So many tasks, not enough time!

I have been SUPER busy the past couple of weeks...Disney planning, trying to loose weight, walking (to help loose weight and to "train" for Disney), cleaning around the house, reading books (to hit my 55 in my 55th year) and, of course, stitching. The first ones are going well, but the stitching, not so much. I can really only stitch on the weekends since I spend the week doing the other things. I'm walking with a co-worker who is perpetually late (although I am able to walk by myself now, when I can get myself out of the house). By the time all that's done, I don't feel like stitching anymore. Thankfully, I can read books and watch TV at the same time, or else not much book reading would be done either. I'm keeping up with my books over on Insta, if you're curious (I think I just finished book #15).

But, on to the stitching. I've only worked on A Girl in a Red Dress at the Castle. Last time I left off here:

Now I'm here:

It's not much progress...1796 more stitches, for a total of 5910/67,500, I'm now at 8.76%, and am 26.38 hrs in (last time it was 18.86 hrs). And I only stitched for two days, both being weekend days. I'm not sure if I'm going switch WIPs this weekend or keep on, time will tell.

Last time, you saw where I cleaned the Duck Room, made a path in the back, and cleaned up my pins (a bit). This week I'm focusing on two tasks, starting to catalog items (although that has a big caveat we'll deal with in a mo) and moving to the front of the Duck Room and straightening up my Mickey ear hats (I haven't touched the Mickey headbands yet, although I don't have many of those). The were on cheap hat hangers on the Duck closet door (and forgive this pic, it's several years old and that area is way more cluttered now, Funkos to the ceiling, the floor covered in plush, and don't get me started on the curios):

Obviously, they didn't all fit due to the limited number of hangers. Since the hangers were made for ball hats, I also had to use various methods to attach them (I did recently change to clothes pins, which plays into this story). The ears that didn't fit were scattered about the room (in their various character categories, of course). I'm always looking online for how other people store and display their stuff, but I haven't found the right "idea" for me in almost every category, but especially ear hats (and pins). Some people have the wall space to mount hangers or to add shelving, I don't. Some people have hats hanging on a rope line mounted to the wall and clipped with clothes pins (like they are on a clothesline), but I never give this idea a second thought because I didn't have the wall room.

Then, it dawned on me, why not attach string to the hat hanger do-hickies and make individual clotheslines. That way I'm not taking up any additional space in the room and, instead of two hats on a row, I could get four or five. Sounded like a plan, right? And the best part is that they could all be together again (I have issues with wanting things to be "together" in their family, the joys of OCD). I quickly found out I couldn't do a line on each row, I had to skip a row for spacing issues. I also tucked in the backs of the hats to flatten them out, like everyone else, to make them hang better. My first iterration:

I very quickly realized this wasn't going to work. The bent hats were driving me insane (I opened them back up) and I still needed the others around the room, which meant more lines. I set about changing them around again, risking the extra rows and adding the hat's brothers, and I HATED the result. I couldn't, for the life of me, get them to look organized after that. I gave that up Wednesday night, but by Thursday night, I decided to start again. After several more configurations, I ended up with this, although I still not happy (and I somehow missed a row close to the top):

Are they too cramped? Yes, yes they are. Is there anything I can do about it? No, probably not, no, especially if I wanted them to live together. And then, like I mentioned earlier, there is still the issue of the Mickey headbands. I'd like them with the ear hats, but I don't know how to accomplish that, at least not yet. They won't work on the rope line and an over-the-door hook won't hold them all.

If anyone has any ideas of how to handle this, let me know, I'm all "ears" (ha!).

Now, on to the cataloging. This is something I have tried numerous times in the past. The last time I tried it, it took me a month to do ONE bookshelf in my bedroom (I have four, not including everything else in the room), and that was probably ten years ago! The software I had became defuct, so I had to buy new home inventory software (maybe nine years ago, unused all this time), which now has a subscription-based model, but the old version still works, so I'm not upgrading until I have to...I'm really hating subscription-based stuff, $10/mo for this, $5/mo for that...it adds up quick. About five or six years ago, I bought a lightbox to make photographing the items easier. It's been sitting in my closet ever since, still in its unopened box. Last year, I bought a camping table for the lightbox to sit on. It's been in the closet next to the lightbox ever since (although I did take it out of it's box to see what it looked like and, thankfully, it came with its own storage bag). Yeah, to say I've been dreading this project for years is the understatement of the decade (literally).

