Nesting?

Like Lag Liv, I'm apparently feeling the nesting urge. (It could also be the spring cleaning bug-- it's been in the 50s around here the past day or two, and still light when I walk home from the train. It feels good.)

This past weekend, I shredded enough documents that the shred filled more than half my big recycling bin. I'm not talking one of those little foot-and-a-half high open blue bins; I have a four-foot high lidded recycling container and it was more than half full.

(No, you really don't need to save tax returns from the 90s. Really, you don't. Or bank statements starting in the 80s.)

Tonight I pulled everything out of my coat closet. I'm not done, but among other things I've thrown away two city of Chicago phone books (both of which were over 10 years old and big) and am moving a tennis racket and three (three?!?) wall-hanging type things to the basement.

Now, my coat closet is tiny, so don't be too impressed. But still, combine these two things with the other work I've been doing, and you have some seriously reduced clutter and much more space in my closets.

(I need to sell my large dining room table and buy a smaller one with fewer chairs, and that will pretty much finish off the "use less space" initiative for right now.)

Saturday, friends are coming over to help me 1) fix a drawer unit I screwed up assembling (do not put things together late on a Friday night when you're tired) and haul a bulky piece of furniture out of the house and up to another friend's house for storage until, someday, I have space for it again. I have good friends who don't even hesitate to step forward when I say "Hey, I can't lift anything right now! Help?" I'm lucky.

This means I can start really putting the nursery together next week. I have time-- technically-- but I'd like to get a few things in place now, and it will feel good to get some of this stuff done. One thing about having a small house is that there's no "overflow" room-- you just can't do y and z until you do x, because there's simply not space.

This is good in terms of discipline. But... still annoying.

On the other hand, I have less space to keep clean. So that's good. :)