Oh my gosh is anybody as stir-crazy as I am? If I’m not trudging through snow, I’m slogging through mud or slipping on ice. I know I shouldn’t complain but I feel like outdoors I just can’t get anywhere, and as a result I am sore and crabby and not getting anywhere indoors either. It hasn’t been a terrible winter here in Michigan, but one certainly can become bored and sluggish easily!
One of my favorite ways to beat the winter doldrums is to rearrange something small in my home. I love to find an area of my home that I am unhappy with, such as the corner of our bedroom where I had previous stacked some large bins to later be moved to storage. They hadn’t ever made it to storage however. They just sat there and sat there, cluttering our bedroom. So this was the corner that I decided needed a change.
To get started, I took a short, metal, utilitarian table and turned it on it’s side, placing two wooden boards across the legs to create a small writing space. From there I grabbed an old shelf from storage (discovered when moving the bins!) as well as a writing lamp, and made myself a “nook” in the bedroom.
Obviously in order to begin working on the cluttered corner I needed to actually move the bins to storage, and before I knew I found I was tidying and rearranging various things across the house with a sort of organic, natural progression.
Little tasks that involve creativity are the perfect way to jump-start into your list of drab and dull tasks. They provide a pleasant way to get into those things that you’ve been putting off, too. In order to set up my little writing nook I had to move the storage bins, fix a chair, pick up the stacks of books from around the room and scrub the floor beneath the storage bins… of course these tasks then lead to sweeping and scrubbing of the entire bedroom floor, vacuuming the carpets (again), setting up a bookshelf by the bed, sorting through my antique sewing items, folding blankets that had been forgotten about in the laundry and ultimately tearing out the carpet and foam on the staircase and scrubbing the hardwood stairs beneath… Crazy? Well, yes… but these were all things that I needed to finish and had procrastinated so terribly that I had convinced myself they were unnecessary.
By providing myself that little bit of creative outlet in my redecorating, I managed to pull off completing tasks I never thought I’d get around to.
Do you ever rearrange or redecorate to inspire winter-time motivation? What else do you use to inspire motivation during the winter doldrums?
You forgot the most important part of that little progression…the satisfaction and contentment that this gave you
. Organising even a little part of your life is always rewarding (now I feel guilted out and just KNOW that I am going to have to tackle that spare room and that fully loaded Christmas Tree that we wheeled into it before visitors come 
)
Your little writing nook looks fantastic. I know what you mean about starting something and it leads into something else and something else. Story of my life when I start to straighten up an area, I carry something to another room and find myself in there moving things around and finally get back to the task that started it all.. or never get back to the task that started it all because I got into another task… ha. This winter I have been going through closets and drawers and purging. It feels good, but often makes more of a mess and I have no more energy to clean it up at that time. Eventually I do and it all feels good. Many of these tasks I save for the heat of the summer when I do not want to be outside at all.