house therapy.

If you remember my recent house update (and the update-to-the-update here), you know we’ve been waiting all year to hear back from contractors about our master bedroom addition.

Well here we are in June, still waiting away. At this point, we’ve let go of the hope of breaking ground in 2016 and we’re looking towards next year. But by now we’re at peace with that.

One of the best ways I know to find contentment in my house is to take a step back and say, “____ is what I really want to change right now, but that’s not possible. So what are one or two things I can change instead?”

Well we came up with a couple of medium-sized projects, one of which I’m almost ready to share with you.

In the meantime I’m glancing throughout the house and tweaking little things. I did another major purge last month (of course I did) and also some organizing up in the attic. I’ve finally come to terms with a houseful of small closets and have started viewing the attic as our big extra closet, albeit one with a rather rickety drop-down ladder. You’d be amazed at the pieces of furniture we’ve maneuvered up that small rectangular hole.

After the frenzy of moving into our house and decorating it room-by-room, I took a good year and a half off of Pinterest and Apartment Therapy. I needed time to just live in our space instead of seeing it as a project.

I loved the break. It quieted my mind. It taught me to be content. I turned my gaze toward other things.

But now, this summer, I’m back in creative-house-therapy mode, in a moderate way. I’m browsing my favorite design websites again, and finding little bits of inspiration. I’m “shopping my house,” as the Nester recommends, and rearranging. I’m wondering how I can add at least one plant to every room, and actually keep them alive.

I’ve got a list on my computer of little changes I’d like to make — things like finally adding some wall art in the bathroom and updating the light fixture on our front porch — and I’ll try to choose one or two a month, depending on the cost and space in our budget. I don’t do much shopping just for the sake of shopping (because I’m pretty terrible with impulse purchases), but it’s nice to have a running list of things I’m searching for, in case I stumble upon the perfect crock for kitchen utensils or slouchy book basket for the kids’ room, or laundry hampers that are on sale.

This is a delicate dance, because we’re trying to keep our house as trimmed-down as possible, in order to make it feel more spacious. So I’m very careful what I buy and bring into it. I purposefully don’t thrift-store shop — not because I don’t think there are great deals to be had, but because I don’t have space for all those deals.

But even so I find that I enjoy this dance of finding just enough and not too much.

More fun house updates to come — now what about you, are you doing any house projects (big or small) this summer?