Couch 51 - They also serve

Morning couch.

Well, just stopping in before heading out the door to go to my dad's shop to help him with a measuring job today. Then it's off to see pdoc. I'll stop back in later this evening when I get home. Busy day ahead of me.

I hope everyone has a good day.

CE - LOL. *I* say crikey....but it's not a word that is normally said in this area.

Lola - I wish I could survive on short naps. These emergency night time assignments are ok for a while, but then it hits me HARD and I steer clear of being available for them cuz I just can't handle having my sleep disrupted so much.

Morning peeps. Well, long holiday weekend over, time to get my a ss in gear. Need to clean, do laundry, etc. I noticed the windows on the second floor need cleaning as well.

Where's Granite been hiding?

Ready - glad you had a good day yesterday. You deserved it.

Morning all. Therapy times two today. Mine in the morning and then my daughter starts physical therapy in the afternoon. She's frightened about it, I think, because they are very upfront about how painful it is, and she's angry and ... She hasn't been pleasant to live with and I'm hoping it is not as bad as we think it's going to be.

On an unrelated note, my son was hired for a summer internship in a national level politician's office. They have never hired an 18 year old before, but my baby is really impressive. LOL. Anyway, the politician and the political climate in that office str ultra conservative, so I have told him that the new rule in the house is he MUST watch Jon Stewart on days he works in that office to get a little more balanced view of what is actually happening in the world. It's sad when the "news" show most highly rated for accuracy is a comedy show.

MKAC - Good luck at your T session today...and PT for your daughter. I'm sure she's struggling with a lot of emotions about all of this, and I can't imagine it being pleasant for any of you to have to endure. I don't envy you at all. I do hope it is at least tolerable and that she can accept that it is ultimately to help her. Hard to do.

And WOW about your son! Impressive!

I see T in a couple hours, and I have no idea where I am emotionally at the moment. Somewhat guarded, somewhat shut down. I need to figure out how to not be so closed off. It doesn't do either of us any good if I am empty and non-responsive. Grr.

Barely got my daughter to school on time. She was quite congested this morning and feeling miserable, but she has a chorus concert tonight and practice during the day. We literally pulled up into the parking lot with less than a minute to spare before the doors locked. Whew.

I was hoping to get some more sleep before my T session, but there's no sense when I'd have to be up in an hour. Maybe I'll start the gung-ho cleaning adventure that I was so dead-set on last night.

Ugh. This is not good. I can't seem to find a place to start with the cleaning. It's overwhelming. ACK. I'm telling myself to PICK A PLACE and JUST START!....and I'm frozen.

I CAN DO THIS.....I CAN DO THIS....I CAN DO THIS....

Oh, who am I kidding? The work I need to do involves packing and lifting and I am in horrendous pain today.

NO! DON'T GIVE UP! There's so much more than packing that has to be done.

KITCHEN. NOW.

Thanks for tolerating my internal conversation.

Mkac... The PT honestly shouldn't be too bad. It's work, and sore, but not horrendous. And the pain will lesson significantly after several sessions. And your son,,,way cool, and Jon is da bomb!

MUE - excuse me if I sound naive, but wouldn't cleaning for an hour daily be better than having to do an overhaul in a few weeks? My mother used to go insane before company or holidays...the stress was awful. Even though my house is generally spic & span, I still get violently ill and stressed when I have to have people over because of that conditioning I had as a child.

Ah yes, cleaning for an hour a day would be better, if this house was in decent condition to start. It's bad. Really bad. We can play "Where's Waldo" in pretty much every room of the house. It's not "hoarders" bad - but it's chaos everywhere. When we had the raccoon issue in our attic, everything came out of the attic - and was never put back up there.

The cleaning that I do on a regular basis is just to keep our heads above the chaos - laundry, dishes, living room, bathroom, pet clean-up.

And I find that during the stretches of time that I am not feeling well, any progress that I've made is wrecked in such a short amount of time. Bags get brought into the house and stuff isn't put away. My daughter trashes the living room. There's jewelry supplies and craft stuff everywhere.

I need to make more of an effort to tackle these things - to declutter - and then put a stop to bringing anything in the house. (It's usually my mom and aunt "getting rid of stuff" - and it's usable stuff for my craft projects, so I hate to part with them. And then I have bins of stuff set aside for a yard sale. The yard sale needs to happen. And I have to be brutal with letting things go. And I need my daughter to stop adding to the chaos and start helping more.

