“Make your home as comfortable and attractive as possible and then get on with living. There’s more to life than decorating.”
—Albert Hadley
After all of the drama and exhaustion of my move in August, I hit a wall about three days after move-in. Too much stuff, too little space for it, one couch too many…and I was just really, really tired of making decisions. What had been accomplished up to that point, housewise, lay mostly untouched for the rest of 2012, as school, work, settling in in other areas, and generally getting on with living took over.
I hung a couple of shelves. A few evenings I was in the mood and put up some art or tinkered in some capacity. I ditched a couch. But there have been large boxes in my living room for months. I have all kinds of framed art stacked under the windowsill, waiting to be hung.
And perhaps most importantly, I haven’t had anyone over because I’m too embarrassed by the general disarray. And that’s a shame, since I love making dinner for friends, and my space could totally work for get togethers. And I like having a house of which I can be proud, all of the little pieces of me on display, all of the magazine and design blog reading put to good use.
So, I’m back in Austin. It’s a new year. I have a week until classes start and another week until I welcome my first visitor. (hooray!) I’m excited to start Nesting 2.0.
Because I’m always inspired by Anna Dorfman’s weekend lists (it’s amazing how much she accomplishes in a weekend!), I thought I would post my to do list here and try to be held accountable. I’ll update it as I complete tasks, and I’ll plan to upload some photos once I’m all done (or school starts, whichever comes first).
Nesting 2.0 list
+ Unpack entirely from Christmas and put suitcases away
+ Vacuum, sweep and mop floors
+ Dust, clean windows, clean kitchen and bathroom counters
+ General bathroom clean
+ Hang black floating shelf in bedroom
+ Hang green mirror
+ Hang whiteboard in kitchen (find store to buy hardware to hang vertically)
+ Hang art wall behind couch
+ Hang map above bed?
+ Clear off desk so it’s actually useful again
+ Unroll and flatten rug that’s been rolled for too long
+ Figure out IKEA spotlights and mount them
+ Buy down insert for new pillow cover
+ Make mantel look presentable (I refuse to use the term “mantelscaping”)
+ Water plants
+ Laundry (load #1, load #2)
+ Make bed, including down comforter
+ Groceries
+ Make toasted quinoa salad with snow peas and shrimp (two thumbs up)
+ Update filing system so I have a place to put paid bills
+ Set up incoming mail drop spot
+ Buy candles that don’t smell like baked goods or diapers (might want another…)
+ Figure out a plan for one stupidly tall shelf on bedroom bookshelf
Kind of a daunting list. And that’s just the house-specific one. But a lot can be accomplished in a week, and I’m excited to get started.
Do you have plans for your abode for the new year? Do you get overly ambitious in January and make extremely long to do lists, as I am prone to do?
I like writing, photography, reading, music, design, typography, paper products, days in the seventies and sparkly snow, Spanish wine and cans of PBR. I spent a year in Córdoba, Spain, working as a 
I too recently read an article about sharing lists as a way of holding yourself accountable. Personally, I think I’d get overwhelmed.
How do you find being on your own again after having room/housemates? I find that I’m super into nesting and very territorial, and it’s taking me a while to make compromises even on such “little” stuff like the location of a bookshelf.
I just received an email, sent to everyone in my program, inviting us to join this weight loss thing where you bet you can lose 4% of your body weight in 4 weeks. If you meet that goal, you get your money back. If you lose the most of your group (but less than 12%…that’s the “don’t go insane on us” limit), you get the rest of the pot. Although kind of tempting, it took the “going public=being accountable” to a limit I couldn’t quite stomach, personally. Too personal, actual stakes. No thanks. But not too many people are going to care if I don’t clean my bathroom this week.
What’s funny about living alone again is that I’ve always owned the vast majority of the things in my houses, so it doesn’t look completely different. That being said, I now get to plan for exactly how I use things. If I want the bowls more accessible than the plates, no one will bitch about it. If I want to proudly display erasers shaped like fast food items like they’re art, well, most visitors are too polite to comment. On the one hand, that increases the pressure to nest, since it’s only a reflection of me and I can’t roll my eyes and what anyone else might add to the mix. But it also frees me to put bookshelves exactly where I feel they fit.
I love that quote, I’ve never heard of it before. I’ll have to remember it! 🙂
We’ve lived in our “new” home for a little over a year now and I still don’t feel completely at home here. There were some issues when we moved in (the builders did a HORRIBLE job on so many things like tiling) and I’ve had a really hard time getting to like the apartment with all its flaws. The builders have fixed some of the problems but they can’t fix everything and I’m having real difficulty accepting that the new apartment we dreamed of isn’t absolutely perfect. This year I’m trying to let go of the need for absolute perfection and just trying to enjoy our home more. Most of the flaws are things other people won’t even see if I don’t point them out and I’ve started to think that maybe I wouldn’t see them all the time too if I didn’t keep pointing them out for myself every single day. It’s a miserable way to live and the flaws aren’t going to go away the more I stare at them and feel bad about them, so this year I’ve decided to try to live with them and try to embrace the home for all the good things it has (in it). None of our old homes have been absolute perfection but looking back we’ve loved living in them and have been happy there, so I’m trying to remind myself of that 🙂