So, does cleaning up the upstairs bathroom, helping to get the new toilet and shut-off valve installed, cleaning up the subsequent leak, getting that fixed, then cleaning up the #$~! bathroom again count? And having to mop the kitchen up where the water leaked from upstairs?
FINALLY I think I’ll be able to get to the second “bedroom” down here tomorrow, to start making some progress again.
You’re all an inspiration.
I spent the week-end going through stacks of mail, making a list of things to do - fully expecting to find the list in three years at the bottom of another pile.
But, I did half the things on the list.
I moved just about ten days ago and today I unpacked the last box. I still have a few pictures to hang, and I need to figure out where to put handbags and sweatshirts, but other than that I’m all moved in and everything has a place. Ten days, huh.
You know, this thread isn’t for people like you. 
It’s for those of us who take ten years to unpack, not ten days.
What about the ten-week types? 
What about those of us who take 24 hours? I knew damn well that if I didn’t do it as fast as possible inertia would set in and I would have unpacked boxes forever.
This weekend was a struggle. I injured my shoulder and I am not allowed to use my right arm. Tidying the house with one hand (and not being able to bend over to pick stuff up) was challenging.
However, the main floor of the house and the basement are all tidied up as of today. The bedrooms are a bit of a mess. Mine isn’t too bad but I need the kids to actually do theirs tonight.
But my husband fixed the front walkway. There is only one more mini-project I wanted to get done before the end of summer (levelling the stones around the garden). While I can’t really help, I think hubby will be able to do it next weekend.
Nope. Though this is for the person who does it as fast as possible until inertia sets in and doesn’t get to the final stuff for two years - or more.
I bragged too soon. It took something like an hour hands-on to scan one manila envelope full of stock statements, including time to glance at each document and rescan a few of them. Phooey. Still something I need to push on with, because getting rid of even one binful of rarely-needed but can’t-ditch paperwork is going to be a big victory. The fun part was seeing stuff from 24+ years ago (stock reinvestment paperwork, so we really do need to keep it).
raises hand in shame
Me too Lsura, me too.
As part of the preparation for the move to college (at my age!), I’m inventorying and packing books. Inventorying, because these particular books are all going to someone else eventually. I’m putting them in marked boxes with packing lists, and then they they’re going into the crawlspace and out of my life. It’s an act that has some sadness, because the books were all once part of a dream. But it was a dream I was unsuited to, and now I’m moving on. Freedom and a new phase!
Ordinarily I might shuffle away in shame 
but I’m a reformed clutterbug and this move has been a revelation for me. About a year ago I started watching Hoarders, and thinking hard about my own home. I started de-cluttering and kept at it until I felt like I only had things I wanted or loved (just like they say you should).
It wasn’t easy. I took piles of stuff to the goodwill that I had been hanging on to thinking I could sell them, and I threw away things that probably could have been of some use to other people. I also let go of really awesome things that I knew I might use someday, but hadn’t actually gotten around to using in the years I’d owned them.
When it came time to move I was actually able to pack without having to sort, and when I got here and unpacked I could see where everything should go, and I was able to put things away in a really tidy and logical way.
As I’m typing this I know it’s true, but I still can’t quite believe it. I now have a home that’s completely clutter free so, go me.
Last weekend, I gave away a 15 year collection of hobby magazines, clearing out 5 file cabinet drawers in the process. Once I’m done reorganizing the leftovers, I will get rid of 2 2-drawer cabinets, too.
I’m not doing without the magazines, however. I bought the DVD library that the publisher now sells. I’ve also been scanning and destroying all sorts of papers, similar to a previous poster here.
I have a fantasy of reducing my household possessions to that which can be moved in a single 16’ Penske truck. Considering the last move used more than half a moving van, I got a long way to go.
I’ve been slack lately, partly due to the disruption of my dog’s post-surgery crate rest requirements. I’ve had to spend nearly all my time in the family room, plus I’ve turned the downstairs into a sick room, with throw rugs all over the hardwood floors, a bunch of dog supplies hanging around, etc. Discouraging (and the dog ain’t too happy either.)
But. Yesterday I laundered the family room couch. Cold water, tumble dry low. Okay, just the seat and cushion covers, but man what an improvement! I also doodled around and filled a couple of holes/defects in the drywall downstairs. Filled, sanded, textured, sanded and primed. I need to go out and get the paint, but I know the colors so the rest should be easy.
I gotta bite the bullet and buy a bookcase for the spare room so I can unpack these damn paperbacks. One day at a time.
And here I am worn out from just the second-job lawnwork and doing the week’s shopping today. Tomorrow I have two more lawns to mow, the laundry to do and then maybe I can do some de-cluttering…
>sigh<
I think I’m actually getting more de-clutter done in my half-hour-before-I-leave-for-work chore time than I am on the weekends when I’m doing the chores I can’t do during the work week.
I’ve gotten rid of all moving boxes that aren’t still doing something useful around here, thanks to Freecycle.
I don’t worry about neatly packed boxes and crates. I have a large enough house. Every 2 to 5 years I go through one and am overcome with emotions and memories … and then I cull.
I can cull things with good memories easily; I can’t deal with painful memories.
Hey, can I play too? I got onto a decluttering kick in the last month or so of last school year, which left me with a neat and organized closet for the first time in ever, a night table instead of a vaguely night table-shaped mound beside my bed surrounded by piles of things, and all sorts of order behind closed doors that might not have been obvious to anyone else, but I knew that the candles and candleholders and pet drawer and medicine cabinets and pantry were as they should be, and that was just enormously satisfying.
Well, we have a nasty problem in the cellar, but there’s a delightful silver lining. We had a broken pipe or two in the wall, and by the time we realized what had happened, there was water under all the floors and mold creeping halfway up the walls and exploding under the wallpaper. We’ve had drying machines running day and night for more than three weeks now, and we still have at least a week to go. The silver lining is that we had to bring everything – everything – up from downstairs, and it’s sitting in heaps in the living/dining rooms.
Okay, so that’s not such a terrific thing at the moment, but the good part is that instead of having all this Stuff hidden away in the cellar, where it would have spent the next many years being hidden and adding to the sense of clutter in the house, there it all was front and center and underfoot. I have gone through all of it and it’s now in three places: the stuff we’re keeping is in neat stacks behind the dining table, the stuff we’re throwing away is in a pile on the terrace or has already been carted away by the trash people, and the stuff I’m selling in a couple of weeks at a children’s bazaar is in stacks in the living room, waiting for me to go through and sort and apply stickers with prices. What doesn’t sell gets thrown out, not only ruthlessly but with glee.
I went through the book shelves in my bedroom today and filled one of those big blue Ikea bags with books that I carted away to the paper bins. (Don’t mourn for them, it was stuff like a desk almanac of interesting and important facts which I was given in 1984. There’s this internet thingy these days that has more facts and takes up less room, plus has updates on the things that have happened in the past 28 years.)
The house definitely still looks like a war zone, but by damn, I can see and feel that the amount of stupid cluttery dusty unneeded unimportant distracting unwanted Stuff is diminishing steadily, and I can look ahead to a time when I feel refreshed and energized by my home instead of feeling dragged down by it. Woot!
shantih, are you for hire? 
woke up this morning in a cleaning mode. sorted 4 drawers so far. getting the laundry going. gearing up for the seasonal closet change.
switched the summer work bag for the autumnal work bag.