Palace Project Part 4: Making Progress in the Office

I started working on the office. There's a great blog I've been reading called abowlfuloflemons that is really helpful and inspiring in getting my house clean and organized. I used Toni's tips to start getting rid of the mess in my office by going through my papers. As a reminder, it started like this:

 But once I finished, it looked like this:

As my mother remarked with joy, "You can see the floor!" I know, I know. This is very exciting.

Then I got the bright idea that I would move my furniture. The desk I have is not terribly functional at the moment because the desktop space is too small. The hutch takes up a lot of room and when I'm working, I need to spread out - I frequently use my computer + a book, notebook or binder at the same time, and I struggle with space if I can't put them all on the desk at once. So I decided to buy a new desk with more space. That means moving out the old desk and bookshelf (wrong color) and bringing in new stuff. So now I've gone from this:

To this:

Sigh. I was so excited about being able to see the floor again...but you know how it works. The room often (if not always) gets messier before it gets cleaner, and sometimes just vacillates back and forth between the two. In other news, I'm excited to buy this to replace the bookshelf.

I 

I'm also getting some pink drawers to put in it. 

This room is going to be so pretty when it's done!

Palace Project Part 3: The Office

I'm also redoing my office this summer. Currently, my office is a huge mess. My brother actually forgot that I had an office, until he realized, "Oh, it's the room where the door is always closed." Yeah, kid...there's a reason for that.

My office currently looks like 7 tornadoes hit it simultaneously. There are two bookshelves and a desk, but I have so many binders and books and papers that there are boxes and boxes of more stuff just sitting on the floor. It's pretty embarrassing - hence the door being perpetually closed. However, I have a coworker who wisely said that when she redecorated, she took pictures every so often to chart her progress. So in the spirit of improvement, I'll post some here.

Rather than starting with my before picture, I'll start with my inspiration rooms. Here are some ideas for what I want the space to look like:

I'm going for fun, vibrant colors. My office is currently nonfunctional because the space is both too disorganized and too boring for me to really spend any productive time in there. But with these happy colors, I'll be ecstatic to sit in there and read and work.

I was debating back and forth about pink vs. orange walls (pink is my favorite color for sure but orange may be a more tolerable color to paint an entire room with). I think I've settled on orange with white furniture and pink accents.

And now, without further ado (yikes), my first progress pictures.

Here's my awful start:

And believe it or not, this is not the worst of it. Before I took this picture, there was actually a huge pile of empty boxes in the corner between the two bookshelves. (Before you congratulate me for cleaning it up, I'll admit that that pile has moved itself to the kitchen. But hey, progress, right?)

I'll keep posting pictures as the room changes.

:)

Palace Project Part 2: Floor Plans

In an attempt to figure out how I wanted to redecorate my apartment, I decided to try making a floor plan. That way I could see what would happen without having to actually move the furniture yet. This proved to be helpful, yet challenging.

First, I discovered www.homestyler.com. It's an awesome site that lets you use sample furniture to make a floor plan of the rooms in your house.

Next, I made a floor plan that didn't work. It looks like this:

Then I actually measured the couch and discovered that it is way too long to fit on that wall. So I made a second plan. It looks like this:

This one is better, but it still doesn't work.

After that, I got smart and realized I needed to measure the dimensions of the room and not just one piece of furniture, and created a floor  plan that's significantly more accurate. It looks like this:

This time I got furniture that actually fits in the space. Smart, huh? Yeah...third time's the charm.

I decided to buy a new couch, an area rug, curtains, accent chairs, an accent table and a shoe bench. Here's to shopping!

Palace Project Part 1: The Living Room

As I mentioned previously, I am not an interior decorator. At work, I'm that person that makes most of her anchor charts on white tablet paper and most definitely does not have cutesy borders and bulletin boards and stuff all over the room. I'm not that artistically creative person. In fact, I'm pretty sure I wrote an anti-ode to art class as poetry assignment for 8th grade English class. So as you can see, I'm not artistically inclined.

