Okay, 2010 here I come

It is the 31st of December. Final decisions about what the new year should be focused on have to happen today, in the next 11 hours in fact.

1. Find a new permanent job.
2. Increase and improve my food production.
3. Find ways to make money at home.
4. Improve water reclamation system.
5. Learn a great deal more about solar power and ways to use it.
6. Increase my knowledge of webpages and their administration.
7. Have a party.
8. Clear out significantly more clutter.
9. Convert the dining room into the office and the den into seed production and breakfast area.
10. Learn, learn, learn!

Things to do on this holiday weekend to get the ball rolling.
1. Put the new vegetable bed in the front yard, and fill it with hay and compost.
2. Work out cost and pricing for some of the 'make money at home ideas'.
3. Go to that 'Harbor Freight' store that has all the solar stuff.
4. Move the desk into the dining room and the dining room table into the den.
5. Clear out more clutter.
6. Laundry...more of a weekly resolution, than a yearly one ;o)

It's a little early for resolutions, but...

I usually refrain from making New Year's Resolutions, but this year they keep coming to mind. I haven't got anything major that I want to change and maybe that is what makes the resolution seem like a reasonable idea. The 'I will lose 50 lbs by March' sort of resolution seemed so fraught with looming failure I never wanted to go there. This year tho' I don't have a huge amount of things and need changing, just improving and improving it natural and part of the forward motion of things.



In the year 2010 I would like to find a permanent job. I have various things that I would like to have in that job, but they are various and do not all have to be met in the same job for me to consider finding a job successful. I am currently doing temp work in a hospital. I have never worked in a hospital before, so I had no idea how much I would like it. The work is important and the importance is brought home to me every time I type the words "oncology" or "labor and delivery". I would like to work nearer my home, but if I end up in a hospital not so near home then at least my need for feeling that my work is important to people is met. I would like to work near my house to allow me more time to work on my self sustainability and if that kind of opportunity comes along then I will meet more of my household goals and that is good, too.



I want to expand my vegetable garden, the plans for this resolution are already in the works. I have priced the wood for my raised beds and for the organic soil that I will need to buy to fill them. I want to improve my green house in a couple of ways. I would like to increase the amount of gravel on the dirt floor, I would like to add more structure for hanging plants over the winter, I have ideas to increase the weatherproofing/heat keeping properties of the structure, I would like to put together additional candle heaters, and finally I would like to build shelves for seedlings. (just a few resolutions for the greenhouse)



Water! I want to increase the rain gutters on my house to add to the water collection that I do for the garden. This includes a gutter along the west exterior to collect in or next to the greenhouse, and a gutter along the south exterior to collect at the southeast corner of the house for the shade garden. There are alot of improvements that can be made to the collection system that I already have around the shed as well. I need to put a leaf blocker over the gutters to prevent the buildup of gunk. The drums that I have need to have spouts connected to them so that I can connect them to a hose.



Chickens! I need to dig out the chicken coop, that is valuable guano and it needs to be placed in the compost pile. I would like to come up with a better way to feed and water the chickens and I think that they are out there I just need to find them. I need to work on weatherproofing the actually coop as well to prevent rain getting in when a serious storm occurs.



The Shed! Man this needs so much work I cannot even imagine it all. Number one is just cleaning it out. I don't even remember what is in there. Then it needs to be reorganized in some way that makes sense. I do not have any idea what that way might be yet.



The Garage! It is coming along, but still needs work. More things need to be removed and then...maybe insulate it a little bit and then put up peg board. Too much to know right now I will wait for inspiration on this one.



The Den! I am constantly re-inventing this room. Right now it is the dogs room, the VCR/DVD room, the Barbie doll room, the knitting room and the seedling room, oh and the office. It must remain the dogs room, and I would like it to remain the seedling room, but every thing else if up for grabs. In fact it would not hurt my feelings to turn the dining room into the office and the dogs room into a breakfast room of sorts. This idea appeals to me. Since I generally watch TV programs on the computer and use the TV to watch DVDs which I actually do from the kitchen or while really sitting on the sofa and concentrating on what I am watching. (This happens very rarely.) This means that the dining room becomes the office and that would require a little redesign for electronics purposes, but it has potential. :0)

I think that there are enough resolutions for the entire year of 2010 at Powell Cottage.

Getting the Stuff Out

Wednesday night, I went to my den and living room and looked for 5 things from each room to give to the Kidney Foundation Drive. I did find 10 things. I found about 15. This was basically unplanned clearing of stuff that worked better than expected. I do not know where this will lead, but I am very happy about the direction.

The winter months are a little more difficult for me because of my lack of central heat. I am working on baking more which actually keeps the kitchen warmer which in turn keeps it cleaner, cuz I will stay there longer. The bedroom is just fine and the space heater in the den is good and I have the new space heater in the bathroom which is good as well. The closet room feels like a deep freeze, but that's okay with me.

I am working on using my space more effectively. This is very difficult for me for some reason. It goes along with my difficulty of finding a home for everything. Both of these things motivate me to move forward in may getting rid of stuff. My wish is that once a lot of this stuff is gone, homes will spring into view for the remaining items.

I find that I can clean out an area, drawer or pantry and then a few weeks later clean it out again. On the second go round I suddenly see new things that I no longer need. These things were there the first time, but for some reason my subconcious can deal with reducing only so much stuff at a time. It's okay. It's slow going, but it is going and that is for the good.

I went over to help a friend clean up her stuff a few weeks ago. She had gotten to that "can't see the floor" place in her bedroom. We worked for two days and, yes, the carpet was still there. Basically this was a "home for everything" issue, with some junk mail and store receipts thrown in. I was in such empathy with her tho. It seems like life is so full and the time to decide where everything should go is overlooked and then it just snowballs. I do it, I do it all the time. At one point she said that she should be embarrassed by me seeing her mess, but she wasn't (good to have friends like this) and I told her that if she started feeling embarrassed then we could just go to my house and do the same thing in my places where the hurricane hits and she would feel all better.

My 2010 goal will be to remove "places of the hurricane" from my house. I almost have this accomplished, but there are always set backs and I want 2010 to be the year the "set backs" are set back, here at Powell Cottage.