I can't believe........................

I did work in the office yesterday. I didn't want to, but I had to. I had to at least make a start on this mess. I know from working on the basement that the more I tidy up and the more I throw away, the better I'm going to feel about the entire mess. I also know that the office is going to be hard - this is the dumping ground. That means that ANYTHING that didn't have a home, got dumped here. 

There are two desks, a table, and a buffet. Oh - there's a filing cabinet, two bookcases, and a storage unit. I don't mention those as they don't encompass a flat surface that I love to use for filing! There are five chairs in here as well and only one is useable unless you move stuff off. And yes, there's some stuff on the floor. I knew that cleaning the room wasn't going to happen in one day. Far from it.

I decided to start with the desk. Yep - this is what the desk looked like in the morning. Seriously?? How did the desk ever become this bad?

The desk in the morning

Now don't get me wrong - I know how it happened. You stand there with something in your hand that you're not sure what to do with - it might be useful. It might be a lost part of something and you don't have a home for it. Guess what? It goes into the office (at my house). And it goes on any surface where it won't fall off. No planning, no sorting, no organizing.

The bottom line is that I recognize this mess and I'm doing something about it. I started by putting most of the stuff into two boxes. I know - not a good thing, but I need some room to work.

Stuff from the desk

The two cardboard boxes are loaded with stuff from the desk and the other two boxes were sitting on the chair in front of the desk. Once the remainder of the stuff is off the desk, then I'll bring back one box at a time and sort through it. It's going to be long and ugly. BUT I'm doing it and the fact that I'm finding homes for things is critical. A home could be garbage or recycling!

A few items got put on the floor as well.

More stuff on the floor

 Now here's the thing. I have M's swim bag when she was swimming with the local city swim team. It's a perfectly good bag. It has her name embroidered on it. What should I do with it? That's why personalized things are good and BAD. This bag wasn't cheap. I might try and take the stitching out???  Contact the swim team????  OR just donate it like it is???  ACK - that's why it's sat here for years.

Once I got the desk more or less cleaned off,  I had a little bit of room to work. As I look at this picture, I'm realizing that everything BLENDS in. The colors of the floor, the walls, and the furniture. It's a dark room, although when they were putting in the new thermostat, I realized that I also have pot lights in the room. Don't go there! That helps, but seriously - the room needs to be repainted in a LIGHT color. Whose idea was it to paint the room orange?

Everything blends

I hate painting, but I don't want to put out the money to have someone else do it. I'm far from needing it painted anyway. Hmmm - do I know a quilter who likes to paint rooms who would swap quilting services for painting?

Anyway, there was a ton of stupid stuff that I unearthed. Oh - if you notice that container of loose papers on the left at the top of the photo? That's my "filing" pile. It needs to go into the filing cabinet. At least, it's all in ONE spot and not loose everywhere. But why don't I just open the filing cabinet and file the papers instead of putting them in this container???  I've got a few habits to sort out.

Lots of silly little things to deal with

I found a BRAND NEW set of glass nail files. I bought them in Paducah several years ago. Recommended by a friend who swears by them. So why aren't I using them? I totally forgot about them. I'll be trying them out later today.

Glass nail files

A Connecting Threads catalog from March 2014. Oh boy - I don't think I need that any longer. It got recycled. There's going to be a lot more of that happening in the next while.

Old Connecting Threads catalog

I found medication for Little Sammy from 2016. She's been gone for years and why do I still have this old medication? It's now in one container and will be disposed of next time I do a recycling depot run. I also have a new bag of electronic waste and it's almost full. I'm going to go through the medicine cabinets and see if there's anything else that can go at the same time. I don't think so since neither of us uses any medications or very rarely.

Old medication

 I found odds and ends of things. What are these things for? The middle one is the cover of a remote??? No idea. I put those in a small container if I find their use. Otherwise, they go in the hard plastics for recycling.

What are these???

I found two smooth sticks. Really???  Why??? I'm certain that M and I or just M found these on a walking trip and thought they would make a great craft. Well, they are gone! I asked her first!

Two sticks

And that was it - I couldn't take any more. It's probably going to take me one more attempt to get that desk surface totally clear and then I'll bring out those boxes (one by one) and start to go through them. Some of the stuff on the desk is sitting there so I could blog about it. Well, pretty hard to blog about it, when I can't even see it!!! 

Oh boy - it's going to be tough going to get this room done, but I must. And I know that I'm going to feel like a million bucks when I'm done. My goal is to have it completed by the end of 2020. Yes - an entire year! I'm OK with that. It's a HUGE job.


