It Is That Time

After a whole year of (waves hands around vaguely) all this nonsense, I finally get to look forward to visitors! How lucky am I? My brother plans to come as soon as he's vaccinated, please may that be soon, and a good friend whose March 2020 visit was cancelled wants to come too, in May, when we will both be fully vaccinated (yay for that day).

Before I go on, let me be clear: I'm delighted for both visits. Sincerely. These are not difficult guests in the slightest.

But. (You knew there was a 'but' coming, right?)

My office/yarn room is also the guest room, and I haven't had to properly clear it up for that use since, oh, the last time my brother was here, which is Thanksgiving 2019.

It may have gotten just a wee bit out of hand in here. Perhaps. I don't feel I've crossed the line into hoarder territory, but clearly the room belongs to someone who would rather go read or knit or be a cat lap, versus tidying up. There are a lot of "just haven't gotten around to it" areas here.

So! It is time for me to look around, decide I don't like what I see, and do something about it. Let April be known as The Month of Some Decluttering (I don't want to get overly ambitious; the goal is improvement, not perfection).

My brother and I actually talked about this recently, and how we aren't clearing things out for the sake of the person visiting, but for our own sake, when the fact that someone is going to be visiting lifts the blinders off our eyes and we say, "Yikes, I really live this way, do I?" 

So, practically speaking, what does that mean? Well, there are a few different categories, or levels of need. 

The single most important thing we need is literally the floor space to set up the inflatable bed*. Some things, like the stools that hold my swift and ball winder, can go down to the garage during visits, and the cat-scratcher-posts too, but there's still some other clearing I can do. A lot of cardboard boxes have built up in one corner, for instance! 

*Speaking of which, it will be a good idea to test that ahead of time and make sure we have no technical difficulties.

Next, on the floor and on surfaces, a lot of yarn and knitting projects have built up (gosh, I wonder how that happened?). I'm going to do some sorting and arranging of that this weekend, is the plan, and then see what else needs doing in the floor space department. 

I would like to make some hanging space in the closet (I am long overdue for a sort-and-purge there), and perhaps even some drawer space (ooh, radical, I know).

What else? I've mostly been drinking cold-brew coffee, so I should clean the Keurig in case either guest wants to have hot coffee.

Making room for a guest to use the bathroom is pretty straightforward, so there isn't a lot to do that way. 

If I have any remaining energy, it will go toward tackling things that are messy but not in guest spaces; for instance, the top of my dresser is invisible under a layer of stuff and I have been wanting to clean it off for a while. Does it need to be done for the sake of a guest? Absolutely not, but perhaps an incoming guest will help me do it anyway. 

And away I go!