I’ll summarize what I wrote in my slob report thread.
Done -
My laundry
Coat/shoe closet
Still needs work -
Wife/son’s laundry
Computer room
Bedroom
Garage
Kitchen
Haven’t even started-
Weeds in the back yard
Dirty Carpets
I’m going to buy at least one bookshelf, and possible a matching entertainment stand (for DVDs and CDs) to help make sure everything has a place to go. That’s my biggest problem, I think. I have more stuff than I’ll use, and there isn’t enough space to put everything.
Alright fine. After clearing off the counter and sink of dirty dishes, wiping it down, and cleaning the microwave I’ve decided I’m just too damned lazy (today) and would rather torch the place and buy an empty home that I can organize how I want with what I already have.
my darling SO, if you happen to read this, keep in mind I’m just moody today and I’m excited about moving in, and nervous!
I think I may still actually have a dustmop around somewhere; but that Swiffer sweep 'n vac actually sounds useful – because of the drifts of dog hair which are a bit much for a dustmop to pick up, but which form on a daily basis nevertheless. I’ll check into one tomorrow. I’ve seen those on TV and wondered if they really work well, so I’m glad to have a testimonial!
picked up and vacuumed the living room / office floor (It’s one big space that is half carpeted and half tiled - the tiled part is still covered with Christmas presents that haven’t found a home and miscellaneous crap from before the holidays.)
done a load of dishes - must still get the clean dishes out of the dishwasher. That’s our weak point - everybody puts dirty dishes in, IF it’s empty. It’s keeping empty that we’re working on.
watched a really amazingly silly and explosion-y movie that made me wonder if I should just fling an F-35 (they’re up to 35 now?!) at my house, instead.
The three adults in our house (the guys and I) are going to sit down tonight and talk budgeting. We’re planning on keeping all our receipts for January, and tracking every penny that comes in and goes out. It’s Slobby Budget Reform. I’m sure we’ll be horrified well before the end of the month at how much pointless crap we buy, but that’s part of the point.
After that, one of us is going to take the dishes out of the dishwasher. There may be a fight to the death to figure out which one. Films at 11.
I think this must be super-common. Unfortunately, my boyfriend and I are both awful slobs, and we have a lot of the exact same behaviors - last time we tried to clean up his office, there was a point where I looked around and realized that he’d been coming up with a system to hang up his Cat-5 cables for about as long as I’d been making labels for all the different kinds of paper he uses. And we were trying to be so good - I’d adapted the Flylady’s “you can do anything for twenty minutes” thing, and been going around very systematically with a keep/trash/sell box set, etc - we just, you know, get distracted. Like vampires counting lentils.
That happens to me, too. Instead of doing a general tidy/toss/clean, I start getting obsessive in the middle of the task–last time, it was in the midst of putting away a ton of home office supplies, and I ended up sorting pens by colour and point size. I like fine point, by the way.
No! Just put the damned pens in one place, then you’ll know where pens live!
Don’t even get me started on what happens when you start making labels for things…
Well, at this point I’ve done enough other stuff today – I ended up vacuuming and dusting and finishing up the final de-cluttering in the spare bedroom, then gave the living room a thorough dusting, did some laundry, and changed the cat box – that I’m going to reward myself by taking the time to sort my knitting needles by size. Then it’ll be done, and I won’t have that distraction any more! Of course, I’m sure I’ll come up with a new one. Sigh. At least it’s nice to know I’m not alone in my distractability! Vampires counting lentils – hee!
I put all the Christmas boxes and gift bags away, and the couch is still clear of clutter from the Christmas cleaning. Tomorrow I’m going to start on the paperwork that needs to be done, including shredding and filing. I already got rid of several stacks of paper, including junk mail and newspapers that had stacked up around in various places. So now that it’s started, I’ll keep going. Small steps, but those are doable.
Well my skills in this area suck beyond the telling of it. Can I join?
My goal is to actually unpack the boxes when I got back to my dorm next month, which seemed (hell, still seems) unimportant for minor stuff since I have to pack it up again at the beginning of the year. Yeah, excuses I know, but it’s how I feel about it.
Hmmm, I did separate art supplies and traditional school supplies into semi organized boxes to use there, does that count?
Finished the laundry. Scrubbed the bathrooms. Went to Wal*Mart for new shower-curtain, new toilet seat. Put up new shower curtain; toilet seat gets done tonight. Bought some plastic milk-crate type things to put my every-day shoes in. The rest will go into under-bed boxes. I need to clean out the dressers, the closet, and under the bed in the master bedroom, and dust, as well. Maybe tomorrow.
I want to get the kids’ toys somewhat under control. I’m pretty sure there’s room for them all on the shelves, but since Christmas a bunch of them don’t have ‘homes’ yet so it’s kind of difficult to tell. If they don’t all fit, some will go, but I’ve already gotten rid of some so I think we’re done with that part.
Time to clean the kitchen properly.
If my dad has time today, I’d like to get the Christmas tree out of here. I don’t want to wait for my husband’s project to be finished, and my dad’s on vacation and willing to help me out.
I hereby promise not to get too distracted by the cool purse I’m sewing to match my neat wallet I made. But I’m going to sew a bit. I’m using up some of my too-abundant fabric, so it’s technically slob reform, right?
