Blargh. Must stop reading the Dope and go clean bedrooms.
I bear good news: the Mound O’ Crap is gone! 
The mound of miscellaneous junk in one corner of my apartment is gone! My best friend came over with his truck and we took two non-working monitors and the non-working laser printer (a two-person lift–I got it as a castoff from work) to the city’s computer recycling at the “transfer station”. We pitched the styrofoam and bubble wrap and the other stuff into the dumpster. We broke down all the boxes and paper and shoved them into one of the wheelie recycle bins outside (filling it up). Now all that remains are two more monitors (the city only takes three computer items at a time), and the TV table, which I was keeping anyways.
We hung a picture. We cleared out other recycling–newspapers, containers–that was just ready to go. Then we realised, “We need boxes for the books that will be donated. Didn’t we just have some here? Oh, yeah. We just recycled them.” :smack:
Now it’s time to clean the kitchen again, clean the bathroom, and clear off my desk.
But… the Mound O’ Crap is gone!
Man here. Gotta keep the gender mix balanced here y’know.
Wow, what a sucky party.
I cleaned my living room, kitchen, and bathroom yesterday, 'cause I had friends coming over. Took me all day and now my back hurts. But I’m going to TRY (and I’ve said this a million times before, and never manage to succeed) to keep at least those three rooms clean and presentable. Or at least keep the dishes washed, since I couldn’t afford the new dishwasher I was hoping to buy.
If I ever have a day off again (I have a 72 hour work week coming up, starting tonight) I promise to take down my Christmas tree.
Himself went fishing tonight. I am debating whether to go do something, or let the beer I’ve just drunk drag me down into somnolent slobbishness. I might try to work for an hour or so.
Bingo! That’s been me today. And unrepentantly so, I might add!
This is the story with me and Mr. Stillwell. I am blessed that he handles all the laundry (he’s sorting as I type this!) and is pretty neat & organized in general, but egads that man does not know how to correctly load a dishwasher. After several constructive critisisms from me he just started leaving them in the sink for me to load. I don’t mind at all because I just see it as one of my jobs, while he handles certain others like laundry and the bulk of the cooking.
That said I’m horribly behind. I spent the last two days at my son’s basketball tournament and haven’t gotten a damn thing done. So right after this cup of coffee it’s time to get busy.
Sunday, a day of rest–except for the pile o’ dishes still sitting there. We went out last night, and were both so tired from the horrors of Friday night that we just went to bed. So I get to tackle all that after church. But we’re going over to my folks for dinner, so no cooking for me!
So HERE you all are! I thought everyone had given up and gone back to the world of unshiny sinks, and instead it was you moved away and left me behind. 
Today is paper day again. Alas. Still, there is only 1/2 of one drawer of filing cabinet left to triage. After that, I might actually start on putting things INTO the drawers, from my 4 ‘to file’ in boxes, but I’m going to try to be smarter about it.
See, as I’ve been discarding old papers, I’ve become very aware of how few things I ever looked at again. I’m going to make a file folder for the paperwork of each major new purpose (furnace, range, washer & dryer) but I’m simply going to toss the instruction booklets and receipts and warrantees of the small stuff. Because, you know, if the toaster dies, am I really going to go to the hassles of looking up the warrantee, packaging it, mailing, waiting 6 or 8 weeks for it to come back??? I think not.
And utility bills and such: why keep them? Especially why keep whole folders of each kind? I’m going to try a single ‘utility’ folder. Each time a new bill comes, I’ll check to make sure they properly recorded my payment from the previous month. If so, write on the receipt half how much I’m paying this time, then put that into the file and throw away the previous month’s version. One folder with just a single month’s receipt for gas/electric/phone/water heater/cable/etc – surely that’s simple enough that I can keep up with it??
I need to toot my own horn for a minute, please. 
All NECESSARY paper older than 7 years has been put in the box at the bank, all necessary paper younger than 7 years has been neatly filed, all other paper has been shredded, the house is fairly neat (a friend could visit without embarrassment, my mother-in-law not so much) and . . .
(wait for it)
our 2006 taxes are done!
Yay me!
