Proof of my insanity

Proof of my insanity
Originally uploaded by nicole_gt.

I need an intervention. I'm turning into Bree van der Camp and I don't know what to do to stop. Let me start at the beginning.
I mentioned that we were going to have an estate agent come to the apartment this week. Well, B told me this morning that he had made an appointment for Friday at noon. We wanted the cleaning lady to straighten things up a bit before anyone came round but that was going to be the sum total of our preparations. The house is in pretty good shape, there really wasn't anything special to do.
But then B went to work and left me alone to start planning my day. In all fairness, I didn't really have any other big plans but of course I immediately started thinking that I didn't want the person going into my dressing room before I had everything organized and behind closed doors, so I spent the morning in there. I ended up reorganing most of the cupboards, but I make such a mess when I am getting ready to go out, that its practically a weekly event.
Then I went to put a pair of shoes in B's cupboard and thought 5 minutes of rearranging would make it look much nicer. The previous owners had had a menusier install a really expensive closet organizer thing and I knew that I would be showing it to the agent. So I went through his cupboard- which took slightly more than 5 minutes...
I took a break for lunch and decided that really the only other thing I should probably do was the coat closet in the entry. The electrics were all in there and the agent would definitely be needing to take a look and since I moved in our winter coats, scarves, and hats, it was just a disaster. After Ella went down for her nap, I started taking things out of the cupboard and as I wiped the dust off the walls I realized that there was no point. It was never painted since we moved in and it was filthy, so I might as well just repaint the entire thing. It would look a million times better. We had just changed the doors on the hall closets so it made sense to make the inside look as nice as the outside, right?
2 hours later, I finished up. It wasn't a perfect job, but once everything would be put back in, it would be fine. I even ran down to the cave and dug out some boxes, covered in brown silk, that I hadn't been using and put our hats and scarves in them. I was totally satsified with what I had gotten done and would have stopped there, but Ella was still sleeping. So I decided to tackle the mess in my office.
I had been telling myself that I didn't have to worry about the office because one room would make no difference. And it was just too big of a mess to sort out in one day, etc. But actually, once I started cleaning, it went fairly quickly. I stepped back and looked at the bookshelves and realized that what really made it look a mess was all the different colored spines of the paperbacks. I love having lots of books, but honestly, they were just cheap paperbacks, bought mainly in airports and they looked cheap.
I pondered this for a minute and then I noticed the massive stack of white paper sitting on Ella's drawing table. B had brought it home last week for her to color on- but it would be just the thing for me. I can't take credit for this fab idea. I actually saw it once in a decorating magazine and loved it. I decided that I would make dust jackets for all my books out of white paper and write the name in pencil on the side. That way I could keep all my books around me but it would still look nice. I present photographic evidence- you decide if it is truly insane to have done this or if its so pretty that it was totally worth the effort- agent or no agent coming to judge my apartment.
I realize now that this was an insane thing to do. But I seriously have no judgement when it comes to deciding when I am going over the top. Ask my family, who have been suffering with this for years. Ask my friends, who will tell you how I can turn a simple coffee brunch into a 4 course sit down meal if they arrive 30 minutes late. Ask my poor husband who never trusts me anymore when I propose a simple project around the house, because he knows in about an hour I'll be introducing him to the architect that I hired... I don't feel like I am doing too much, I fell like it would be lazy to stop at good enough when, you know, I've got atleast a half hour of free time to kill. Its only in retrospect when I see the insanity. Of course, another theory would be that I have a bit of energy to burn. Clearly knitting is not enough of a hobby.
So really, this project is just par for the course. Its actually going quite fast- won't be finished by noon tomorrow, I don't think. But I can do about 40 books in an hour, so maybe... seems like it would be lazy to just lay in bed and sleep when it would only take another 4 hours to finish. And it looks so nice that I will be really happy to see it done. And...
here we go again.