Goal Tracking: Declutter and Cleaning

You go! I'm having a hard time getting started this morning/staying focused. I just put a load of laundry in the washer, but I have a stack of dishes and made a few messes I still need to clean up.

Just listing some of my cleaning goals for today. A friend wanted to swing by and drop something off and I almost had a heart attack. I really want to stay off the computer and clean today.

1. Clean dining room.
2. Clean living room.
3. Bring all Christmas stuff to basement.
4. Finish dishes, clean kitchen.

Progress update once I've actually done something!

Update:

I spent about a half hour on these tasks. Some stuff is in the basement. The kitchen is clean except for the floors and dishes. I have a good start on the DR. While putting stuff away in the DR, I found something I need to mail and decided to send an email asking if I could drop it off instead... which led to me checking my mail and spending another forty minutes being annoyed at one of the messages I'd received.

Back to work!

I've had several reminders this week that having a trashed house is not normal. I'm giving someone some gardening stuff and they offered to come pick it up. Sorry, can't do it!

Since I've had a horrible time getting started this morning, I'm going to try publicly stating my plans again.

I need to vacumn and wash the floors - had a friend over yesterday and tracked so much sand and dirt in the house. Plus still evergreen needles from the tree all over.

Okay, offline until I make that happen. Cross your fingers for me

I cleaned the floors. Now the dishes!

There is a big blank spot between the two dressers that line my entrance hallway, about 3 x 4 feet square. I feel like i'm living in the taj mahal! I am getting there!!

I did the dishes earlier!

Wow, everyone is doing great except for me. I thought a lot more about it yesterday, but that doesn't count. I contacted that clutter cleaning service and they wanted to make an appointment for a consultation but I have zero money for it. If only my friend could work with me for a few days we would get so much done.

Angelique, I hope you can do just one little thing today -- it's nice to feel like you did something. I haven't done anything yet and am not sure that I will.

Thanks, hvert. Even if you don't do anything today, you will soon because you've been doing so well. I wonder what I could do today. I just don't know. The problem is that throwing things out requires starting a huge trash bag and I don't want to store that for weeks in the other room until my friend can haul it out.

Yeah, I don't like storing the big trash bags either. It's like I get them halfway filled up and then have to wait to find something to fill the rest. We have to pay per bag here, so I hate to throw them out half full.

Maybe you could wipe down a counter or wipe the fingerprints off the lightswitch? It all adds up.

I just finished reading the Marie Kondo book, the one that's really popular now, about the 'life-changing magic of tidying up.' I would love to know what she thought about organizing homes in the US. She describes some of her clients living in spaces that are 13x10 feet!

I like some of her ideas, but I feel like the NYT review I read gave me as much information as I needed. She is an entertaining writer and it is interesting to see another culture's perspective on housework. The fact that she wants someone to 'do it all at once' just seems too overwhelming to me.

Her suggestion is that you take all of your clothes - all of them, everything in your drawers, closets, coat racks, trunks - and pile them in one spot. You hold each one up and ask yourself 'does this spark joy?' If it doesn't, you toss it.

One thing she says repeatedly in the book is that the practice of tidying can change your life because you hone your decision making skills. By repeatedly asking yourself whether or not some item brings joy, you get in the habit of asking yourself that question about all of your decisions. That seemed to make sense.

Those are wonderful ideas, hvert! Thank you.

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Thinking does SO count!! otherwise i am down so many points!!!

No cleaning from me today, but I might do some tonight. I need to call someone to see how the mice/squirrels/whatever are getting into my walls.

I visited a friend with hoarding/collecting tendencies today. I really enjoyed seeing how well he displayed his collections in a very small space. Everything was crowded, but so well laid out and tidy. It was pretty inspiring.

Ugh.

Mentioned to BF that I was going to call someone to come in to see how the mice were getting in. As I said that, I was staring at his office, which you can barely walk through, and across the hall, where I keep a bunch of stuff, again, you can't walk through the area (I moved furniture out of one room to redo it two years ago. Still haven't redone it).

His comment was to laugh and ask me how I was going to accomplish that. It's a really good question. I wish this stuff could just magically vanish, and that I didn't have these weird attachments to things.

I'm a day behind on my usual dishwashing day, but its done now.

tIt seems like the mess gets worse just before it starts to get better....it's like I have to put everything out while I'm organizing.....started it one evening & put everything laid out on my bed.....but I didn't get it finished before I was exhausted but no bed to sleep on.

Slowly I'm getting walking areas in the rooms & things stacked in their organizational kinds. Found that having a huge trash bag to throw the junk stuff in really helps get it out of the way so I can focus on the important things......but it still gets messier right before it gets organized.

Then I find that I have overflowed some of the box area I originally had for things...specifically wrapping paper & gift bags. Now I have to find a new container to put those things in that will be the appropriate size.

I have to say that being sick & not going anywhere has really helped me focus on the house when I have a little energy, I put it into the house. I've made a dent in the kitchen, my bedroom, the computer room, & my laundry....not bad for being sick. I found that when I had to go somewhere, I would end up Not starting anything around the house because I know I will get so involved that I will end up being late for any appointment or get together......not going anywhere has really been a good thing....it's NICE TO FOCUS.

Well I hope I can maybe tackle some of the stacks of paper here in the next few days. I'm so sick of seeing them everyplace I look. I began taking Cymbalta today (I've had it here and it seemed like a good idea) but I'm not sure if it will help.

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I think part of my problem was that my mother had very low tolerance for my work in progress. She would just SCREAM at me to put stuff away immediately. I was watching one of those home shows recently, and this architect was fixing up his own house, and he was taking FOREVER to do it. He would start remodeling a room, change his mind, and just leave it!! It made me feel a lot better about what i do. We OBVIOUSLY have the vision of an architect, eskie!!

I knew there was some rational thinking behind how we operate...lol.......definitely our artistic side & our creative mind

Cleaned my room yesterday. I finally got a new bed frame, I hated having my mattress and box spring on the floor. It's so much better high up

I must be an architect... and a housemaid in a former life?? Congrats on so much success!

I dont know why, but its like im looking forward to working on stuff, and i dont feel like such a burden to myself anymore. Its very weird. I also feel like a younger version of myself that actually used to do stuff like this - ie clean my house.

That's so awesome, hankster. I wish that feeling was catching

I put away the laundry on the couch and did some dishes.

No i wanted you guys to figure out WHYYYYYY im feeling this way!

I bought the Marie Kondo book on kindle last night - i can read it on my phone. She is a little OCD, but she says nobody ever falls back. She also said it usually takes about six months to clean, but then youre done forever. I thought that was interesting.