Actually, I cheated this week. Giant freakin marine found a laundromat with “Service.” That’s what the sign & receipt call it – Service – but it means we paid $62 for someone else to pick up, wash, dry, hang or fold as appropriate, and deliver our laundry, including sheets & towels! It’s not something I would do every week, but it did eliminate the mountain of dirty cloth while allowing me to placate the IRS.
Wow. We haven’t even got our T4’s from work yet.
Today wasn’t very busy for me in terms of cleaning, but tomorrow I’ll try to reorganize the linen closet before I go to work. After laundry. It’s going to be -17 tomorrow. Going to the laundromat will be sheer joy.
One of the few joys of being self-employed as well as having jobs with good payroll departments. The biz books are closed 31 dec, and we both got our W-2s (I assume they’re like your T4s) handed to us on 31 jan.
I truly don’t mean this in a snarky way, but I’m jealous of your cold winter weather, and of you getting to go to a nice warm laundromat. I wanna go back to Montana <whine>, where we have real seasons and small pleasures like walking into a steaming, Bounce-scented room.
Okay, the joy lasts mere minutes before turning into sweatyness, but I still miss it. I used to wash **all ** the blankets & throw rugs (even the clean ones), just so I could go to the warm, fragrant, humid laundromat when it was bitterly cold.
OK, this is a bit lame, but I would like to announce that all the dishes are done. Every single one. There is nothing on the counter or sink, and that has not been the case since Friday evening. So, woohoo!
Also, I did two loads of laundry and cleaned off the table, which was totally wrecked, since the kids spent half the afternoon making art projects on it after we failed to clear off the lunch dishes or the Sunday paper. Their favorite activities involve tons of paper, scissors, and plenty of markers and Scotch tape. I think our paper use is accounting for entire forests, which kind of worries me, but what am I supposed to do? “Nope, sorry, stop making art and expressing yourself! None of that around here, missy!” I guess I’ll make up for it by…hm. Taking sub showers, maybe?
I spent a chunk of a couple evenings studying for a competition and then the week was half gone. Have been keeping up with dishes & laundry & getting stuff like recycle out promptly, however.
Today I tidied and vacuumed the front hall, did three loads of laundry, washed the kitchen floor, and made some yummy muffins for the week. Got my baking dishes to do in a while and I’ll boil an egg to go into a salad I’ll be making tomorrow.
Just seeing this thread reminds me to get off my butt and go do something
My brothers, specially Middlebro since he “left the nest” sooner, have this highly annoying habit of dropping the dishes instead of depositing them. They once started to place knives pointy-end-up but I got rid of that by saying “if I cut myself, you are doing the hand-washing. And you’re redoing it as many times as it takes to be clean by my standards.” Mom’s flat has very low water pressure, pots and pans need to be handwashed. And my standards say that a pan’s bottom is not clean if it’s greasy or blackened; the bros tend to handwash the insides of things but not the outsides (listen guys, if that dish has been sitting on top of another dirty dish, the bottom of the dish that was on top is dirty too!)
When I bought my apartment, the previous owners left everything that was in the kitchen. This was cool, but the carts in the dishwasher were in very bad shape. Mom was getting a new one; luckily, her old carts fitted my dishwasher, so I inherited them. But I kept the old ones until my bros came to see the place. I pointed to the chipped, rusty spots and said “you know how that came to be?” “:dubious: No idea, must have been bad material.” “Nope. Dropping metal lids instead of carrying them all the way down.” “No kiddin’!” “No kiddin’ at all.” “Wow.” I’m told it helped. SiL reports telling her husband “hey, remember how much one of those carts is worth!” when she hears him dropping the lids in.
Did I say I’d given one of my old tees a downward promotion to rags? I did. Another one is right now being used as a rag and will be thrown away when it’s deemed dirty. Several other pieces of clothing have been thrown away. A pity this hit when I was away, there’s piles and piles of Stuff to be gone through and selected for throwaway/keeping back home. It’s one of the worst parts about this line of work, I usually move with little warning so never get around to using the moves to clean up.
Another lurker fessing up!
I’ve been following with interest since the thread pitting the Flylady! I’m another one who doesn’t see mess. I can walk past piles of junk and dust and they are somehow filtered out of vision. When I was 10 my mum bought a sign for my bedroom door which said, “Please do not tidy the mess in my room. You will confuse me and screw up my whole world.” This still holds true today, it may look like a bomb has hit the house but I know where everything is!
