Most of the chaos of my house ends up in the basement and recroom.

And we have somehow never managed to get the storage down there to be properly set up for the stuff we have. And that just adds to the chaos.

Today, my plan was to make a little progress on the recroom by moving a couple of things around but once I moved them, I could see what to do next.

And once I did that step, the next step appeared.

And by the end of the day, I had brought some order to the chaos.

Not complete order, there is still work to be done, but this level of order is liveable. I can keep this level of order and work on the rest of the chaos a little at a time.

I am absolutely delighted.

I have often thought about buying Christmas dishes but I have always takes myself out of them.

Why?

Couldn’t tell ya.

A while back though, my Auntie Pat was looking to give away her Christmas dishes and I happily accepted them.

I put them in the cupboard today and I have to say that I love the idea of this annual ritual of switching the regular dishes for the Christmas ones.

I need more low-key ritual in my life and I’m glad the Christmas dishes will be part of that.

I had fun drawing these little presents this morning.

This is just a draft for something I am working on. I want the presents to look a little more cartoonish, with fun angles on the boxes, but I haven’t nailed it yet.

I like these as they are though.

It wasn’t a bad day. It just was a weird one.

It felt upside down.

I couldn’t seem to work on things in a logical order at all

The good news is that I could work on things, the day wasn’t a write off.

But it still was very strange, as if the whole day I was doing the opposite of what I should be doing at that time.

It would be kind of the equivalent of having supper at breakfast time.

There’s nothing wrong with having supper at breakfast time, it just feels off.

And doing some writing when it felt like I should be making lists for my volunteer work, that just felt off too.

As part of my plan to finish 2023 soft, I’m trying to have a softer start to my days.

This morning, I woke up a little earlier than usual and couldn’t get back to sleep so I came downstairs, and puttered over my breakfast before sitting down to read with the tree lit and a candle burning.

(I turned off the ebook in case there were spoilers on that page. It’s a bright screen, I wasn’t trying to read in this dim light.)