Taking Up Space

I have issues about taking up space. I feel very guilty about it. I have, on the whole, gotten over my immense guilt about being alive. And am getting better at not wanting the ground to swallow me up when sharing my creative talents. But there are two areas where my space issues still show up.

My body. And my living spaces.

Being heavier than I have ever been, I have also found a sort of peace. I am allowed to take up this much room. I have my own permission to eat as much as I need to. I am allowed to take up space. As a person, as a woman. It is OK. I need not apologise for my body, my appetites, for my size. I am allowed to be big... in every are of my life, if I want.

The other issue, as I said, is with living space. It takes me years of living in a place, to feel I have the right to make it my own... to actually move in.

Instead I camp in space. Living out of bags and boxes. Not wanting to make any mark on the space... as I know I will be moving on soon enough. For most people decorating a space is something they do straight away when they move in, usually with great relish. They don't think twice about hanging a painting on the wall. Or painting the wall for that matter. For me it is such a serious move it takes a couple of years to get up the courage to give myself permission to make my mark, even in a small way.

It stems, I am sure, from a lifetime of moving between parent's homes, boarding school rooms and rented accommodation. Space of my own is always borrowed, transient and can be reclaimed at a moment's notice for someone else.

Mr Dreaming Aloud has no such bullshit in his brain - perhaps because of having had his own room in the same home for 20 years of his life. So he is happy to paint walls, put up shelves, heck even put up nails to hang paintings on.

Me, I only hang paintings where nails exist already.

And so, after three and a half years of living in our own home, I am finally getting settled in. Little by little. We have two of my paintings in our bedroom, one of which is actually hanging on a newly placed nail! My favourite books are on shelves by my bed. For me home is where my books and journals are.

And so today, emboldened by the successful launch of The Rainbow Way, I started phase one of "make my studio my own" .

Mr Dreaming Aloud helped once more - having heard me say umpteen times about wanting an armchair to curl up in brought one of ours from home up for me last week. And me...I have cleared out (most of) the boxes. I have (propped) the paintings that I want to look at. And my father gave me a little heater so that I do not freeze any more. I have cleared and tended my little creative altar. And intend to make myself a vision board above my desk, and get some lino to cover the tiled floor so I can paint without anxiety about ruining the beautiful tiles.

 Little by little I am taking up space. Making it a room of my own.

Though, I must be honest here, I have yet to put things into the cupboards - I can feel the nausea rise just at the thought of it.

Slowly, slowly I am taking up space.

If I Could Have Just One Room

The lovely Georgie over at the uber beautiful blog Visual Toast tagged me in her post If I Could Have Just One Room.

And I just had to do my own version... if nothing else than to justify my many misspent hours drooling over Pinterest - though it has gained me over 3000 followers!

The idea for this meme came from The Reading Residence which asked:

If you could have just one room, all to yourself, what would be in it? What colours would you choose? What would it smell like?

So here goes...

Lots of natural light, large windows looking onto the beautiful wildness of the Atlantic coast. And space. And bare wood. And zen-ness. And books galore. Soft sofa beds strewn with comfy cushions to lounge and read in. And rainbow colours and patchwork, and my art and that of others I love all over the wall. And an altar...

Something like this...

I'd love to see what yours looks like...

Emily at The Nest

Erin at Starving Artist Ink

Heidi at The Dreadess

My Husband's a Stripper!: "Room for Improvement"

"We're heading to West Cork to see a friend, and Mr Dreaming Aloud is stripping..."

So read my text to a friend who invited us to meet up this weekend...

Stripping...wallpaper that is! Get those visions of my dear hubby out of your dirty minds right now. Actually talking of dirty... no, we'll get to that later. Back to the wallpaper...

There are certain areas in any home which make your heart sink... Mine was the hallway. Always the hallway. From the first moment I stepped into it, on our first viewing of the house, I hated it. It could be summed up in three words:

Orange paint-effect wallpaper.

The rest of the house was beautifully decorated and detailed by a woman with exquisite taste. 

But the wallpaper was hideous. And the first thing you saw when you entered the house.

But this was not the only problem in the hall, oh no, over the three years we lived in the house we have also added our own...

• lots of rips to it - as modeled by two of the prime culprits - don't trust those cute faces!
• a huge coat mountain just inside the door, filling the whole space under the stairs. Well, in truth it was coats on top, with a central core of unpacked picnic and swimming bags, endless bags of books packed by our three-year-old, odd shoes... (somehow I forgot to take a photo of that!)
• a hideous Argos shoe shelf which again only sported odd shoes, as all shoes worn on a daily basis were variously scattered around the sitting room floor, or lying in wait at the bottom of the stairs.
• our nature table took root on the top half of the dresser a couple of weeks after we moved in, it was joined by library books, unopened post, foreign coins, random bits of Lego, all of which I had to pile up into a leaning pile of crap to take pretty pictures for you on the blog!

