My adventure this week was a road trip to buy things for my house. One downside to the place I’m living now is that it’s a smallish, fairly remote town without a lot of the big stores. And one downside to my house is that the rooms are small and the doors are narrow, which limits the furniture I can get. I haven’t been able to find a loveseat or chair for my den that I can get through the door, whether the sliding door from the deck or the interior door (and the interior stairs are narrow). So I had to resort to something like Ikea, where you can assemble the furniture inside the house. I didn’t want to buy a loveseat without trying it out, which meant a road trip to the nearest Ikea, which is in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., more than two hours away (more or less depending on traffic). There were also decorative items that I wanted from another store they don’t have here but that’s near the Ikea.

The weather yesterday was good for a trip, so I loaded up with road snacks and headed out to drive across northern Virginia. It was actually a lovely drive, following the Blue Ridge Mountains much of the way, then crossing the mountains. I was surprised by how little traffic I ran into. The route my phone sent me on had me mostly driving through the woods, even after I got off the freeway, and suddenly I was at the mall where Ikea was. The traffic was a little worse on the way home because it was the beginning of rush hour, but it still wasn’t as bad as I feared for the D.C. area. The drive from my house in Texas to the Ikea there was shorter, but this longer drive was much less stressful.

I have a loveseat on order — the one I liked was the one people seemed to gravitate toward to sit on while the people they were with were shopping, which is a good sign — and after a break to have a Swedish meatball lunch I bought a bunch of organizational things. After that (and picking up some cinnamon rolls), I headed to the other store to get throw pillows, kitchen canisters, and a footstool. Now I have just about everything I need to set up my house, and it’ll be a lot more homey once the loveseat is delivered (I could have fit it in my car, but even if I opened the boxes and moved pieces one at a time, I didn’t think I could get the main piece up the stairs by myself, and I didn’t want to count on drafting a neighbor to help without checking with him first, so I had it delivered).

My living room color scheme is navy and ivory. I’ve already got a navy and ivory patterned rug. The sofa is a sort of ivory color, and I’ve got navy velvet throw pillows, footstool, and curtains. With all that velvet, it should be nice and cozy.

But today I’m giving myself permission to not do any work on the house (unless I really want to). I’m doing some writing work and putting my feet up because yesterday was a long, tiring day, not just the driving, but also pushing a very full cart through an Ikea, then loading and later unloading the car. I am looking forward to having it all done so I don’t have to think about the house, though then it will be time to focus on the yard. Today it’s a month since I started living in the house, so I figure I’ve done pretty well. I’m the sort of person who likes to be settled within a week or so, but I had to get so much furniture and organizational stuff, and I had to figure out where things would go, which took me longer.

I was rather overly optimistic to think I could have my office set up by Monday. I spent all day Friday putting together the new office furniture. Saturday I shelved some books but mostly took it easy because I had a dinner party to go to that night, and I was really tired from the previous day’s work. Sunday I painted my filing cabinet. It was that dull beige government office color, and I painted it to fit better with my new office decor, in an “oil-rubbed brass” color that matches the door hardware in my house. I’ve spent the past couple of days arranging my office stuff. The new bookcase I bought has drawers, so I’ve been moving things out of the plastic drawers I used with my old desk and into the bookcase drawers.

I thought I purged about six years ago when I reorganized my office in my old house and then again before I moved away from Texas, but I still had more stuff than I realized. I seem to be hoarding memo pads and paperclips. Memo pads are a standard writer gift, so they tend to come in the goodie bags I get when I speak to writing groups or libraries. Then there are the promo giveaway pads from conventions and conferences. I also can’t seem to resist hotel memo pads. When I have a meeting at a hotel and they have a memo pad at each place, I can’t just leave it behind when I’ve written on one page. I should never again need to buy a notepad for making grocery lists.

I’m not sure where all the paperclips came from. I don’t even use them anymore. I might have bought one small box, but I practically have a crate. They must be reproducing. I wonder if I can put some of them in metal recycling. Or I could string them together to decorate an office Christmas tree.

I also have a surprising amount of stationery. When I was in junior high and high school, I had some long-distance friends I corresponded with (pre-email), so I have a few sets of notepaper from that, and I know I got some stationery sets as gifts. For some odd reason, I have two sets of Garfield stationery, and I was never a big fan of that comic strip. I don’t remember the last time I wrote a snail mail letter (probably when my grandmother died. I used to send cards and letters to her when she was in a nursing home). I have used some notecards for thank-you notes, but that’s about it. I have a few sets of notecards with frog princes and high-heeled shoes that were gifts from people who associated that with my Enchanted, Inc. books (some of these may have been speaker gifts). I guess I need to find someone to write letters to, or else I’ve got even more stuff for making grocery lists. I’ll roll into the store with my Garfield note paper.

