Oh, and I did help my boyfriend clean his office. (By “help” I mean "stand there with the trash bag and make him keep working.) We used a variant on a Flylady tip - instead of 20 minutes, we did an hour, but we started at the door and worked around. He has the exact same tendancies as I do - he gets bogged down in “I need to create a home for these USB cables!” and stops taking out huge bags of trash. He really needs to be held to the “keep going around the room” thing, and it’s really useful. Also, after the hour, you can knock off. It doesn’t matter what isn’t done, let’s go eat! It really did work well. Of course, it’s a shithole again, because he’s like me in another respect - we get stuff clean, and then we make a new mess out of stuff we’ve bought to help us organize. Not the stuff itself, but the boxes and such.
Oh, my goodness, Zsofia! I literally gasped out loud and made a squee! when I saw those after pictures! I mean, really and honestly! I think I woke the baby up, but it was so worth it to see that!!!
Okay, the punctuation police are going to arrest me for exclamation point abuse, but really! Did you people click on that link?! 
Way. To. GO!
And, of course, bonus squee to the kitty. 
Happy, happy, happy! I’m glad everyone is still on track and this thread hasn’t died.
WhyNot, great news on staying on the wagon!
Lili, wow, great job!
cowgirl, not sure if this helps, but I have outside shoes and inside shoes so I don’t have to clean up the stuff from the outside when I get inside.
Alice, you’re part of the club now. Thanks for letting me know how it feels to have a clean place. That’s good motivation for me. . . I hope I get there one day.
Zsofia, great job with the outside. I won’t sqee too much. I can hear **WhyNot **from here.
I just squeed again over here, but there’s a baby involved. I think the Crusty Cynic Club is coming to revoke my membership card.
I am doing OK. I am at about a ‘C’ house keeping point average. My place isn’t great but it’s good enough to have close friends stop by most times.
What I really want to know is if other people get overly involved in cleaning one thing and then fall behind with everything else. For example - I started cleaning my kitchen the other day and about 3 hours later had my entire oven/stove completly taken apart in pieces. I almost had a problem when I couldn’t get it back together, but I finally worked it out. Then, another day, I tried to clean my office and I decided it would be a good idea to reorganize my computer desk’s wires. That included going to the store to buy a USB hub - and I didn’t have enough outlets so I had to get new power strips. Do you folks do that kind of thing as well… get super involved in one task to the demise of overall cleanliness?
I just can’t get any REAL cleaning done if I focus so intently on individual tasks. AARGH.
Also, I really need a dishwasher and a dog that won’t eat any trash or food left around. I am constantly finding a plate with some food left on it in the micro or the oven because I can’t leave it in the sink to get cleaned later (I know… just wash it right away… yeah right). I did, however, invest in a dog proof trashcan. Now if I can just get the dog to forget how to open it. :rolleyes:
Congratulations to you Dopers who are doing well and feeling great as a result!
Hello! I am pretty happy with this week’s efforts. I have spent the week trying to get back on track, and it has gone pretty well; I’m much happier with the state of the place, though there is still plenty of clutter to go 'round. Next week I will probably spend all my time painting trim and letting the house go to pot again.
I do need to tackle our bedroom, which tends to gather piles of books and papers and cables–my husband has gotten rid of some stuff lately, which I appreciate. I like to have clear dressers (with linen runners!), and he sees them as computer-junk repositories. Sigh. Maybe I can do that tomorrow and have a pretty (and thus sexy) bedroom back!
Zsofia, your house looks great!
This is actually a really common symptom of us messy people; we want to get things perfect, and spend a bunch of time getting this particular drawer just perfect–while the dusting and vacuuming goes undone. I do it all the time, and I’m sure other people here do too. (Example: before dinner, I had the kids clean their room, and then spent a bunch of time picking little pieces of trash out of their wire-grid toy shelves.)
I have a HUGE problem with getting sidetracked (and going to Lowes, and Target, and and and, and then putting together a piece of furniture). What helps me sometimes is the decluttering technique you see a lot on TV and online - you get a few large boxes and designate them things that make sense to you - some people do “keep”, “trash”, and “sell”, I tend to do “trash trash trash trash”, “this room”, and “other rooms” (this is one of the things we did in the BF’s office). You are NOT ALLOWED to take things into other rooms or put them up or anything - the way we did it, we threw everything that didn’t belong precisely where we were cleaning into the “this room” box, and when we made it all the way around the room having cleaned everything we vacuumed and all, and then we took the box and put all that stuff away. When you’re to that point, THEN you can go out and buy some shelving. 
Thanks for everybody who likes the outside! I’m so in love with it - maybe this time I’ll be motivated to keep it like that! I garden like I clean, getting so involved in planning and this little thing and that little thing that I lose track of the fact that while the side bed may be all southeastern native plants, the yard looks like crap. In a way it helps that I keep adding beds because it cuts down on the grass, but then if the beds look super-messy…
We got some new shelves for the bedroom last week, so it’s a little tidier- we really need designated surface to drop things, or we just leave crap all over. So the bedroom’s been a little tidier.
The kitchen didn’t get cleaned last night, but after Mr. Lissar does the dishes, I’m going to scrub it.
I’ve completely fallen off the cleaning bandwagon. And now I’m in the process of moving and sorting and generally having a miserable time of it. However, I will have less stuff once I’ve moved, AND a new slate to start from, so I’ll be lurking in these threads for awhile, until I’m in my new place. Whereever that may be.
