I’m very proud of how productive I’ve been during the evenings this week. Well, except for Monday, which was a write-off because it was my brother’s birthday and I went over for cake and a visit after dinner, didn’t get home until 9:30. But the other three nights I’ve done dishes and laundry and chipped away at the to-be-eliminated pile — even made my first Kijiji sale!

All this during a week when I have to work late twice (today and tomorrow) because it’s our fiscal year end.

I don’t have big weekend plans yet, other than garage saleing on Saturday, possibly also shopping with my mom (for a table for the balcony, for my birthday). I should also work on hauling the last of my boxes from my parents’ basement, and do a little shopping down there while I’m at it – there may be something I want among all the forgotten mirrors and picture frames and wall shelves.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I also pretend the carpets don’t exist. Ideally I would like hardwood in the living and bedroom spaces and some kind of nice, neutral tile in the bathroom and kitchen. Also I forgot that my balcony needs work. I need a little table or two (I’m thinking of using TV trays of some kind, because they fold and store easily) and maybe a rug?

I’m out on the balcony right now. It smells like Happy Rolph’s out here and has all weekend. I suspect the Smokersons are letting their dog crap on their balcony and/or leaving animal waste out there for some reason. Luckily the stink hasn’t yet found its way into my apartment (once in a while I’m grateful for the lack of air circulation).

Got my hair cut this morning at the ungodly hour of 9 AM, then went to Value Village to drop off a backpack full of stuff I don’t want (a bathroom rug my mother bought me in an insane shade of green, goes with nothing I own or will ever own; two pairs of shoes I never plan to wear again, one due to excessively high heels and the other due to uncomfortableness) and somehow came home with a backpack full of more stuff. I cannot seem to purge successfully. I donated all those old clothes this spring and yet my closets are still filled to bursting.

All this week, when I’ve not been coughing my brains out, I’ve been making lists of home decor-type things I want to buy. It’s that time of year again: that brief period (early this year; usually coincides with the arrival of the new Ikea catalogue) when I actually give a damn what the apartment looks like. When I temporarily put aside my it’s-too-shabby-to-bother-with attitude and make a stab at decorating, or at least what passes for decorating when you’re incredibly aesthetically-challenged.

In order to make any effort at all, I have to pretend that the walls are the colours I want them to be, instead of off-peach or whatever the fuck they are. This means pale blue-grey in the kitchen, pale olive in the bathroom, and sandy everywhere else. That way, when I eventually live somewhere where I’m willing to invest time and money in painting, the rooms will transplant easily.

I also have to pretend that the treadmill simply doesn’t exist. (That’s easy; I’ve been doing it for weeks, every evening after work when I should be using it.)

So I’ve been spending all my online time on Etsy and Apartment Therapy and all my offline free time reorganizing my closets. I’m finally forcing myself to part with SOME of my empty boxes; not the really nice ones, just the crap ones that have been through so many moves there isn’t a spot left that isn’t covered with packing tape or magic marker. That freed up some space for some of the miscellaneous clutter that adds to the unkempt bachelor/teenagery look of my place, something I wouldn’t mind edging away from.

Now I just need to:

• slipcover the couch (preferably chocolate brown; I have a bid on one on eBay right now that looks promising)
• get art to hang on the walls (especially over the TV, in the bedroom and on the long wall that goes from the entryway to the living room)
• buy a ledge/shelf for the blank part of the living/dining wall (I like this idea of putting old clipboards on it, especially since my dining area is really more officey than eaty)
• maybe buy a new dining room table?
• figure out where to put the towels (there’s no room in the bathroom and there’s no spot big enough in the bedroom right now)
• collect some (preferably vintage) cake pans (in fun shapes, not just rectangles) to hang on the kitchen wall
• stop leaving the kitchen such a freaking mess all the time!