My old office had an entire wall of closets, and this one doesn’t really have a closet. There’s an alcove for a closet, but they removed the door and clothes rod when remodeling the house, so it’s just an alcove with a shelf. One of my bookcases slotted into the alcove. A lot of the stuff I used to store in the office closet will go in the basement, but I still have office stuff with no home. I may pick up some bankers boxes and put them on that upper closet shelf.

I have got all the office furniture and equipment in the office, and I put up the last set of blinds in that room so I’m not visible from the street while walking between my bedroom and the bathroom (not a huge concern, as there’s nobody directly across the street and there are trees in front of that window, but still it’s nice to have total privacy). I mostly need to finish shelving books and then sort out the other stuff. Then I may have a more or less functional office. I may need a couple of smaller bookcases, one to hold my CD player and some CDs for my working background music, and it’s possible I’ll need one more place to store copies of my books.

After the office is done, I need to finish setting up the den and deal with the clothes, which will help me know what I need to do in the spare room, which is going to be mostly storage, with what I hope will be enough open space in the middle for a yoga mat or an inflatable bed if I have guests. I still need a sofa/loveseat for the den. I’ve been sitting in my patio lounger to watch TV. I’m hoping to make a trip to Ikea next week to round out what I need. I’m looking forward to having everything all set up so I can just live and work without spending my days unpacking and setting up.

My project for the day is getting my office set up, and that means assembling furniture. I’ve been wrestling with a large bookcase, and later today I’ll get to work on my desk. My office is really small. It’s the smallest room in the house (other than the bathroom), but it’s the room with the best views (mountains!) and the most electrical outlets, so it makes sense as an office. I had to get creative with furniture. The desk is like a hospital tray table and it’s on wheels so it can move around. It’s not very big, so all the usual stuff that would go on top of a desk, other than the computer and maybe a pen and notebook, will have to go on the bookcase behind the desk.

I think I’m actually going to have shelf space for all my books — until I stumble across another box I forgot about. The spare room is gradually gaining floor space as I get books on the shelves. I put off dealing with the books because I didn’t need them for daily life, but getting them on shelves clears out so much space and makes room to do other things, so it was worth taking care of that.

I hope to have the office totally set up before Monday so I can maybe get back into a regular working routine. I’ve fallen into some bad habits during the move, and I’ll have to get back on track. I’m hoping that if my office is all set up, I’ll be able to focus instead of getting distracted by all the things I need to do.

Sunday it’ll be a year since I arrived in this town, so it’s been more than a year since I’ve had a dedicated office instead of a combined living room/dining room/office/kitchen. I still managed to write a book and revise a couple more, but it’ll be nice to have a real working space again.

Then I’ll have to avoid getting distracted by staring at the mountains.

I’m back from my moving break. That doesn’t mean I’m through with moving. I have finished physically relocating from one home to the other. I turned over the keys to my apartment yesterday, and all of my belongings are in my house. But I am far from being truly moved in. There’s still a lot of unpacking and arranging to do. Everything is in piles or boxes.

I more or less have the bathroom and kitchen set up, though the kitchen is still somewhat cluttered. It’s downstairs and near the front door, so it’s where a lot of things got dropped before I tried to take them any farther. I have things in the cabinets, but I need to get a few organizational items to really finish setting up. The bedroom is set up to be able to sleep. My clothes are in various suitcases and bins in different rooms. The closets are tiny, so I’m figuring out other things I can do. I’m putting hooks on the closet walls for some things. My knit clothes are all getting folded and put in cubes that go on shelves. I’m probably going to get a couple of zip-up wardrobes at Ikea to go in the basement for out-of-season clothes. In the meantime, getting dressed in the morning can be a bit of a hunting expedition.

The living room (or I guess it would be considered a den) is mostly set up, though I still need to shelve all the books. I also need to get a rug and a sofa, but it will have to be a small sofa and something that you can take apart so it will fit through the door. I was looking at one at a furniture store here, but the door would have to be six inches wider to get it into the room (it’s not even all that narrow a door. It’s a modern sliding glass door, so I don’t know who could buy this small sofa and get it into their house). So I may end up doing Ikea for that, too. In the meantime, I’m using my patio lounger as a recliner for watching TV.

My office is pretty much a lost cause for now. I’m going to get all new furniture for that room, so the books will be mostly unshelved for the time being. I’m trying to get back into a writing schedule, but I’m using a laptop desk and migrating around the house until I get the office figured out. I think I’ve found a desk that will work, and if I key off that, the office will end up being kind of steampunky.

