to play with), but get rid of most. The storage room will have to wait until later this week.

The small forks and spoons are the most used in my drawer. The rest of the family likes the small spoons for cereal and we all use them for ice cream -- can't imagine eating a little scoop of ice cream with a soup spoon. And we always use the little forks for lunch, although it's the big forks for dinner. That said, I never set the table with two forks, no matter what we're eating.