Last Saturday (hence the little bit of weekend stitching), I pulled it all out, set it all up, put the camera on the tripod and got to work photographing the front, back, and bottom side of each item (and sometimes a second set if it lit up). This wasn't even Duck Room stuff, this is MY bedroom. After SIX hours, I had done just the things on my dresser! JUST THE DRESSER! I could not, for the life of me, get everything back in the right place, which also drove me insane. After about 10 hours, I had a ton of photographs, nothing in the cataloging software, and now an annoying dresser top I don't like.

Yeah, I'm not sure how in the Hades I'm supposed to do the entire house. I also realized that my new camera was taking high quality pictures, pictures that will take up a ton of hard drive space. Thankfully, work has an old point and shoot camera that isn't being used, so I got permission to take it home and try it. The MP size of the pics has to be 20 times smaller, so that will help. It was (apparently) a day of realizations, because I also realized that it would be easier to photograph the item, THEN add it to the software one at a time (which will take me a LOT longer than six hours and means I need to start over). I also need to get a barcode scanner (or borrow one from work). Saturday night, I broke down the lightbox and the camping table and put them back in the closet. Whether or not they make it out again in this decade, is up for debate.

I do need a cataloged archive of all my items, not just for insurance purposes (which, as I mentioned numerous times before, most of this stuff can NEVER be replaced, so that's probably a moot point), but because I don't know what I have anymore and sometimes I buy things not realizing I already have it. Since I started cataloging my books, it keeps me from rebuying them all the time. I love it! I also have the Funko app and have all those cataloged as well (although I question if I've done them all). Shame Jim Shore or Enesco doesn't have an app. But, books, movies, music and even Funkos and Enesco figurines are 1/100000 of my entire collection, so the time it will take might be more than the life I have left.

But alas, these are the worries on my brain now and I'm totally open to any ideas you give me! You guys know I'm picky about my stuff, but I will try anything at this point! And let me know if you want to continue to hear about my Disney stuff. I probably should be doing separate posts for all this, but I'm lucky to be posting at all these days. I probably need to learn to actually use Instragram for more than just posting single pictures with a comment!

Have a great week everyone!

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Weekly Stitching Update

I didn't stitch a lot (more on that later), but I did get some done! I finally started A Discovery of Witches by Modern Cross Stitch. I STILL don't have my modification equipment for my stand (and I'm starting to get upset about that, it's been almost 2 1/2 months now), but I did my best with the stand the way it is. It's probably why I didn't get very far because it was a juggling act. In case you forgot, here is what the image looks like:

It's not my largest project (it's the second largest), but it is huge! It's hard to tell here how big it actually is, but it's in a 48" scroll rod, so I'm sure you can imagine it. I only worked on it for one day (3.87 hrs) because it was uncomfortable on my stand, but I got 1278 stitches out of 499,999 total and I'm at 0.26%.

Because it's so long, I also did a close up picture, but because it's just one color, it's kind of boring.

I'm still kind of shocked at this, but I've decided to start three of my new four purchases and, because I've been obsessing over it, A Girl in a Red Dress at the Castle was first. Maybe because my brain is in Disney mode, but I did work on this for the holiday (and I'm not sure if I will continue this week, but we'll see). Here is what it will look like:

I got 4114 stitches out of 67,500 total and made it 6.09%. That sounds like a lot, but it's not that big of a project. I am really happy with the level of detail though and I can't wait to get to recognizable landmarks (aka the castle).

I planned on using my stash thread and fabric, but I was still missing some threads, so I did have to order them. But I'm good so far with just stitching with the threads I had. This was also one of the projects that didn't need new fabric. I had just the right piece for it.

I didn't stitch all weekend though, I managed to clean up the duck room even more, clearing a path through the back side (and yes, it's so dark because of the "island" I've made in the middle, I have to use a lantern back there):

This is the only one the four "walkways" that I don't have to turn sideways for! Quite proud of that!

I emptied out the duck room closet of more old boxes and whatnots (this seems to be an ongoing project). I managed to get the past six years of vacations in their storage boxes (I keep extra storage boxes just for this purpose...well, technically for Disney trips because I want all the storage boxes to match, but that's a different story and I did have some random other boxes, so it's not as matchy-matchy as my Disney stuff). I also got them labeled with my handy-dandy new label maker. It's one of the generic little ones from Amazon, but I love it! Oh, for those that don't know, every single trip I take I keep a "memento box" of the trip stuff. Things like receipts, knick-knacks from the hotels, drink stirers, bags from purchases, glasses or cups I wouldn't ever use, etc, etc. I've been doing that for Disney since the beginning and it's just sort of spilled out to all my other trips. The boxes on the left are my Disney purses and bags, but the smaller ones on the right are the trip boxes (and, the eagle-eyed among you may spot the Disney bag in one of the trip boxes, but that's a box of all the stuff that my sister had given me from her various Disney trips, so they all live together in one box). This may still look messy to some, but believe me when I say this closet was a disaster before!

