SDMB Slob Reform Club - The Re-Resurrection

The previous thread has been idle for 2 1/2 months so I decided to start a new thread. Hopefully some of us may have some new stuff to report. I know I do.

Thanks to a recent wake up call on my procrastinating ways and my washer malfunctioning and overflowing in my garage I realized I really, really needed to get off my butt and get things done. No more excuses.

My garage was packed and I mean packed. I was too embarrassed to even take a “before” picture. I had a walk way through the door from the kitchen to the outside door and access to my washer and dryer. That was it. My washer had overflowed on Wednesday and the water ran all the way out to front of the garage and to the street. I knew a lot of the stuff on the floor would be ruined and start getting moldy. I couldn’t do anything Wednesday because I had to get to work but Thursday I had a few hours to work and I managed to clear a space. I broke down a bathroom cabinet that had been ruined by the water. I threw out a couple non-working box fans, I bagged up a lot of plastic bottles I was saving for recycling and broke down some empty boxes. I removed other bags of recycling stuff that I had collected but not taken and managed to clear enough of a space and pathway to walk to the middle of my garage.

Friday was a day off because we had to go see Iron Man.

Today I took all the recycling to a nearby recycling drop-off and continued to work on the garage. I started going through some boxes of papers. There were some magazines and a lot of schoolwork from the '80’s. I filled two boxes with papers to purge for recycling. Made a small stack of stuff to shred, old bills and things, and had one small bin of stuff I wanted to save. I managed to clear out 3 boxes, one very large one. It felt good. I also changed the light bulbs on my garage fluorescent light fixture, those things are always a pain in the butt to me but I finally got the bulbs to stay in and I had nice non-flickering light to work in. Except now I have to find out what to do with the old light bulbs.

Anyway, I found a lot of stuff I forgot I had! It was like an archeology dig into my past. I even found some bottles of liquor that a website tells me should still be good as long as there is no crystallization. I found a bunch of wigs I had bought when a local costume store went out of business and they were well wrapped up so no creatures got to them. I also discovered why I have a mouse problem (aside from the mess). Apparently I had a bag of coffee in one of the boxes and the mice chewed into it, they’ve been caffeinated!

I have some old blankets that got wet and may be salvageable if washed soon but I can’t trust my washer and I don’t want to run up my water bill either. I tried running it today since I was out there to watch it and it still managed to overflow and I didn’t notice until I was standing in water. I can’t get a new washer until I get enough space cleared to get a new one in there. I won’t bother to have it repaired because I bought it over 10 years ago for under $200. I don’t think it’s worth trying to fix. I may have to resort to a laundromat for a while.

I still have a lot of work to do but it feels good to have accomplished something. I think the wake-up call (not related to the washer) can keep me going for a while providing I have no other major disasters happen. I was recently going through my sketchbook (fortunately it is in the house), I sketch from pictures I see in magazines and I had been lamenting not having the some of the original pictures so I could finish my sketches. Today I found a picture from a magazine of a wild cat that I had started to sketch, so I can at least finish that sketch. I took it as a good sign. I am excited about getting something done in my garage because I also have a bunch of hobby projects planned and I need my garage cleared to work on them. I feel the creativity started to stir in my brain again. I’m starting to feel better about myself.

So how is everyone else doing?

My major accomplishments on the home front this week:

  • ironed enough work clothes to last me about a week and a half, plus a few nicer casual clothes. This took me about three hours. I usually hate ironing enough so that I wind up only ironing one outfit at a time as needed, but I finally said to hell with it and did everything at once. Note: if you have to stand in the same place doing the same chore for that long, doing it in front of the TV while a favorite movie is playing can help make time go a LOT faster.

  • planted some vegetables to see if I could actually grow something edible. I’ve had some success with cultivating cane cuttings from houseplants, but my food growing attempts in the past have not been successful on the whole. However, I attribute that to waning interest on my part. On the menu: cucumbers, hot peppers, and Japanese eggplants. I’m hoping at least the eggplants will show up with a little TLC.

  • cleaned out a bunch of crap in my closet to take to the PTA Thrift Shop.

  • did some file deletion/organization/backup on my computer. I have this “Miscellaneous” folder on my desktop that gets very clogged from time to time, not to mention I forget everything that goes into it.

I am getting a working vacuum cleaner this week. It should help to reduce the horror of cleaning up after two adults, two cats, and a baby.

Cleared my desk off a couple of days ago. Huge job.

I’m trying to stay on top of dishwashing, and this week I will scrub and bleach down the kitchen. I will.

i got a nice chest of drawers at a flea market. now the paper recycling, “go to work” pile, photo boxes, hats, sunglasses, brollys, etc have a home and are not all jumbled up on top of the tv cart.

the tv cart will be taken apart stained and become the coffee table.

the basement still needs some work… i can only work down there in brief spurts due to allergies.

wile e there is nothing like a flood to get things cleared out. about 4 years ago this month we had a flood in the basement and everything that was in paper boxes on the floor was trash. i didn’t even look because the boxes were wet to the lids.

every now and again i think “i know we had this and that” then i remember… oh yeah, the flood.

I cleaned out my garage a couple of weeks ago - it was full of empty boxes and trash and junk from when we moved here in 2006. Now there’s room for my car in there!

Scrubbed my kitchen and all my kitchen cabinets.

Did a hands-and-knees scrub of the bathroom floor (the toilet was leaky for a long time and there were 'shrooms growing around the base of the thing).

Sat on my husband until he fixed my vacuum.

Right now I’m trying to work up the motivation to go mow my yard and burn my brush pile before the City Ruler Man sends me a stern letter.

Fine! I’ll clean up the cat vomit and clear out the garage, just quit nagging me!
Really that is what I’m going to do right now. As soon as I click on “Post Quick Reply”.

Two boys left a flyer in my mailbox advertising that they would mow lawns for people in the neighborhood this summer. One of my roommates called them up and gave them the horror tour of the backyard. They mowed it on Saturday.

My lawn hasn’t been mowed since last July. Me and the dog rolled in it this afternoon.

I had to work today so couldn’t get as much done but I emptied out a few more boxes and doubled the recycle pile. I am ashamed to say that I knew I had mice but I found droppings that must have belonged to a rat or the biggest mother-lovin’ mouse ever. I put on a re-breathing mask today just to be safe from my dust allergies and possible hanta virus or plague. [sub]just kidding … I hope.[/sub]

Unfortunately I have filled my trash can and garbage pickup isn’t until Tuesday. But I have a couple appointments and work tomorrow, then Tuesday and Wednesday are my extra long work days so I won’t be able to get much done in the garage. I am going to shift to doing smaller, less dirty jobs inside the house for those days; like cleaning and organizing my desk and washing dishes/cleaning the kitchen. Gotta keep moving before the inertia can set in again.

Got all the laundry done. Put down ant traps.

Tomorrow I’m going to bleach down the kitchen, if the baby will sleep long enough. And on Wednesday I should be getting my working vacuum cleaner!