Since I’m in the process of buying a house (should be closing next week) and since I got rid of a lot of my stuff before I moved last year, I’m going to be doing a lot of shopping for house-related items in the near future. I planned to essentially start over when I found a house, which means I’ll be replacing a lot of things, like kitchen gear, linens, etc. Plus I’ll need some living room furniture and office furniture. And I’ll need area rugs, since my old house had wall-to-wall carpeting and the new house has the original 1945 hardwoods upstairs and vinyl plank downstairs.

Which means my biggest distraction lately has been online window shopping as I look for ideas. An idea will pop into my head, and then I’ll find myself searching for that thing. In fact, I just got distracted by an idea for what to do about curtains for the sliding door in the living room. I can spend hours browsing websites for various stores, picking out things I like. This reminds of when I used to read the Sears catalogue for fun when I was a kid. I made a game out of mentally decorating my imaginary future home by picking out things from the catalogue. Or I would choose my favorite item on each page. I didn’t much care for the toy catalogue, but I loved looking at the housewares, all the bedspreads, curtains, rugs, dishes, and the like. I don’t think I’d like most of what I picked out then (it was the 70s, so I probably wouldn’t like anything that was in that catalogue), but I still enjoy the game, only now I play it on the Ikea website and I have a specific house in mind.

This is making it hard to write because things to look up will pop into my head while I’m working and I get so distracted that I just give up and look it up, but then that starts a rabbit trail of thinking of something else, and so forth, and next thing I know, I’m looking up how to install curtain rails on the ceiling and wondering if a two-track system that would allow me to have sheers for daytime privacy and blackout curtains for movie/TV viewing would work, and which ones would I want.

I’m not buying anything yet, though. I have furniture I can live with, though I’ll be using my zero-gravity patio lounger in the living room until I get a sofa. I want to live in the house some before I figure out what I want. I want to see where the light falls and how it feels with the furniture I have, then I’ll figure out what storage items I need and what rugs, curtains, and furniture will give me the feeling I want.

Buying all this stuff may be a challenge, as I live in a smallish town without most of the usual big-box stores. Even in larger areas, all the places where I used to shop for house things are now gone, like Linens and Things and Bed, Bath & Beyond. Sears is a memory. I don’t know what other department stores still exist. We have a Belk here, but about 90 percent of their stuff is online only, and I want to see and touch things before I buy them so I can be sure of the feel of fabric and what the color really is. I may have to do a road trip to the DC area where they have more stores and I can do some serious shopping.

I may look around here at antique shops, and there are a few places around here where you can get Amish and Mennonite-made wooden items. One nice thing about being in a “historical” area is that the place is loaded with antique malls. I don’t necessarily need anything of great value, but I may find interesting vintage pieces that fit with the character of the house.

In the meantime, I’m doing a lot of looking around online. Ikea has a lot of storage and organization stuff, which is giving me ideas for dealing with this house’s tiny closets (one downside of a cute older home). I’m reading books on home decor and doing Internet searches.

I may just have to decide that I’m not going to get much work done until the move’s over. If I do something, then great, but I won’t expect it of myself, and I can use this time to think. If I’m thinking about decorating as I try to write, then maybe I’ll start thinking about my story ideas while I’m packing and moving.