My Surprise Christmas Gift--to Myself

Have you ever given yourself a gift you never knew it was in you to give? I laid eyes upon mine this morning and cried out in a calm and dignified voice:

You see, I'd been facing a challenge that I couldn't guess how to beat. You all have yours and I had mine: how, as a busy writer with limited means, to transform my small, cluttered, barely furnished studio into a cool and cozy place...while looking for a better place and organizing what I have so that it's ready for use now--and when I do move. To begin with: the clutter was astonishing. Time and again, I would look, then give up, not knowing how or where to start. 

The place is in this photo's not mine, but my place could more than compete:

Actually, my situation was worse in that I had no file cabinets or even a book case because I knew that additional furnishings would cost additional hundreds of bucks with a mover. And despite my Seattle successes--the loss of 55 pounds...12 ebooks and 4 print editions...a new job in a dream location--despite all that, I'd given up on solving my clutter dilemma while I prepared to move.

But then I gave myself this gift: the idea of tackling one tiny section each day, beginning with a window sill piled with godawful clutter..the next day proceeding to the next....and, when the 5 window sills were cleared, I'd set in on a single stretch beginning with the bed and carrying on to the north wall. On the 5th night, when the sills were cleared, I began to feel--well, almost buoyant. And I began to see the real beauty of the gift:

If I followed what I now saw as the Single Strip Procedure--tackling one two-foot strip at a time--I could accomplish both goals at once: neatly boxing what I don't need and arranging impeccably everything else. Not only that, as I proceeded I'd buy the furniture and furnishings I needed for the single strip at hand: new linens, for instance, for the bed, plus a bookcase and/or racks for books and DVDs. 

The entire process should take me roughly a month. But I'm telling you, my friends: those window sill sure look terrific! And the first, bed-wide, strip is comin' right along.