Nesting, Rearranging, and the Poetry of Space

Nesting has begun! I welcome it with joy. It is wonderful to have all of this spontaneously generated energy, motivation, and focus. I can really make use of this by harnessing it in service of some household projects that have been nagging at me for accomplishment.

We've been clearing out the former office/guest room/ exercise room and turning it into a nursery for Little Guy (who up until recently has still been in our room) with a craft corner for me! This will be great as I haven't had a dedicated place for my crafty pursuits since I moved my sewing nook out of the living room back when Bear started to crawl. I hope my son will not mind sharing his room with space for one of his mother's hobbies. It is a bigger room than he needs and the girls will have to share, so it's only fair, right?  Space in our home is limited so we need to multipurpose some areas.

Anyway, over the last week I've been doing a lot of decorating and sundry projects in there, trying to give the room a nautical theme. It is looking pretty good although still not quite done.

We've moved H's desk and office equipment into our room. I've also re-organized my closet, cleared clutter from off my dresser and nightstand, and done some general reducing of stuff, boxing things up for Goodwill. I love getting rid of things. I love that sensation of lightening my load, lightening the house.

There are soon to be five of us in this 1400 square foot bungalow. I'm convinced it can be comfortable, even spacious and roomy, if it is efficiently arranged and we keep our stuff under control. And really that can be a very agreeable task, as I believe there is a deep poetry and symbolic resonance to the way we shape our spaces to fit our changing needs, personalities, and desires.

When worked mindfully from an imaginative, soulful core, creating and caring for inhabited space can be a journey of fulfillment and life celebration. I think household chores and the domestic arts only become stifling and tiresome when we take them up from a value system foreign to our true selves, heaping on the "shoulds" and personally inauthentic measures. Easy to do, wonderful to be free from. I'd like to bring more of a sense of freedom, poetry, and soul to my homemaking endeavors. It's a process, but I feel better about everything when I keep those deeper values in mind.

Moving out of the heady and abstract and back to the kitchen etc., ;-), I'm gaining more appreciations for the benefits of clear space for creating a sense of harmony and peace. Clear floors, corners of rooms, surfaces (counters, dressers, table tops, etc). It gives a feeling of expansion and rest.

It's looking like the recent endowment of nesting zeal will be enough to help me pull this off (a lot of clutter has accumulated from the days I wasn't feeling so well). I'm glad the nesting has started early in this pregnancy. Maybe when I'm done reorganizing the house I'll still have time to paint and decorate the laundry room before the baby (due in May) arrives.

I suppose anyone who still reads here (site traffic has dropped significantly since I haven't been participating in blog challenges for a couple weeks now) may have noticed I haven't blogged about my art journal in awhile. The fact is, I haven't been art journaling hardly at all due to being preoccupied with the subjects of this post. I'm sure I'll get back to it, probably soon, in the meantime I'm liking writing about other things from time to time as the inspiration strikes. Anyone who is reading feel free to say hi, I love hearing from you!

Art Therapy Monster

Lately I've been enjoying learning a little about art therapy and practicing some interventions on myself. Toward those ends, I read all the blogs by art therapists I can find (and I wish more of them blogged as I haven't found all that many). However, the few I do read are pretty awesome and today one of them, Carolyn Mehlomakulu, did a post on metaphorizing problems into monsters via art media of some kind. Rather than elaborate on the dynamics here by quoting too extensively, I'll link to the post in question and encourage people to go have a read. It's interesting stuff.

At any rate, thus was I inspired to create Fran The Tired Monster.

Let me tell you about my monster. I have three children under three. (Well, one of them won't be born for another few months yet, but she still has all kinds of ways of making her presence very much known. So practically speaking, I feel I have three under three already.) I've always wanted at least a few kids and I think there are advantages to having them close in age. Realistically, though, I expect that most of those advantages are things we will be experiencing more in the years to come. Right now, I love my babies bunches but I'm tired a lot.

It so happened that I was particularly tired by the time I got some time to myself today, as I'm fighting off a cold and so is Little Guy, and neither kid was good about taking a nap this afternoon (erm, is this all starting to sound too Dickensian)? I ended up hiring the teeenager across the street for an hour of babysitting so I could rest. Whilst relaxing and skimming the feeds on my google reader, I came across the post mentioned above and thought, "Ah, yes, this is what I will do right now. Make a portrait of my monster of woe."

And so, here is Fran, poor girl:

I didn't actually finish her by the time the kids came home, but that was okay because I set Bear up with some art supplies and we worked together companionably for a bit while Little Guy played on the floor. It was kind of fun-- blending feelings of self pity and humor into an understanding monster that I now have some affection for.

 I think, after the kids are settled for bed, Fran and I will satisfy a pregnancy craving and treat ourselves to a bowl of mint chocolate chip icecream. With vanilla wafers and whipped cream and bananas. Now that is the way to make friends with a monster. :)

Ciao.