Naturally, when it came to deciding what to do with the living room, I had no idea where to start. All I knew was that I wanted a zen space. One that's really peaceful and calming. I started looking up inspiration rooms, and came across this beauty:

I found this picture here.

I love it! I love the pretty green on the walls and I love the curtains. I love how they brought everything together with the greens in the pillows, on the couch, on the rug and in the chairs. It's so beautiful! This is my inspiration room for the living room.

Decorating bloggers and experts say you should choose the wall color based on something else in the room that inspires your color scheme. I didn't do that. I just saw this room and decided I wanted green. I was going to replace all of the furniture, but I want to keep my media unit (to keep down cost) and my coffee table was a special-ordered gift, so I don't want to replace it. It's multicolored but it has a lot of green, so I think I'll make it the focal point in the room and build the other colors in around it.

I went to HOM furniture with a friend when they were having a sale and found this couch

It is totally customizable, so I picked out my own color (gray), fabric (comfy), arm style (rolled), and can even pick which side the chaise is on (the right). (Yeah, I got a chaise. I'm cool like that.) The super nice salesman even customized the seat cushions to fit my height (I'm fairly tall). How cool is that?! Good job, dude.

I'm excited for my new couch! The best part about it is that since I'm getting a new one, I can donate my old to two fabulous young girls who are getting their first apartment and are in need of new stuff (just like me, three years ago). The couch is coming right around the time they are moving! I'm so excited to be able to pay it forward and help someone else the way my friends and family helped me. Yay! Life is beautiful.

The Project

I think I need a name for my house-beautifying project. I haven't decided what to call it yet. Here are some (admittedly lame) ideas:
1. House Beautiful
2. Super Space
3. Project Make-it-Pretty
4. Project Zen
5. Project COP (Clean, Organize, Prettify or Clean, Organized, Pretty)

OR...the Palace Project! This idea is #1 in the running so far. When I bought my house, one of the reasons I liked it so much is because it's purple. The previous owner painted it gray before he sold it to me (LAME!) but you can still see the purple through it (and in some places near the foundation where they didn't totally cover it up). I love having a purple house! So when I moved it, it was quickly nicknamed The Purple Palace. However, if you read my last post, you know that my home is currently far from palatial. So my project this summer will be to rectify that.

Here are the things I want to do:

1. Redecorate the living room - paint the walls and buy new furniture
2. Redecorate my office - paint the walls and buy new furniture
3. Deep clean everything (I'm considering a new line of cleaning products)
4. Fix up the yard (it's in horrible shape)
5. Organize!

One of the reasons I didn't do this sooner is because I'm not a naturally gifted organizer, landscaper or interior decorator. I really don't know where to start with these things. However, the internet is a wonderful place! I've been looking all over for inspiration, and I've found some really beautiful and informative things!

I'll post about my living room next.

What I'm doing

So in my last post, I wrote about how I'm trying to curb my obsession with DOING things and just be, just relax. And in order to help me with that, I've decided to redecorate.

I know, I know. That sounds like work. And my goal this summer isn't to do work. (Aren't I taking the summer off of work? What is this madness?) But my main goal isn't really to avoid doing anything that involves effort - it's to do things that help me de-stress.

Things that stress me out:
1) Having a bunch of things to do, but not quite being sure what they are.
2) Having things on my to-do list that aren't done.
3) Clutter.
4) Mess.
5) Dirt (dirty spaces in my life - rooms in the house, dirty car, dirty classroom, etc.)
6) Unfinished projects.

Number 1 is an easy fix - a to-do list always helps me organize my brain before I start working on something. The problem is when I get to Number 2 - things on my to-do list that aren't done. When I have things on my list that aren't done, I get stressed out because of that annoying desire to have everything finished right now. I'm learning to take baby steps and let myself relax when a project takes more time than I can devote to it in one sitting. It's really hard, though. Patience, patience. 