Getting ready to head out to my T session...but I have boxes ready for when I get home.

MUE... my house situation sounds similar to yours (except I don't have crafts)... I've started tackling the situation too... I don't know if what I've started would work for you but here is what I am doing...

1. I gave up on having a yard sale (tag sale/garage sale for those in other parts of US). I said I was going to do it but I never did it. I decided that since I itemize my taxes...Donating to goodwill gets me about the same in $$ savings on my taxes as selling at a yard sale...

2. I've picked one room to declutter and one type of thing to declutter (everywhere)..

So I picked the dining room which for me is the one room that collects clutter.... mail/bills/paperwork and then stuff that nobody knows what to do with, etc. I have the junk pile as I refer to it... almost gone through... I got smaller boxes and took stuff that was for other rooms in the house and sorted... like each kids rooms, basement, etc... and a box for goodwill... at first it just made the mess bigger but it did make me not stop because I didn't have to move from place to place...

The "thing" I decided to declutter was clothes... I had clothes set aside from older son for younger son and I had lots of clothese my younger son outgrew... I went through any clothese that were bagged already first... I pulled out anything name brand and newish and washed and folded and took to a used kids clothing store first... then other stuff not useable got bagged... next I'm going through everyone's closets...

So far I made $40 selling clothes. Have taken 5 trash bags of clothes, 1 bag of shoes and 1 box of household goods to good will. And 2 bags of trash thrown out...
I also gave a box of kids books, costumes and stuff to my sons' school for a yard sale.

Its doesn't look that great yet... my H and kids probably think it looks worse but I'm keeping a tally sheet of what has left the house to keep me inspired.

Maybe you can pick "crafts" as your thing... and since you have a shorter timeframe for a goal... I would pick the room you use the least (like for me I wouldn't pick the kitchen and the living room cause they are used so much that it would be depressing to see them get ruined so fast)...

sorry it got so long...

I don't think I like therapy any longer. Not that it has ever been enjoyable, but you know what I mean. I do like my therapist, I just feel really disillusioned by the process. I wonder if I can bring this up with him. I wonder if it would be a good idea to do so. He'd ask me why, and I'm not sure I want to tell him. Gah.

Thanks, RTS, for the tidbits of advice that have helped you tackle the task. I am certainly going to try to apply some of those techniques!

I have freecycled a ton of stuff already and donated a bunch of bags of stuff as well. The impulsive part of me who wants this stuff OUT has been tempted to just donate the rest. Yet the near-broke part of me wants to see if I can at least get a few bucks out of it. I wonder which side will win.

I started making some progress in one part of one room so far - and took out 3 bags of trash. Woo hoo. It didn't make a dent AT ALL, but ya gotta start somewhere.

Since each room is a disaster, I am deciding to focus on the rooms that will be used by the guests that will be coming over and working hard on keeping my progress steady - as opposed to backsliding each and every time. I can always close bedroom doors. And if I can't get the downstairs done in time, I can always keep the guests upstairs. (We never really use our downstairs anyway...even though it's a livable space with a pool table, couch, fireplace, etc. - it's been used basically as a storage room.)

I love your idea of picking one "thing" - whether it's clothes or crafts, etc. Thank you!

I made a little bit of progress so far to one corner of one room.

Mastodon, I totally hear you. In today's session, I shared a little bit about my own feelings about therapy - and my T showed that he clearly had years of practice in rebuking these kinds of arguments.

Mast: not that I need to remind you, but, don't you have a long break coming up? Maybe your "self" is prepping you for it.

3 bags of trash in only one room?
I don't even have nicnacks because I hate dust! Not to mention that clutter and chaos make me confused and depressed.
I know this is my stuff, from my FOA, but I find myself being so worried about your d not having a functional organized space to be creative in. My d is artsy, and where she goes, messiness follows, but I have always managed to keep her area organized in ways to suit her needs. Maybe you can bring in a professional organizer? NAMI has that service, my girlfriend uses it for free.

Wiki, believe me, my house would totally depress you then.

If it makes you feel any better, 2 of the 3 bags of trash was an old Christmas tree that I decided to finally get rid of because some of the parts were missing. I was holding onto it because it was my dad's (he passed away and was huge on Christmas) and my mom said she would try to locate the rest of the parts. I gave up. It's gone. Buh-bye. I have another tree from him, so I'm not going to let myself feel badly about it anymore. Being brutal. It's time.

