Thing I learned in January: I really like my new Cole Haan red canvas penny loafers. I wore them A LOT last month. My plan of wearing more dresses even though I’m working at home kind of fell through. I wore dresses twice: once just for fun, once for a dinner out. Which was for the 12th anniversary of my first date with Adam. Twelve years! I’m 36, so that is officially 1/3 of my life.

In addition to gathering more freelance work, I’m also hoping to reopen my Etsy shop soon. I’ve got a few new quilt designs in the works, too.

But really, January was about decluttering. I’m still working on things, but I have been going through the house bit by bit and organizing stuff I haven’t had time to organize for a few years. And just trying to declutter. It’s really hard, for me at least, to work at home when the house feels cluttered. I am easily distracted to begin with, so clutter and debris and all the little things that the small human leaves around the house get in the way of my concentration.

I spent the beginning of the month doing a major overhaul of my studio, for starters. I can’t believe that was only a month ago, it feels like it’s been much longer. And I’ve kept it decluttered! Miracle of miracles!

But I’m going through closets, bookshelves, trying to sort out the bathrooms. It’s so much easier for me to tidy every day, deal with laundry, deal with cooking, deal with writing and just life if things are streamlined.

I’ve even tackled the mail bucket, which I just completely cleared last night. I hate mail, it’s my nemesis. We take forever to open it and deal with it, so we just throw it in this big post office mail bucket that we inherited somehow. It’s a crutch because it’s huge, and it just becomes a bottomless pit for paperwork. And I went through all the paperwork yesterday! And updated our filing cabinet for the first time in 2 years!

The clutter exorcism is underway. January has been a great start to what I hope is a really good year. My kid is great, my husband is great, I’m great–except for my right knee, which has been giving me grief. But that’s another story for another day.