Mid-winter cleaning

So here I am again, back after another unintentional hiatus. Plenty to blog about, but little time to do it in. I've been knitting a lot, there's no shortage of work to do at work, and I'm on an as yet unsuccessful campaign to look fabulous before a friend's wedding in April.

Today was cold and rainy, but not so bad as it could be considering it's January. It's been a fairly mild winter here, all things considered, which is good, because I really hate digging my car out after a snowstorm. Work was hard, and I had a terrible time concentrating on it. That's something I really need to work on. I get distracted so easily, particularly when I'm working on things that aren't exactly fun.

As I was eating my lunch today, I was thinking about my extremely untidy house. I'm not living in filth or anything, but it is very untidy and I don't like it. There's a distinct lack of storage space in my apartment, so most efforts at cleaning up end with a slightly cleaner carpet and slightly more tidy stacks of books and papers. I'm out of bookshelves, my file system overfloweth, and I don't have a proper desk. I am, in fact, writing this entry while curled up on the sofa with my laptop on a tv tray. Maybe it's just the procrastination talking (and that seems likely here), but it seems like I might get a little more done, work and writing-wise, if I had a nice place to write. My current desk is overrun by my old creaky desktop that makes more noise than a vacuum cleaner, mysteriously opens a clip art program every time I turn it on, and has less hard drive space than my iPod mini. It's on its way out as soon as I figure how to wipe all my personal information off. Then I'll have a nice table to work on, but I'm thinking I might move the table underneath my doll house instead of the big folding table that's supporting it now and buy a real desk, with drawers and stuff, for the computer instead. Then I could write and browse, and even pay my bills in relative comfort instead of balancing all my paper, my computer, and a cat on a small tray table.

I also really need to do something about my filing system. I'm an accountant's daughter, and I save bills and receipts like nobody's business. Thanks to a clerical error which for a while resulted in my not being able to open bank accounts or acquire credit cards, I'm also really paranoid about identity theft (it's since been resolved, thank heavens.) That means I hate to throw things out, so I bought a paper shredder, but I haven't yet decided to kill a night shredding things and reducing the giant fire hazard of bills and such which hulks in the corner of my dining room. One day I'll see floor over there again, I hope.

These things are, at best, temporary fixes, but hopefully they'll make some difference in my attitude towards my apartment. I'm really unhappy with it at the moment. I'm considering moving when my lease is up in May. At least if I do that, I'll have to clean up again, if only in order to pack and get out.