Once I dig myself out of this nightmare, I will certainly consider looking at my options for better organizing.

Hi Couchies.

Spring baby season is kicking my butt. I feel like I'm up to my eyeballs in wild babies. And I'm just a volunteer who gets to go home and not work 60+ hours/week.

I hope all is well with everyone here. I'm hopelessly behind on the goings-on around here. Off to scan...

I know bags of trash sounds like pizza boxes...and paper plates, and seeing episodes like horders...

for me I currently have five file boxes of papers... its mail and stuff...if someone was coming to visit... i would just take all the stuff on the one counter right by back door where phone and mail goes and just shove it in a file box... and I know if I haven't missed it I probably don't need it but I can't just throw out without opening it ... has names and other stuff ...so for me its a lot of going through junk mail and school papers and stuff... throwing out stuff and shredding stuff... sometimes I find important stuff and then I know its worth going through the boxes...

but of course if I would just deal with it daily I wouldn't have this mess... I know...

yea. I get it. It just makes me nervous. lol. Growing up we could never bring people over without advanced notice. My grandmother would make comments. A pile of papers sends me over the edge. I am almost paperless now, and when mail comes in I open it in front of the shredder. H's and kids mail gets set by their dinner plate, and they all know that if they want to keep it, it must be filed somewhere. Bills that need to be paid get opened and separated and put in a bin that corresponds to the week they are due. (I have a 4 week sorter that gets emptied the last week of the month.) I know I must sound crazy to all of you...but it works. I never have to clean for company. Every one has duties, we are all adults and I expect each person to keep their own space clean. Fine tuned machine. I dot my i's and cross my t's too.

CL...we have 158 patients at the clinic I volunteer for. I'll be there tomorrow...yikes. Those babies are so needy!!

Its odd... I find people usually react to either by becoming the opposite way their parents were or repeating it. My house was like you describe yours growing up Wiki...in relation to having visitors... and I tend to repeat it... Have a real issue about having people over... didn't use to ... but having kids changed lots of things for me and that was one of those things...

i swear junk mail is going to over take the world .my house is fairly clean. probibly not as clean as wikis (squeek) but the only problem i have is junk mail on the kitchen table.my husband freaks if i throw it away and he hasn't looked at it .like i'm throwing something important away.but then wont look at it untill it has been there for a week and threaten to just dump it lol

I shred junk mail before H comes home...he doesn't even know about it. In fact, once at church someone was talking about a frequent ad that comes in the mail, and H said, "I never get junk mail, I don't know why".. and I about peed my pants. I do save coupons though, but again, I take the 2 minutes to go thru it when it comes in and file any good coupons in my little holder.

And my house does not squeak! lol. It gets messy, but I clean a different thing every day (cept the kitchen is daily) and I can say "yup...window's dirty, I'll get to that on window day" and leave it be. I don't HAVE to clean things right away, but I do clean things on cleaning days.

Grrrr!! So, I made a choice about three months ago to go off of my anxiety/depression meds. The medicine did wonders for my panic disorder didn't really touch the depression. However, I was starting to gain tons of weight, having terrible headaches. I weaned off of them. I had been on meds for about a year in therapy for a little over a year.. I thought it was worth a try. Except I didn't tell my Dr. or T.. Both weren't all that happy with me that I had weaned (although, I did it the Dr. told me how to if I were to ever do it).. NOW- panic is back! In a big way. Dr. wants to try me on Effexor.. I am trying to hold of until work is done for the summer because I remember the first two weeks of Celexa being hell!!

I just don't understand.. How could some how something trigger Panic Disorder, I mean not just here and there panic attack- constant, multiple panic attacks a day.. One day I was fine that increasingly I started to get more and more anxiety. So, now.. after a year of HARD work in T, and being good about meds.. and nothing has changed. It is amazing how panic can make me go over the edge so quickly.. I see little hope, I feel defective, like unless I am constantly in T and on meds I am going to be a anxiety filled mess.

OMG, Wiki.....Can you come over to my house? You'd totally straighten our butts out.

I don't really notice dust and such. I have people who come clean my house now every few weeks. I could never do the clean just one thing a day idea. It is a good idea for those who work like that. I don't.