Hey, this thread fell off the page. Where’d everybody go?
Well, I did it!!
I walked into the space that was supposed to be called an office but is now just a disaster area. I had to put on my gloves and a mask. I would have put on a dust-resistant suit but I didn’t have one. And I started to throw things out. I promised myself that I wouldn’t get in there and keep going until I just HAD to stop. I’ve done that before and that leads to never wanting to do it again. So I just did half an hour’s worth of uncluttering. The problem with that is that it looks exactly the same. . . as if I hadn’t touched it. But I’m hoping I can keep going with this. Wish me luck!
And thanks for all the motivation in this thread. Clean on!
Oh I backslid. Every couple of months, my sleep schedule goes way out of whack - I wake after four hours of sleep, find myself too hungry to sleep, get up to have a snack and wait to get sleepy, go to bed an hour or two later and wake up bushed. Then fall asleep on the couch early the next night, wake after four hours… :rolleyes:
Needless to say, I’m dragging myself around and I end up falling asleep before the dishes are done.
So it’s another weekend of catch-up. Sigh. It’s times like this that *Galaxy Quest helps.
Well, I did another 30 minutes of throwing out stuff and still no signs of progress. But there must be an end to it somewhere. So I’m in search of that mysterious place.
Another day, another 30 minutes of cleaning that room. Still no visible signs of progress. But now I’m getting curious. How long will it be before I notice an improvement? Is it a bottomless pit? What will I need to do before improvement shows? If that happens, will I feel better?
Stay tuned for the answer to some of these questions. . . hopefully.
I can’t answer that until I know what you’re decluttering, and how, and what your goal is. I will say that papers. need. a filing. cabinet. Do you have one?
Oh sorry, I meant those questions to be rhetorical, thrown up to the cleaning gods.
Because yeah, there’s a lot of stuff in there, mostly papers and stuff, so it’s gonna take time to go through some of it and even get a handle on what some of it is. And yup, I’ve got three filing cabinets, 6 individual drawers with hanging file folders and 5 boxes with file folders in them. Most of the drawers and boxes are already empty. I did a cleaning purge a while ago. But I don’t want to stick stuff back in the boxes, so right now, I’m mostly sorting and purging.
Thanks for your interest though. I was beginning to think I was writing to myself. I guess that’s why I was writing rhetorical questions.
My house is pretty much a disaster this weekend, but I did spend the last 45 minutes cleaning up the kitchen and sweeping, and generally tidying up. I’ve spent the last few days reading essays on homeschooling instead of doing housework–worse yet, they were old favorites that I’ve already read. :rolleyes:
Well, right now, I’m updating the file directory. After that, I will purge the folders of everything from before 2006. Then I will create new folders. Do you have a directory? It may sound like overkill, but it saves you a lot of grief.
For instance, what I’m looking at is the sub-directory of the Red Files and their contents. Account numbers and contact info are also listed on this page, which often saves actually having to dive into the files.
Phone (no change)
Electric (no change)
Cable (we switched cable companies, so all that info has to be changed)
Gas (no change)
Apartment (no change)
Cell phone (they changed ownership; more updating)
Further down the list, the pager folder has been empty for years, so it is about to become something else. New folders will be added at the end of the line. But I don’t know why I didn’t update the directory long ago; it’s had so much new info scribbled on it, it’s barely comprehensible! Also, please, please tell me we have more red folders. ::checks:: We do!
Okay, I’m officially trying to clamber back onto the wagon. Last night I cleaned off enough of the coffee table to put a pizza box on it.
The crisis, though, is outside. We don’t talk much about outdoor slobbery here, but damn can it get out of control! (Especially if you have a manual lawnmower.) I just thought I’d share a blog post I made today (on my totally neglected garden blog. Am I predictable or what?) so you guys could see my knee high weeds surrounding the Christmas sea lion in the yard. Also there are pictures of my sweet dependable bulbs, so it’s not all doom and gloom.
Anyway, I made a start today - took like 45 minutes, stuffed the Christmas crap in the attic, mowed some (some!) of the weeds until I got to a piece of the neighbor’s dog crap, which is truly gross when you run it over with a reel mower, and took a look around. The great thing is, when your yard is that much of a mess, doing just a little makes a big difference! (And it’s a security issue - I’m sure I’ll get more stuff stolen off my porch if it’s a mess.)
I’ve been following an online housecleaning program – well, sorta kinda following it. It would be more helpful if I could plug in my home’s dimensions and problem zones, because, for example, I HAVE to vacuum more frequently than it calls for.
BUT, the general principle has lead to an enormous improvement around here. It’s about doing 20-minute jobs frequently, and tackling noticeable details.
Like, last week I brasso’d the handles on all the bathroom cabinets, and also washed them inside & out. It’s amazing how much better the bathrooms look to me now, with those nice shiny handles - it’s a real motivator, tackling a detail like that.
