Didn’t get to everything planned this week, but I did get some done and that’s the point - keep at it.
I did dishes and a five minute pick up. I’ve just been so busy lately.
i got through the “craft bag”. tonight i will fix a clock as the clock items were in the “craft bag”. very exciting!
Not much this week. Did manage to go through the mail as I have said I would do weekly, which is good, but that’s about it. I am enjoying everything being just slightly more organized, though – there are a couple of things that have been on my to-do list forever that I could now clearly see needed to be done because they are now at the top of the much-smaller-mail-pile.
Spouse was sick last week, so I was doing a lot more driving, and I am realizing that driving just tends to saps my energy to do anything else. My kids are in the stage of life where I feel like all I do is drive them around, so yeah, that’s a problem. (I’m doing as many carpools as I can, which at least cuts down on the driving by half, but ugh.)
Yeah, driving. I’m driving into the office four days a week now and it’s a lot of time and energy. I’m pretty wiped. On a day like tonight, due to my son’s therapy, I’m spending 2.5 hours on the road and I’m not even getting back to the house until 7pm.
I managed to put my laundry and dishes away this morning. Hoping for a five minute pick-up before bed tonight. But mostly I’ve just been listening to A Slob Comes Clean podcast and living vicariously through her clients.
Had a busy couple of weeks and didn’t do anything, but this weekend I got rid of one (1) pile of papers that I’d just stuck on my dresser. Except for the part of that pile that was my younger child’s classwork from last term, which ended in November, which is only around because I want my husband to look at it and then I will file them. (I probably don’t need to keep them long-term – I kept my older child’s classwork and that has been actually pretty useful to gauge what she was learning as well as compare to my younger child, but since he’s my youngest it’s not like I need to keep it for another child after him.) So yeah, I still need to work on the part where I keep piles around for a specific reason and then I totally don’t follow through with whatever that reason is.
I feel like I need more large dedicated pieces of time. Like, if I had even a couple of consecutive hours to declutter I could, for example, declutter the bookshelf in the bedroom which has become something of a mess. But I haven’t had a couple of consecutive hours to devote to decluttering in a few weeks now, and I don’t anticipate having that time for at least another couple of weeks. And then of course when I’m sick I just lose all will to do decluttering-ish things.
The other thing I need is time when my kiddo also has time to talk to him about all the Legos. Maybe during his spring break as we’re not traveling this year for it.
The other progress is that husband and I have talked about another piece of furniture that would house what right now is a mess of charging cables and random electronic devices hooked up to them. (We move so slowly that yes, this is progress!)
Okay, since I won’t have large bits of time this week, I think… I think I will try to declutter bits of my desk and bits of my dresser. I think I can do that in small increments.
try a 5 minute better. set a timer for 5 minutes, without moving things off the furniture, just look for stuff that can be thrown away, or belong somewhere else. it is amazing how much better that 5 minutes makes things. take the item that belongs elsewhere there straight away. just carry it, don’t put it in a box or bag. pick up the item take it where it should go.
I solved a bike problem in the garage by adjusting my existing bike lift and adding another, further back.
When my wife’s car is in the garage, the bikes were really in the way, now it should be no issue at all and I reorg’d the snow shovels a bit while I was at it.
I got 2 lifts for $24 and already had one not set up correctly. So about an hour work installing the new and fixing the old and I have 2 working lifts and a 1 spare in a box.
The snow blower is in its non-winter storage. It basically trades places with my mower for the winter at the front of the garage between the doors.
Yay!
After falling off the declutter wagon for the past month or so, I had a very good weekend, probably because all of our usual commitments got canceled for Easter. I cleaned out my entire bedroom bookshelf, which badly needed it. Among other things I found sticker books with all the stickers used (why do I still have this??), old calendars (the oldest was from 2005!), random boxes that I was keeping why?? who knows?? they might have come in useful someday? Ugh it looks so much better now! We have too much stuff yes, but I think something else is that I’m very bad at using the actual space that we have efficiently.
Also moved the shelf that used to be right by the door and now it’s where all the cords are for our various electronics so the cords are going onto the shelf and not just laying on the floor. Not decluttering but it looks a lot better.
Kiddo and I also went through his bedroom bookshelf though that work is not yet finished and there are still books all over his floor…
Still some residual cleanup to do from all this – a ton of books identified that need to go to the little free library, my dresser is now covered with the knicknacks from the bookshelf that I need to go through (I expect I’ll end up throwing the vast majority away).
Here’s a new one:
I de-cluttered my life by selling my old pickup truck. It is 27 years old and the maintenance is more than I can handle anymore. Sold it to a mechanic who is fully aware of its issues. I am unburdened of something I can no longer use (at least not well), the mechanic will fix it up (and be able to do the necessary maintenance work) and have a new-to-him pickup. Win-win for both of us and I’m inordinately pleased it is NOT winding up in a landfill or junkyard or decaying in a driveway or yard.
Yes, I’m a bit sad - I loved my truck, lots of happy memories. But it was time to let go.
Yesterday I disposed of the last of a 2+ ft stack of papers which I had been shredding for the last few weeks. I had hoped to shred it at work, or find a company that does shredding, but the monster shredder is out of service, so I ended up doing it at home. Shredded paper takes up more space than non-shredded paper, so it was a few steps back, but now the stack is shredded and gone.
Next up? Company monitors which were sent home with us in 2020, and haven’t been used much in the last year, since we’re both working at the office. Those monitors are going back to the office. They are considered old technology, so no one is asking for their whereabouts, and I’m not sure they even got tracked, as none of it has company id stickers.
I don’t miss tracking bits of shredded paper around. Not at all.
Wow, decluttering is such a slow process over here. Took kiddo and me a week to clean up all the detritus from his bookshelf, although to be fair that did include things like “let’s also declutter this entire bin of baby toys so that we have a space to put your math competition stuff which used to live on the bookshelf.” Why did we still have an entire bin of baby toys, sigh. No baby has lived in this house for just about a decade. There’s still a lot of clutter in his room but it looks a lot more manageable now, and I can enforce “books go on the bookshelf” much more readily so there aren’t huge piles that grow on the floor.
Tonight I’m going to have to clean up the detritus from my bookshelf, which I still haven’t gotten to (although there is much less of it than there was in kiddo’s room).
I have a computer monitor that worked fine last time I fired it up. I’m in western Michigan … any ideas besides parking it at Goodwill (motto: “We’ll throw it away for you!”) is there a way to find some local school etc. that might put it to use?
Sorry, no clue. Since we’re still working for said company, we’re just taking them back to the office. Took hubby’s back, but I need to work at home for a few days later this month, so I’m waiting to take mine back afterwards.
Speaking of our employer, they are doing a decluttering of their own and are offering tables, chairs, company merchandise, etc. So I might do the opposite and bring some stuff home. If I do get some picture frames, I’ll actually hang something up on the wall. Which is another way to clean up clutter.