Then there’s the yard. I learned from a neighbor that this house had been abandoned for years until the people I bought it from got it at auction and remodeled it. I guess they got it early in the year and were working during the winter, so there wasn’t much going on in the yard. Now it’s exploded as spring has hit. It’s been allowed to run wild. They took out a few trees that were dangerously close to the house, but they didn’t get rid of any plants. There are a lot of flowers out there. But there are also a lot of weeds. I’ve discovered some poison ivy, and I’m trying to identify what else is out there so I’ll know what to dig up or kill and what to encourage. In the meantime, it looks kind of wild. My neighbor has offered to let me use some of his power tools, but I’m not sure you could get a mower through the yard because it’s a pretty steep hill. I’m planning to get rid of what grass there is and replace it with ground cover.

I know I have a few redbud trees, a plum tree or two (but I don’t know if they’re ornamental or if they bear fruit), and a maple, but I’m not sure of the other trees. There’s a huge bush that turned out to be a lilac. There are a lot of plants that seem to be various kinds of lilies, but they haven’t bloomed yet. I discovered the “identify” feature on my phone that looks up what you’ve taken pictures of, and that’s helped me figure out some of the plants, but I know some of their identifications are wrong, so I’m not sure how much I trust it. I may have to take my phone to a garden center and play “kill or keep” before I decide what plants to buy.

I’ve been living on frozen dinners for a couple of weeks since the kitchen has been too disorganized for cooking. I think I’m going to graduate myself to convenience meals this week. The stove has a glass top, so I’m going to have to learn how to use that at least enough to boil pasta. Then maybe next week I’ll move back to real cooking, of the sort that requires chopping and measuring. Right now, things are too chaotic for that.

I do love the house, though. It’s much quieter than the apartment. I’m near the end of a dead-end street, so there’s next to no traffic, and I don’t have an upstairs neighbor’s kid jumping up and down and screaming. Supposedly, shaking up routines and doing things in different ways is good for creativity. If so, then I should become wildly creative because the house is so different from anywhere I’ve ever lived that I can’t just put things in the obvious places that correspond with where they’ve gone before. I’m having to come up with entirely different organizational schemes that involve entirely different routines.

I’m trying to get back to writing instead of spending all day unpacking and organizing. I’m alternating a little work with a little housework. We’ll see if I can focus enough to get anything done.

It looks like I’ll be closing on the house either Thursday evening or Friday morning, and I’ll start moving soon after that, with the furniture going on April 21, so I think I’m going to take a break from posting for a week or so. That’s just one more thing to deal with when I’m already pretty overwhelmed.

Yesterday morning I had the final walkthrough to make sure they’d done the repairs I asked for. That also meant I got to see the backyard redbud trees in full bloom. I hope they’re still pretty when I get there. Today has been the Getting Stuff Done day. I’ve set up electricity, water, and Internet at the new place. Now I just need to finalize the insurance and the wire transfer for the purchase.

I’ve already boxed up a lot of books, probably at least a carload. As soon as I close, I’m going to try to get a load over. I don’t want to get a bunch of new boxes, so the plan is to fill up all the boxes I’ve got, take them to the house (it’s about a 5-minute drive), unload the boxes in the spare room that won’t have any furniture in it yet, then bring the empty boxes back and fill them for another trip. Almost all the fiction is boxed up. I just have the reference books and other nonfiction and the “brag bookcase” of the books I wrote. That’s still a lot of books. Since the earliest I could get movers was the 21st, I hope to have just about everything but the furniture and the daily life essentials (the bedding, some clothes, enough dishes to eat breakfast that morning) at the new place by then. And then I’ll just need to clean the old place and get the new place properly set up.

When I was getting ready to move about this time last year, I was doing a massive purge, so I had to make a lot of decisions about what to keep, and then I had to take things to the various donation places, and that took a lot of time. For this move, I don’t have to make decisions and I probably won’t be getting rid of things (I may pare the wardrobe a bit further now that I know what I haven’t worn in the past year, but I may not worry about running things around to thrift shops before I move). It’ll be a lot easier to just throw things in boxes.

While I was out yesterday, I stopped by a couple of furniture stores, and I think I may have found the sofa (loveseat) I want. I’m going to wait until I get my furniture in the house before I make any decisions, though. I also need to get a washer and dryer, some blinds, and lots of storage stuff. I will be breaking my personal record for most money spent in a single month, given that I’m buying a house, plus getting all this stuff.

But this will be the view from my living room. It’s glorious at this time of year, and the redbuds will also have lovely fall color. Which reminds me, I’ll also be getting more plants for the yard and deck while I’m shopping. But that will wait. I never put out plants until after Easter. We’re still getting freezes at night. I’ll be planting morning glories as soon as the weather is right.

Now to tick the last few tasks off today’s epic to-do list.

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.