But I’m not thorough about everything all the time. Instead of taking 2 hours to mop the floor, oh, about three times a year (before Major Holidays and Familial Visits), I now mop it in 20 minutes once a week. Which means I don’t scrub every inch to perfection the way I used to, BUT the high-traffic areas get attention every week. In the long run, it looks MUCH better and I get more satisfaction from the work I do.
I’m lurking in this thread, mostly, but tonight I started to organise the out of control bookshelves by the front door, selected some books to give away, took out recycling, swept the foyer and shook out the rugs, and weeded the front garden enough to fill two small buckets, and… Um, made dinner.
I never thought to look for Kim and Aggie on YouTube–now that’s great inspiration!
Wow, this thread is hard to find. It keeps falling off the front page.
Anyway, 30 more minutes cleaning that room. . . and I’m starting to see some possibility!! I’m still not seeing the end of it, but there’s a small noticeable improvement, I think.
I’ve thrown out three garbage bags of stuff and that helped a little. And since I was throwing stuff out, I tossed some stuff from the garage as well. Yay me!!
So…yeah…bandwagon… it’s way over yonder somewhere. I fell off back there somewhere. Now, I can’t prove causation, but I did notice the whole place fell apart when I stopped wearing my lace-up shoes and stopped shining my sink! Dammit.
Funny thing is yesterday I got back on, deep cleaned the bathroom (even the ceiling was ucky!), Swiffered everything, reorganized the baby’s room, did 6 loads of laundry…
…and only at bedtime did I realize it was the Equinox. (Bad pagan!) Spring cleaning, indeed!
The house is doing OK, though not spectacular. I did a ton of laundry yesterday–including all the quilts–but otherwise haven’t done much this week, because I’ve been working on the exterior.
I spent quite a lot of yesterday and today power-washing the house (yay me!). I learned that scrubbing stucco is not a lot of fun, but scrubbing siding is, and power-hosing is quite fun (our cookie-cutter house is siding on the front, where it shows, and stucco on the back. It’s also painted a pretty color in front and a cheap off-white in back, like every other house in the neighborhood). I also learned that my house was pretty dirty.
I’m going to do some sanding this afternoon on the spots that need it, and then caulk tomorrow (at least in back, where most of it is needed). Also, I found another piece of siding that is going bad, though it isn’t in such bad shape as the first one was, and I think it will be quite simple to replace. Bleah, house-painting is hard!
It’s hard to get started. . .and even harder to get started again, so good job!
I have a question about this. Does this make the paint come off faster? I’m undecided if I care about the dirty exterior of the house if cleaning includes the risk of paint falling off and needing new paint.
Hm. Well, if the paint is already peeling, some more bits will come off. But if the paint is in good shape, it shouldn’t hurt it, and will get rid of a lot of bugs and junk. And it did give me a good chance to inspect every part of the exterior closely, so that I found some things that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise–like the bad bit of siding in a sheltered corner, and the weird rusty hole in a vinyl window frame.
Paint is like skin on a house, so it does need to be kept up; it’s not just decorative (as I am finding out). My siding is really just particleboard (another new discovery), so the paint is actually doing a lot of work and I have to make sure it’s OK. Under the siding is tarpaper, and then the wooden frame with insulation.
If you want to power-wash your house, I just used my own hose with a good spray-gun attachment and it worked great. I used a narrow pushbroom for the scrubbing; I put 1 part TPS soap concentrate to 4 or 5 parts water in a bucket and slopped it on. The soap dissolves a bunch of gunk, so you only have to scrub at the really bad spots, and then it all rinses off after you leave it to work for 10 minutes or so. I got fairly wet. I think from now on I will try to at least rinse the house once a year or so.
So another 30 minutes spent cleaning that room. I think I’m nearing the middle because it’s feeling like drudgery. The beginning of a project is exciting because I can think of the outcome and the end is exciting because it’s almost over. It’s the middle that doesn’t feel so good. So I must be nearing the middle. yay.
Yahoo! I just got a bump in my production. Right after I posted that last post, I came to a box in the middle of the room. I thought I was going to have to go through the contents, but it turned out to be empty. So things are moving a little faster than I predicted. Whew! It wasn’t looking good for a while there.
Wow, it’s been 5 whole days since my last 30 minute session cleaning the room. I could have sworn that only 3 days passed by. My, how time flies!
But my 30 minute session is done for today. Yay!
And now I’m firmly planted in the middle. I could see some progress in some ways, but it’s still looks like quite a mess. I don’t want to push papers back into drawers though because that would be hiding it and I might not get back to it. So I’m leaving all the papers on the outside all over everything which makes it look horrible.
The upside to doing this slowly is that I’m not burning out on it. But the downside is that progress is so slow. It’s hard to keep up motivation sometimes.
I’m appreciating this thread because it gives me somewhere to keep track of my progress and I’m hoping that it might motivate others sometimes too.