Also, for those that might be shocked that I have four tubs of just Disney purses, bags, and backpacks, don't be...there are actually five and I need a sixth, you just can't see the other one.

I also got the nerve (or courage) to clean out my Disney pin backs and boxes. This was the hardest thing for me to do. I've kept every pin back and box for every single Disney pin I've ever bought. They live in two big bins and I had numerous bags of them just tossed in the closet. Here they are in my living room floor (and the bin you see is just for the pin backs, not the boxes...the box bin is a lot bigger):

All my pins live in binders in my bedroom. A couple of weeks ago, I took all the pins tossed in my closet from various trips and finally put them in their binders (and tossed the boxes and the bags in the duck room closet, hence this past weekend's project). I still need to get some black binders so they all match, but here they are (and you can see at least one wall of my framed pins, they go all around the entrance to my bedroom):

Of all the things I threw away this weekend, this was the hardest thing for me to deal with. I knew I wouldn't be able to throw all of them away. The empty pin backs and boxes serve no purpose anymore and I couldn't match most of them back to their original backs if I tried, but keeping them is just how I'm wired (like I always say, there is a fine line between hoarding and OCD). I simply stared at the mess in the floor for literal HOURS and went through several iterrations of decisions before I came up with my final option and I'm stressing now writing about it. This is the box with the empties from boxes or lanyards, or pin sets (and, you can't tell, but that stack of mystery pin boxes in the floor was a good 2ft high):

I had a couple choices of what to do, but in the end, I went with keeping one of each type of mystery pin box and throwing away the duplicates. It still filled the box bin back up, so technically it didn't help much, but once I took out the duplicates that were already in there, they all fit and now the bags are all gone (and even throwing away the bags was stressful). The trashed boxes filled an entire kitchen garbage bag on their own. I will need to get another bin by the next pin haul, but I'll worry about that after September.

Oh, and I feel like I need to explain Disney mystery pins. They are pin sets that come (usually) two to a box, but you don't know what's in the box until you've purchased and opened it. To get the whole set, you have to keep buying box after box and, even then, you may not get them all (and don't get me started on the boxes with chaser pins). I HATE mystery pins and rarely ever buy them unless they are special occasion sets or something I feel I can't live without (first I hate surprises, but you also have to keep buying box after box to get the whole set...it is financially draining), but my sister loved them. She was horrible at not finishing a set and would buy all kinds of different sets, which drives my OCD nuts. Not that I wasn't grateful to receive any Disney stuff from her, but I used to have to go on eBay and find the rest of the set, which sometimes cost more than just continuing to buy the boxes. I'd rather have two or three complete sets than 30 partial sets. Plus, there is the guilt involved with her buying me stuff. I can't remember when the last set she bought me was, but I haven't finished those sets because there were just too many of them.

Now, back to the original topic, I should add that "technically" I've thrown all this stuff away. In all actuality, the garbage bags are all sitting in my living room (all TWELVE of them) because there isn't room in the garbage can outside. It will take a couple of weeks of full trash bins for them all to go away, but this also means that I can change my mind at anytime and put the stuff back. So yes, I cleared out a ton of stuff from that closet, but it ain't over until the garbage men sing (unless I take them to the dumpster at work). Getting rid of Disney stuff, even the trash, is incredibly difficult for me. I REALLY need a bigger house (although it wouldn't take me long to fill it up too).

And that's the update for this week! I'm quite proud of myself for all the work I've managed to get done over the past few weeks. Let's just hope I can keep it up (and not undo it). I still have a ton of stuff to trash, but I'll get there eventually! I do look around a lot and sometimes wish I could get rid of more stuff, but it's probably never gonna happen. I go through phases with stuff, be it Disney, movies, books, etc and, just because I'm out of the phase now, doesn't mean I'm not going to be back in it in a week, a month, or even a year from now. I have typically always regretted throwing stuff away, which is why I hate doing it. But if I don't do something now, I'm going to be one of those hoarders with a maze in her living room of stacked up crap (it might be neatly stacked up crap, but, you get the point).

Hopefully, I will have a stitchy update next week, and, if you'd like to see more of my Disney stuff, just let me know and I'll see what I can come up with!