 I currently live in what might be loosely called a "bachelorette pad." The phrase "bachelor pad" makes me cringe because I think of pizza boxes on the living room floor and trash everywhere and dirty laundry, on the furniture, which is not at all what my house looks like. However, it is the kind of house a recent college grad might live in - mismatched, donated furniture; ugly-colored walls with ripped/damaged paint; sparsely furnished; no small accents or homey touches; not altogether functional. It's very much a "starter home." But now that I've lived here for three years, it's time to change all of that.

I want my house to feel more "homey". I want to get rid of the clutter and the mismatch and create a space that I'm really happy to come home to every day. I want my living room to feel very peaceful and zen, and I want my office to be a vibrant, productive, and organized space. That way I'll be happy and cozy and less stressed when I'm home. Plus it will be more incentive to keep the place cleaner.

This project will probably take me all summer, so I'm definitely going to have to work on being patient enough to take baby steps. But I'm really excited to get started!

DOING Things

It's Staycation time!

I've been counting down to this day for months now, and I'm so excited that it's finally here! Which day, you might ask? June 10th. That's which day. The first day of Summer - The Time I Am Not Required To Work for Two Months.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am pretty Type A. (According to my little brother, I am extremely Type A. What are you trying to say, dude? Anyway...) What this usually translates into is a constant state of stress brought on by the unrelenting feeling that I should be DOING something, and that something needs to be done immediately. 

The first time I tried to take a day off from everything was incredibly difficult. It was a Spring Break a couple of years ago. I decided that I would spend Sunday, that first Sunday, doing no work all day. To most people, this would probably sound wonderful. But for me, the thought of doing no work at all for an entire day made me feel like this:

What the heck am I going to DO all day?

I had no idea what to do with myself. In fact, I spent the three days prior to my vacation day stressing out about how I was going to spend it. I couldn't imagine a day without work.

Fortunately, I got over that and spent the day laying on the couch, painting my nails and reading. It was lovely.

Almost as good as this.

When I took my two-week staycation a few years ago (the one that started this blog), I was so stressed about what I would do for my two weeks that I actually googled "what to do on a staycation" and made a list. And last night, the first official night of this summer's staycation, I had a brief moment where I thought, Oh my gosh am I bored already? May I should have decided to work...

But I quickly came to my senses and went to Dairy Queen to get a Chocolate Extreme Blizzard.

As I was eating my amazing dessert, I got to thinking. What is this obsession with busyness? Why is it so necessary for me to be DOING something every minute? Every staycation has started out with a stressed-out attempt to find something productive or cool-sounding or just plain "busy" to do. And it isn't just me - everyone who asks me if school is over yet subsequently wants to know what I'm going to DO this summer. My first response is usually, "Sleep. A lot." Their subsequent question is, "But do you have any plans? Are you going to go anywhere? What are you going to DO?" I can't fault them for asking. It's a very good question. But it seems to come from the same obsessive place that my anxieties stem from - I can't spend my time just being. I have to DO all the time.

But the thing is, DOING is what causes my anxiety in the first place. Rather than spending this summer DOING things every minute, I need to get back to the place of peace - a place where I can just be. Over Memorial Day weekend, I resolved not to do any work. Instead, I slept in every day. I got out of bed when I felt like it. I took a nap every afternoon. I played with my 8-month-old niece (who is SUPER adorable!) every day. I watched corny Hallmark channel chick flicks with my mom and sister-in-law. And amazingly, slowly but surely, the spinning in my head finally slowed to a stop.

So this summer, my goal is not to DO anything. I'll do things. But not DO things. The goal of the summer is to just be. And enjoy it. No travel, no work, no stress.

And ice cream. Definitely ice cream.

So far, summer is delicious.

Mmmmmmm.

First Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Second Image courtesy of photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net