I was surprised at how many negative thoughts came up.
The lamps - I had wanted white ones but black ones were cheaper (how does this make me feel? Silly. I could have bought the ones I really wanted.) I try to keep things simple but the shelf had accumulated lots of things in too many colours. (Feeling? Slightly irritable - simple and uncluttered makes me feel calmer.)
The hearth needs a tile fixing (lazy). I'd always intended to paint the chairs white but I've never got around to it (lazy again). I've been meaning to get the lovely 40 year old sofa recovered.....and so on.
I do believe each of these kinds of thoughts can drag you down a tiny little bit - and I'm thinking them every time I look at them - the broken hearth tile for example. Every time I see it I'm telling myself I'm lazy, and I see it almost every time I look at the hearth. Not good, is it.
The thing is it's easier, quicker, and I have to say more fun, to go out and buy something new for the room (I've just bought a new cosy rug,) than to do the boring fixing and repairing jobs like filling the gaps in the floorboards, which would, in the longer term, make more of a difference to my satisfaction with the room. There's nothing major here. I can (and do) live with all these things, and I'm very grateful to have them at all, however imperfect.
So this winter's work might be to do those nagging tasks, some of which I've been looking at for years. I'm not a very patient person, but am beginning to see how simple and satisfying it might be to just knuckle down and do these things!
Will report back....or better still can I ask you to ask me in a month or two whether I've done anything about them?