Every so often little areas that were once tidy, turn into THIS! Included in this melee: fabric, wool, knitting books, sewing books, textiles magazines, camera equipment, and fiction books. 
It's embarrassing. You'd think it would be easy to sort out, a ten minute job at most, but let me tell you a little story.I had a friend staying with me one weekend, and on her way upstairs one day she saw a blue plastic cup turned upside down on the second stair. "Is there a spider trapped under there?" she asked. I was puzzled as to why she would think there was. She couldn't think of any other reason why a cup would be upside down on the stairs. "Well," I said, "the blue cup fell off the shelf unit at the foot of the stairs about a fortnight ago, and I really should shift it, but I just haven't got round to it because it shouldn't have been on the shelf unit in the first place. The rest of the set is in the washing machine cupboard and I should really put the cup with the set, but the set shouldn't be in the washing machine cupboard either - they should all be upstairs in the camping equipment box but all that's obviously a much bigger job than just picking up a cup off the stairs, which is why it's still there."
So you see, the reason it's taken me so long to do this ten minute tidy up is because I have a few areas that need a tidy up: the aforementioned shelf unit in the kitchen, THE KITCHEN PANTRY (that'll take a good couple of hours), all the cupboards in the kitchen, the book shelves upstairs, getting to the bottom of the wash baskets. And to do ALL of that would take several days, hence why ten minute jobs take a long time to get round to.
Anyway, this is what it looks like now:
Hagos suggested I store some of the stuff somewhere else, but I pointed out to him that once I finish all the projects I have the materials for completing in here (Gemma jumper, purple and green jumper, mittens, socks, paperweight algae skirt, Roman glass dress, headbands, toiletries bags), it will be much reduced in size. 
I'll try really hard to keep it tidy from now on, and following on from my success, I might attempt to break down the rest of the little jobs I have and do them one tiny little area at a time.
3 comments:
Polly, I covet your collection of Rowan and Selvedge. I should post a picture of my coffee table... it looks like a bomb hit, puts your 10-minute pile to shame.
And I would've thought the same thing of the upside-down cup -- I had a small menagerie of dead spiders under cups on my stairs one summer. I always intend to move them out-doors, but spiders absolutely paralyze me.
Anyhow, big props to you for jump-starting Spring Cleaning.
Wow it looks loads better afterwards - very inspiring! I need to spring clean so badly, but my issue is there is so much to do I'm scared to even begin. I suppose I should break it down into little tasks that aren't so scary as cleaning the entire flat! I'm impressed anyway, the tidied area looks very cosy and enticing!
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