♥: Apartment

You might remember that Christmas and the time leading up to it is one of my favorite times a year, plus all the decorating, crafting and wrapping that goes along with it. New Year´s Eve is ok too, but come January 1st, I crave spring and first flowers and mild weather. Now, I know that isn´t reality (as Dani never grows tired of reminding me "January?! Why, that´s when the real winter only begins!")...but my body and mind, exhausted from lack of sunshine and light simply cannot accept it. So the beginning of the year not only marks the time of good resolutions for the new year, but mainly the whole 'bring spring in' fest. That´s when I take down all the Christmas and winter related decorations and fairy lights and start deep cleaning the whole house. Spring cleaning? Bring it on! It seems that this is the only time a year I´m motivated to really get down to it, de-cluttering included. In fact, our guest-room is full of stuff... there just seems so much of random stuff that we accumulate each year but also a LOT of things from times past, like old furniture and stuff from my sweetie´s school and university days and an assortment of random books from said time. This time I´m chucking it. I´d chuck it all out but I´m including Dani in the decision progress, so we might hold on to a lot more unnecessary things than needed (of course, he might say the same about some of my essential decorating props ;) ). We haven´t even started to go through the basement yet! There are a few things I have to add to the pile in the guest room but then I need to start sorting trough the pile (trash? goodwill? clothes to donate? recycling?...).

Aside from all that, I bring in flowers (or in my case, Dani brought them home for me, Cpt. Awesome that he is!). I love hyacinths, especially the white ones. I think they smell best. They are just so fragrant and turn the whole room into a spring meadow for your nose!

These things really help a bit when getting the gray-day blues out here but thinking that spring won´t come for the next 3 months or so makes me really ~~want to move to a sunny island~~ quite upset. Aalen and the area surrounding it is one area that always blooms latest... it´s just too cold. I´m always fighting hard against the 'Flee! Flee this place while you can!'-urge that´s surfacing particularly strongly within me each year at this time ;).
But one of my resolutions for this year is to actually feel happy about living here. I don´t know, I just have a hard time adjusting to this place and that´s never happened to me before. I felt much more at home in Kensington, MD, SLC or in various different places around the globe. I really don´t get it. The one thing that always saves me from going insane here is Dani (on the other hand, if it weren´t for him, I´d still have my job and not live here at all!). Look, I´m blabbing and rambling on again... and no wonder, I just looked outside where it is only slightly less dark than inside (need to turn on the lights...) and it´s raining!

Well, I hope you´re all doing great. Let me know when/how/if you start your spring cleaning and/or decluttering. Any savvy tips for making it go faster? Making it fun?

Here are some pics to get an impression (hm, I should take a picture of the chuck-out-pile, too...):