Ah, now the moving sort and decluttering I liked. Hated the packing and moving part, of course. But moving is a great time to give yourself permission to get rid of stuff. I had a two bedroom + 1 office apartment and threw away more than 3 dumpsters full of crap. I know because everyone else in the building moved out before us, so we were the only ones filling the dumpsters and all three of them behind the apartment building were full the day we moved out. Actually the garbage truck came as we were closing the trunk of the car for the last trip across town. It was sort of poetic and cathartic to watch the garbage get squished and then drive away ourselves.
And you know what? We’ve been here since May, and there’s not a single item I’ve missed. Nothing. I couldn’t even tell you today what all that stuff was.
Zsofia’s boxes are more important than ever for you right now. I watched a lot of Clean Sweep in the months before we moved, and it was great therapy. “Keep, Sell, Toss!” became my mantra.
So good luck to you! You haven’t fallen off, you’re just taking a quick detour. Getting rid of stuff is a HUGE part - probably the hugest part - of becoming a *reformed *slob!
Thank you, WhyNot, but this move is a particularly excruciating one. But I will have much less stuff at the end of it, and I am looking forward to that.
Thanks.
I think I need some primal scream therapy or something. Aaaaaaaargh! My kids are so dang messy! They produce a truly astounding amount of chaos and mess, not to mention trash. Gah!
OK, now back to the schoolroom. We’re making progress–it’s just that the older one has produced 6000 crafts in the past 12 hours and left a gigantic mess on and around her desk (“I thought you would like some Japanese lanterns on a string!”), and the younger one wanted to cut some yarn to tie up the house she was trying to make for her horsie and completely destroyed 2 entire skeins in the process (with nothing more than a pair of kid scissors). I don’t mind losing $3 worth of yarn, but the zillions of little bits everywhere are a mite discouraging.
Breathe. Baby steps.
My level of disorder never quite rises to the problematic because we have a cleaning lady and we don’t spend much time at home. I find that going through clothing once a year and sorting out what you haven’t worn in fifteen months to get rid of helps keep the closet clutter down. If you can keep the clutter down to a minimum, it makes the house easier to clean.
This thread has inspired me to get to some projects. I have been procrastinating on a home project for two weeks. I removed some cabinets and put in some more. I need to patch an area of drywall and paint it. I’ll do it today and install some rails from ikea to keep stuff off the counter.
We’ve also been putting of laundry for a two weeks so we’ll get to that as well.
I have been terrible lately. We have had a succession of visitors and I always let things go when we have guests. Well, if they are here on holiday then I am too! So, the house is in chaos, and in need of dusting and hoovering. Still, the sink is always shiny, you can’t take that away from me! I look at all the clutter everywhere and feel a little despondant, so the other day I cheered myself up by decoupaging the baby’s bed. It’s all about priorities…
The before and after pics of the houses are great, you must both be very pleased. Our garden is slowly coming together and when I have finished the essay I have due in a week I have promised myself that I will rearrange the lounge, declutter the study, dust and hoover thoroughly and as a treat for doing all this can tend to the poor sick roses in the garden as I am dying to go out and do that. I hope to be back soon with good news! Keep up the good work you reformers you!
I did really well today - forewent golf in favor of working on the house. It honestly wasn’t as bad as I thought, I guess because I worked so hard on it when we started this thing. I didn’t clean off the coffee table or anything, but I did make a huge change in the living and dining rooms. Honestly, I hate it when there’s a bunch of crap in the living room that I have to step over to get to the couch. It puts me in a terrible mood! So why do I let it stay there?
Anyway, I did the “invite people over” trick, which always really makes me clean a lot! Had my folks over for dinner and I really did pretty much clean up the living and dining rooms (although of course I wrecked my nice clean kitchen.) I made pot roast in the pressure cooker, which is super easy and looks like a lot of work - all you do is smash together the carrots and parsnips when you get done and you have the meat, potatoes, and a root vegetable mash! And I also made shoo-fly pie, which I’ve never made before and which tastes like the dough for the gingersnaps I make. Now, the 64,000 question - can I keep it up?
You betcha. Part of it is I really don’t like doing things piecemeal. I’d far rather devote one large chunk of time to getting a project done rather than try to whittle away at it in bits.
I fell off the wagon. Or, rather, I’m on the same wagon but haven’t gotten much further. Still keeping up with dishes mostly, which is very ‘yay me’. I did get all the financial papers sorted and filed properly thanks to it being tax time.
I keep trying to figure out where I should store things such that the ‘place’ for ‘everything in its place’ would exist and I could then put things in their places. I’m not succeeding.
I think that, while I’m very good at initial organizing (I use room charts and grids when I move so I know exactly where all the furniture should go), I’m not good at envisioning how to reorganize to accommodate new things better.
Half of me thinks I should just bite the bullet and get a wall of cupboards built; the other keeps insisting I should be able to shoehorn everything in if I just do it right.
Congrats to all of you who are making progress! Your stories encourage me. I’ll get there. Someday. Somehow.
And here I came in because I read that as BDSM Reform Club and was going to enquire where’s the fun in that.
Damn that dyslexia anyway.
Oh well… Carry on!
Hmm. I’ll be working full-time for the next couple weeks. I will try to keep the kitchen clean, but the rest might slide. Oh, well.
I’m going to go through my clothes tomorrow, just to see if there’s anything else I can throw out.
Hoping to keep things up this week; so far so good today! And my husband was so nice and cleaned up quite a bit of his stuff in our room. I just vacuumed some of the area that used to be covered with cables.
We are happy because today, my husband will quit his job! He got a new job that he is really happy about, and he can hardly keep the grin off his face. He’s been wanting this for quite some time, so we are really thrilled. Whee!