So there we have it. Our house. I felt SUCH shame any time anyone, especially neighbours called to the door. Because their hallways are all clean. And light and bright. And  most definitely not full of shit. I, in all honesty, was composing a pretty sign that I was going to put on the front door which said - I spend my time writing books and painting which is why our house is a mess.... But was just trying to figure out how to make that sound clever... 

And then, as my humour went into hibernation and my feelings of despondency about our family pit grew, I was approached and offered money to redecorate a room in my house for a promotion called "Room for Improvement", run by the lovely people at Money Supermarket.com. So I said hell yeah - I'm like that, I like free money. Especially money I can throw at my husband whilst he sweats (if you know what I mean!!) ... He is a fine stripper you see... I happen to be married to a man who comes from a long-line of obsessive DIY home improvers. He enjoys it, relishes it even. And I love the results!

The point of this exercise? To show that with just a little money you can make big transformations in your home. And as you know, Dreaming Aloud is all about creative transformations, both inner and outer!

So a plan was formed. I would, with heavy heart, take my kiddies down to West Cork for the weekend to visit my soul sister and her children, where we would sit on the beach and drink wine and not-stop-talking-for-the-whole-weekend. Whilst he would hire a (wall-paper) stripper, buy paint and spend the weekend slogging away. I had the tough end of the deal, I know, but hey!

So just as we were about to leave he informs me that Mr Google says a wallpaper stripper machine thingy is a last resort, that it should just pull down quite easily. So I take an overhanging corner, the one that has made me cringe with shame every day for years... And pull... 

OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH MMYYYYYYYY GGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOODDDD!!!!!!!
I groaned... The noises I start making were most definitely X-rated! 

If you are like me and you get a slightly twisted sexual pleasure from squeezing blackheads (especially other peoples'), peeling sunburn or picking scabs, then you will understand QUITE how much fun this was. I may have referenced that this was as pleasurable as my most fun bedtime activity. This received a rather odd look and curt reply from Mr Dreaming Aloud - I feel I may not be on the receiving end of such pleasures for a while to come.  But I digress. 

The children on hearing these strange noises coming from their mother and seeing me pulling down the wall coverings enquired if I was supposed to be doing that. When I informed them I was, their next question was if they could too? So between us we pulled down the hideous paper (except for one small wall, behind the coat mountain) in under five minutes. They take after their mother, I think, from the squeals of glee coming from them!

And then we left him to the "real work". We piled into the car. Had a spiffing weekend of jolity, including a sleep over!  And came home to THIS!!!! 

Yes, this is my house! For the cost of a tin of paint, roller, tray, some wood and nails. Pure, beautiful, white walls - certain members of the family have been strongly talked to about NOT redecorating it in the kindergarten style!

Mr DA officially moved a mountain - look - clear empty space!!!!! That's like an endagered creature in our house!!

I almost ran down the road to get my best neighbour friend in before it got messed up, she of the tidiest most beautifully kept house containing three young kids perhaps in the whole of Ireland. But it was bed time, so I didn't! So do call round soon and see us before it gets messed up!

It feels a little like our own private art gallery, with paintings by my dad, my uncle, two soul sisters/ daughter's fairy godmothers, my mother and me...

It's focal point our very own dedicated nature table... to celebrate the seasons and share creative inspiration with all who enter our home.

And shoe rack... made with reclaimed bricks!

I feel very, very proud of my home. And my husband. What a man!

Everyday Zen

We are a household whose tidy skills are not our forte, nor our priority (as this blog has documented here and here).

We were messy before we had kids. But now it is not just adult mess, it is a typhoon of little clothes, pencils, works of art, yogurt pot tops (yogurt side down - of course), dead ladybirds, books, lots and lots of books, lego, lots of that too, usually detected underfoot with a sharp yelp. We are really craving a way to find a little calm, a little order in the chaos. And yet we know that we will not have a tidy-personality transplant any time soon.

This is our everyday zen project.

Everyday zen is inspired by our time in Japan and throughout Asia where every home, often every room had a small sacred space or altar.

It was reading Rachael's Variegated Life blog and Goddess Leonie's creating your goddess space e-course (see the link at the side of this blog). They made me think - we need a clear space in every room. A focal point which makes my spirit soar, which gives me calm and peace when I look at it, rather than despair and depression at the deluge of paper and packages and dirty dishes which cover every space in every room. Or so it seems.

I have had a nature table for a couple of years now for the kids. It combines flowers or nature finds of the season with little Steiner figures, felt fairies or wooden animals.

The zen space takes this one stage further. Its intention is simplicity. Beauty. Calm. Emptiness. Balance. A soul restoring place in the midst of the necessary clutter of daily life. The zen space was inspired by my husband's new shelves which we display some of my father's pots on.