Well, phooey. I had all these great plans for today, but my husband just outfoxed me by wanting to go goof off at a casino this afternoon. So I guess if I do any cleaning, it’ll be this evening.
Oh well. I was so good yesterday that when I was done with all the heavier work I was going to be doing, I sorted my knitting needles just so I wouldn’t have that task sitting there staring at me to distract me! I can’t wait to see what my new distraction task will be. :rolleyes:
It is nothing short of astounding how much trash my two young daughters can produce. Every few weeks I go in there and try to sort out all the trash–the papers, the tiny plastic junky toys, whatever–and it’s always overwhelming. Anyway, now their toys are sorted out and all have a home on the shelves. I took a picture but I still haven’t posted any of them, so that’s not much help.
Now a little friend is coming over and I’m going to jump in the shower. After lunch I’ll tackle the kitchen.
Bah. I made a good start this morning clearing out a big box of miscellaneous wires and cords and saving what I really need, but then I got sidetracked by LibraryThing and thought, “you know, I’ve been meaning to catalog my books for a long time now…” The wires project is half-finished on my floor.
Well, I had already decided that I need to get cracking on my house-cleaning organizing. I had been working on going through a bunch of containers and boxes I inherited from my mother’s place when she went into assisted living. There’s very little of anything I want to keep. A lot of it is holiday stuff and collectible type dolls she’d buy and do nothing with them. Yeah, she was a bit of a hoarder. I’ve been through most of those containers now and I intend to take the stuff I don’t want to a garage sale or consignment store. Much of it is kind of new and if I can get a few dollars for my time spent sorting it all it would be worth it.
I also have a bit of an artistic bent and I keep a lot of stuff that looks like junk in order to use it in artsy projects, but I need a place to keep it so it doesn’t look like I’m just keeping useless junk.
I have a house full of Servants of Chaos* who will immediately try to undo any cleaning or organizing that I manage to do so everything that I m keeping needs to go into closed cabinets, closets, or storage containers to protect the items from their efforts.
The problem with getting to such a cluttered state is that you never know where to start. I really need to clean a large enough area int he garage, spare room or living room so I have a staging area for my de-clutter efforts. I think I just need to start by cleaning a small room like a bathroom or closet so I can feel like I accomplished something to keep my enthusiasm for the job. Okay, I’m going to sign off now and clean a bathroom. Be back later.
I have boxes and bubble wrap for the breakables that are going to charity. (Do vases breed? And if so, why can’t you ever find one when you need it?) Tomorrow will be a packing day. I have boatloads of crap, er, stuff for charity. I sorted and shelved a ton of books that had been blocking my bedroom door for about a year. I can actually *walk *into the bedroom now, instead of sidling. I’m only keeping 1 shelf of these books, the rest are leaving the house.
I also made an appointment with the county’s Household Hazardous Waste disposal unit to drop off the case of oil additives that has been sitting in my living room for years, along with assorted household cleaners. They’re rather coy about location - I guess because they have too much after-hours dumping otherwise.
How do I re-format computers for donating? I’m totally clueless. I think they’re running Windows 95. I don’t know if they still work, but they probably have personal information on them.
I think I hover somewhere around a 1 on the squalor scale - there is always laundry on the sofa, either dumped on it or stacked on the back, waiting to be taken upstairs. Always stuff on the stairs, waiting to be taken up, dishes in the sink, dirty laundry on the floor in front of the washer…
I have an attack of the cleanlies every week or so but with three other slobs in the house and only one person (moi) who does much about it, it is a losing battle.
However I am on holiday this week, and despite the other lot also being on holiday and so dirtying more dishes etc, I am gradually working my way around the house. I have put nearly all of Christmas away, there is only the tree left to wrap and get into the attic. And tonight during a long phone call with my brother, I worked my way around all my cabinets in my kitchen, and wiped down the doors and counters. Inside them is still messy (but not too bad, as an anti clutter method I have only one day’s worth of crockery. That way I HAVE to wash up!) but the outside gleams!
I also spent two hours tidying up and weeding our kitchen units which house coffee and teas, cups and canned goods on one side, phone, decorative stuff and bread and cereals in the middle, and kids study books and school stuff on the other side. I threw away one big bin bag out of there - mostly done and half done notebooks, workbooks and even a couple of last year’s textbooks! (The type the kids write in so are not returned.) It looks much sleeker and there is even space on the shelves that I want to leave that way.
It is snowing heavily now, and the outlaws who live nearby are away, coming home tomorow. So in the morning we will shovel out our place, then go and do theirs, then my husband has promised to go through our office hell hole with me. He has been saying he’ll do it since October but Tomorrow Is The Day!!
My dad’s coming over and the tree’s coming down, yay! He’s also going to take a look at my garage door, which stopped working yesterday. Luckily I had parked on the driveway so I could clean up the peices of trash on the garage floor! If we can’t fix the door between us, I’ll call Elaine, my garage door guru.
My kitchen is destroyed again, so I guess I’ll clean that up today if I can.
I’m sure we’ll be horrified well before the end of the month at how much pointless crap we buy, but that’s part of the point.