I am also a world class procrastinator. “I really should hoover up those balls of cat fur, what with being allergic to them.” and then the thought leaves my mind as quickly as it entered and it never gets done because I am off to do something more interesting.
So, I have been following you all with great interest… In the original pit thread someone mentioned a web site called Motivated Moms. I went there and spent the best $9 in a long time! I may well not do housework because I can’t be arsed, but give me a list of jobs, and a little tick space next to each one and you immediately appeal to my inner geek, and have her most earnest attention! The list has daily jobs which include cleaning the kitchen sink, and wiping the ones in the bathroom. Then, each day there are other jobs to do. For example today’s extra ones were: inventory fridge and plan meals around contents, vacuum first floor, restock toilet paper in bathrooms, clean toilets.
It works for me because I neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed to tick things off, sad little bunny that I am, and it doesn’t tell you to deal with a whole room alll in one go which I find terribly off-putting. Also, if you skip a job, it comes up again another week you don’t have to backtrack.
So far it has been 3 weeks and I have stuck with it. I notice everything looking cleaner and generally more sparkly and I like it! I have also found that I do more than they ask, for example if it says ‘clean bathroom mirrors’ I do that and as I am already there with a cloth and cleaning products in my hands I often end up cleaning more than just the mirrors, and shining my halo!
And that folks concludes my longest ever post! I’ll be back to let you know if I am sticking with it!
Thanks so much for getting me off my lazy bum! You are doing a great job!
Oh dear, I wasn’t even going to confess to being a lurker over here! Being outside the US I had no idea what FlyLady was so I had to go and do a bit of investigating although from what was said in the Pit thread, I would have had a hard time reading the site without shouting at my 'pooter.
I hate mess, I’ve always hated mess. Yet I live in a partially renovated house that is several years away from completion, with a bloke who doesn’t see clutter at all despite most of it being his.
I am also a world-class procrastinator, and I’m terminally lazy when it’s something that doesn’t immediately look like fun.
I’d love to live in a small house with storage space for all the junk, with someone who is willing to clean up after himself without me having to tell him he’s only done half the job…but that’s not going to happen so I have to make the best of things. AT the moment I manage to keep the kitchen and bathroom clean (they get done properly on a fairly regular basis), and the floors get vacuumed every week, and mopped as an when necessary.
Other than that, I’m uninspired by cleaning, I have nowhere near enough storage space (or too much junk that doesn’t belong to me) and lots of clutter that’s not mine to dispose of.
Am I a hopeless case?
Nitpick, or maybe explanation: “a bloke who doesn’t see clutter at all because most of it is his.”
Mom claims that one of the most revealing moments of her 42 years with Dad was when they realized that Other People’s Stuff Is Clutter, Your Own Stuff Is Just Where It Oughta. If he left a magazine on the coffee table, it bugged her. If she left a magazine on the coffee table, it didn’t bother her at all. Revert pronouns, rinse and reapply.
It’s a little hard to explain if you’ve not seen the state of the house! He goes and buys stuff which comes home in a plastic bag (or several bags!), he takes out the thing he’s bought and leaves the bag(s) on the floor. Lots of them. Then he puts bags inside bags and still keeps them. He doesn’t put them in the bag recycler, he just leaves them on the floor.
He gets stuff out to use and never puts it away again - things like steel tapes, hammers, screwdrivers etc - they get left lying wherever they were last put. We have a shelf over the meter cupboard in the hallway that has more screwdrivers and DIY paraphenalia on it than has room for. Yet he has a perfectly good toolbox to keep all that stuff in. And it’s not like he’s about to use any of it.
I know the argument about his stuff being stuff and mine being clutter, or vice versa, but it’s much worse than that. He’s a serial hoarder, a proper packrat. Inside his computer room are boxes and bits of packaging for items he’s not laid eyes on for ages, bit of kit that have been damaged, broken or discarded, but still he hangs on to the packaging. Then there’s the floor to ceiling stacks of magazines (three stacks, equal height) in the bedroom. He’s keeping them in case he needs one of them at some point, despite the fact that in the last six years he’s never so much as touched the magazines…
But, but, but… he needs it!