I know that I'm not the only one who is going through this disaster. Here's a blog post that might interest you. Janice had decided to not buy anything quilt related in 2019. As the year comes to a close, I wonder how she made out? Anyway, this post in particular echoes how I feel about my stash (her collection) and shopping. Check it out.

Then I was downstairs doing what I really love to do. Quilt! Have I mentioned that I love my American Professional Quilting Systems long arm? I've got the 14-foot Millennium with the QuiltPath robot. I just love it. I've had my issues with it - some related to the machine and some related to the operator. As for the robot, I've only scratched the surface of what it can do. I'll be like my Dad who at 87 is still learning and very proud of the fact that he's still learning. My paternal grandfather vowed to live to 100 and he did, although at the end, he wasn't really doing much of anything. My Dad vows to do the same thing. I can see him - at 100 still checking out Youtube! It sure helps to get up in the morning when you have a goal or a purpose in mind!

No danger of running out of things to do at our house!!!

Anyway, this was one of the quilts that I dug out when I was rifling through the "to be quilted" tubs the other day. This is mine and it's very bright and cheery. It's an unusual size for me - it's 64 by 82 or something like that. It would fit a twin bed. So this is the quilt I want when I'm in the nursing home! You can't miss it! It'll get trimmed and binding on another day. The pile of quilts to be trimmed and bound is growing by leaps and bounds. I don't have time right now!

My quilt - DONE

By the way, I went through another stack of tubs in the "to be quilted" area. Four more tubs - FIFTY quilts. That's obscene! So far, the count is ninety quilt tops (or table runners) and I'm 2/5 of the way through the pile. At least, it's all sorted and mostly organized. I haven't found that missing binding yet.

I was in search of a backpack pattern from byAnnie.com. Thanks to Christine, I now have the pattern. It's not the large one, but that's OK. We might be able to adapt it to the large one. Anyway, today, I'm scheduled to make a backpack. In preparation for that, I quilted my fabric yesterday. I couldn't for the life of me decide which fabrics to use. I first had oranges out, then blue and when it came time to load the fabric on the long arm, I went back to orange!

Quilted yardage for the backpack

So the lining and the top are quilted together. Not sure how the seams are finished. Of course, I didn't read through the entire pattern. There is foam in the middle and the texture of the entire piece is very nice and it's very light. I can't wait to get started today. I wasn't sure how the foam would quilt on the long arm, but it was a breeze and no skipped stitches.

And I quilted it with my favorite overall pattern. That's the beauty of the robot - I can make this pattern HUGE or I can make it small. Whatever size I want to make - I'm in charge!  So if ever you're making a bag or a backpack or whatever and you wanted quilted yardage - I can do that for you! It'll cost you of course, but it's easy as pie. E-mail me if you want more details.

Detail of the quilting design

Ronda is coming over this morning so we can make our backpacks together. The first line of business will be to throw her fabric on the long arm and get it quilted! Then we cut, then we sew. Not sure how much we'll get done in one day. There's a lot of pieces and loads of fiddly stuff.

In keeping with my determination, I also did some embroidering yesterday. The darn pieces of backing that were prepped aren't large enough to fit the hoop, so extra strips had to be sewn onto the blocks to make them manageable in the hoop.

Added strips so I could hoop the backing for the block

 One more block has been added to the quilt on the design wall. This is Stitcher's Garden. That means there are FIVE blocks to finish. I'm NOT giving up my $10 in January.

Stitchers' Garden 

 There are two machine embroidery blocks to work on. One of them is almost finished and I'll finish it later today. I ran out of time to complete it this morning.

And Shelly - this one is for you! I found the block of the month quilt. It's on the design wall and guess what? I found the patterns in the box. This is on my 2019 UFO list. I won't be able to complete it this year as there's a lot of work left to do. I'll share more on that another day!

My block of the month

It was an action-packed day as the girls and I took a walk to the library, made turkey soup, and watched a movie with DH.

On that note, I'm out of here! It's almost the end of the year and time to regroup - think of goals and actions for 2020. BUT not before, you pat yourself on the back for what you've accomplished in 2019. I wish I had kept better notes of what I did, but I know deep in my heart that I accomplished a lot and that's good enough for me!!!  I also checked the list of books that I read in 2019. These are novels - I don't keep track of the non-fiction books. Over SIXTY!!!!  That's more than one book a week. Yeah!!!!  So do not EVER think that I don't take time for myself - I do. Lots of time!

Be sure to check out the classes and in particular the Sew Alongs which start next Friday!!!!! Everything is listed in the blog post right after this one, but here's the link to help you out.

Have a super day!!!!


Ciao!!!