Like an altar it is tended daily - NOTHING is allowed to be dumped in the zen space. It must be kept clear. We actively maintain this small calm space. We refresh it with fresh flowers, or a single stone.

It encourages me to embrace zen moments in my daily life. To snatch small moments of calm throughout the day, to meditate for two minutes here or there, rather than not bother because I don't have the time or energy. This inner and outer calm are connected I realised. This not being bothered, despairing at the level of chaos is connected. And in honouring the calm and the stillness, I also learn to honour the life which causes the chaos, to honour the mess, the living which is so precious and yet I so often apologise for. Both are necessary. The chaos and the order. Both are just as real. And it is for us to embrace them both, to cultivate and balance them.

Home is where the feelings are

It occured to me last night as our daughter, who is calm and quiet outside of our house wailed and screamed and yelled and kicked that she does it at home because she feels safe here.

An email from a friend who is keeping a happy face to cover a breaking heart admits to bawling her eyes out at home for days at a time.

Home is the only place I yell. I wouldn't dare to yell on the street. And I feel guilty that it is my nearest and dearest who see the majority of my negativity and intense emotions.

I find myself almost running for cover at times, trying to hold it together until I get home, until I can let go, collapse the social face and just be as I need to be.

And I got a sense of all of us, all around the world, discharging our depth and breadth of human emotions within our homes - making love, yelling, crying, celebrating small and big triumphs, mourning, freaking out, worrying. All the human stuff that human society has no stomach for and that the world of work and socialising has no time for. All the sides of us that go on unseen, that we have to watch in the movies, or have friends confide in us their own experiences, to know that we are not alone. If you based your knowledge of what it means to be human on what you see with your own eyes away from TV, then sex would not exists. Nor would hysterical crying. Orgasms and anxiety attacks also would not exist. Life is bland stream of bored, polite, fake smiling faces when seen in public. Home is where the richness is, home is where the heart is free to feel.

And it occured to me that we are sold an idea of home, as a place that looks good, or that provides a place to eat and sleep. But far more, home provides us with a safe space to be fully human, to feel, to learn to express these feelings. That the walls of our homes are charged with this human emotion, layer upon layer of our unseeable selves lies invisibly on top of the wallpaper or paint. This repository of ourselves within a space is what makes us so deeply attached to our spaces, which makes them so much more than mere bricks and mortar, or canny investments.

Boxes, boxes...

I have always said that I am not someone who fits into boxes. I despair of questionnaire people (is there a proper word for them?) knocking on my door, trying to get me to answer which box I fit into, for example: employed, unemployed, housewife...  I don't know... some of them, all of them, none, all at the same time, I feel like saying. I don't know if I'm just awkward, exacting, overcomplicated, super-diverse, or if everyone has the same problem.

My other issue with boxes is living out of them. Since I left Uni, nine years ago most of my life has been packed into boxes. And now we have our own house, still there are boxes everywhere, waiting, waiting for that perfect, box-unpacking moment to come along. They fill me with dread. And disgust at myself, Miss Voluntary-Simplicity-Woman  is the not-so-proud possessor of score upon score of boxes of possessions. And my husband seems to have none. But then I am known to him and my friends as the go-to gal - you need a book on just about any subject from back ache to 2012, a novelty bottle opener, embroidery thread in any colour under the sun - you name it, I have it! And I am SO anti-commercialism! And hoarding! And "stuff" in general.

So anyway, as you can see, I beat myself up for this. And then I had a look at the boxes still waiting to have something done to them, and with the exception of the hideous mound of boxes in the utility room which are full of strange bits and pieces that will never have a proper home found for them. Apart from the fabrics waiting to be made into quilts and other creative projects, and notes waiting for future writing and teaching projects, the rest are actually boxes of love: boxes of my grandmother's love letters, diaries and correspondence; my own love letters; a box of our wedding cards and programmes and memorabilia, other cards, photographs, letters, diaries. Boxes of love. Boxes of words and memories. How lucky I am to have boxes full of love to look back on, to sift through, to cry over and to warm me to the tips of my toes.

THE NON-DOMESTIC GODDESS SHINES HER SINK

Hands up who likes housework?

I am certainly not one, as any one who knows me can attest to. I may have acquired the title of domestic goddess for my baking skills, but not my housekeeping ones. If there were a competition for the messiest house in East Cork I would be a strong competitor. In fact I could represent the county in the All Ireland's. I despair at the mess in my life and am currently on a serious, sorry...fun... OK serious/ fun creation of order in my home life, so that our beautiful new home, The Pink House, is not a pit. So that at any moment, a friend/ delivery man/ plumber/ neighbour's child/ Buddha can call in and I am not mortified by our unholy mess.