I am prone to taking on too much. This means I tend to have lots of unfinished projects around me. But I have discovered that there is nothing like a looming deadline to persuade me to get my act together.
I have lived in my little house for four years now. It is the first house I have owned all by myself (apart from a love-in with the mortgage company, obviously). I bought it off plan and it sits on a tiny development of just four houses in a conservation area in the village. It overlooks a beautiful stone-built farmhouse and a small paddock. I open my curtains in the mornings and breathe a little sigh of contentment.
When I first moved in, I had all sorts of grand ideas for what I was going to do with it. The garden was to be the perfect entertaining space. My bedroom would be serene with all my clothes and junk neatly stored in a bespoke wardrobe with shelves, drawers and hanging spaces perfectly arranged for my clothes to be stored in colour-coded, easily accessible order. The spare room would be casually perfect, ready for the spontaneous overnight stay of a friend, while doubling as my home office during the day. The open plan living-dining-kitchen downstairs would be a cohesive, cool area where I would listen to music while preparing dinner for friends while we chatted.
Has any of this happened?
No. Of course it hasn’t. While I do love my home, and have had some fun times in it, the lawn remains devoid of borders and plants, other than the few the builders put in around the patio area. The shed remains unpainted despite having had a tin of cream shed paint untouched in my under-stairs cupboard for two years (and I no longer want to paint it cream but would rather paint it a moody slate grey, but being a spendthrift, I cannot bring myself to discard the cream, hence probably why I have being putting off painting it altogether). My clothes remain hanging from the two temporary hanging rails I bought when I first moved in or crammed into chests of drawers in the main and spare bedroom (there is no space for guests to hang any of their clothes). Despite having bought a desk for my spare bedroom-cum-office, I still work at my dining table, an ugly varnished pine affair given to me for nothing by a friend around ten years ago. The only room in my house that I would consider ‘finished’ is my bathroom, but that is still plagued by the ugly bath panel that I have never got round to having tiled in, and a leak from the shower door that has caused the paint to peal from the skirting board. And on top of all that, I have numerous restoration and upholstery projects cluttering up the place.
But, all this is about to change. Why? Because I am going to be moving in with my boyfriend at some point in the next few months (which is going to bring its own challenges) and, despite being a classic procrastinator, I hate leaving things unfinished.
So, as I sense my time in my very own little house coming to an end, I am going to set about completing some of my many unfinished projects. Better late than never, I guess.