Goal Tracking: Declutter and Cleaning

I prefer thinking "Them" smarter than mere scapegoating and enjoy reading double-bind theory:

http://com1300.dedalon.net/S_10_file...BindTheory.pdf

I started out pretty well this morning, got the garbage out to the curb before they tried to collect it. I checked in to my new USLA writing course site and posted my "Bio" and went to my health site and joined a fun new team that is doing everything based on Dr. Seuss so my poor brain has been rhyming all morning. I also started one new online activity blog but still have a couple to start with paper and pencil. I got my insurance books out (I'm taking my test taking course online, part of the problem I'm having, you can't "back up" and remind yourself of what's what) and it looks like I have a "QuickSheet" that has all I need to memorize -- I think I will write the two sections, word-for-word out by hand, see if that helps me learn/memorize who's on first?

Thanks for the download. Yeah i did my nail school stuff by copying it out. I even rewrote the cheat sheets they gave us. Its like they never heard of indentation!! Grouping? See, math is everywhere!

Ha ha, Perna -- I've been resisting those for a long time. My exercise step finally made it out in time for recycling pick up Musicjunkie, can I tempt you with a treadmill?

Today I saw pictures of me from four years ago when I was less fat than I am now and it was very discouraging - maybe I should have kept the step!

What about rechargeable batteries and a recharger I never use? Why am I keeping this?

Theme of the day: timers. I set a timer for 20 minutes to do the dishes. After 7 minutes, I wandered back over to the laptop and remembered... after 13 minutes, I was done with the dishes and used the remaining time to clean up the sink and counters.

I have used timers in the past with great success -- so much of this seems to be about applying techniques that I know work.

Someday I hope I get to the point where getting the dishes done doesn't feel like an accomplishment

Ok.....stayed got 2 hours sleep then stayed up all monday night to finish painting the flooring with the 2nd coat of kilz......& they came to install my linoleum Tuesday morning....bright & early....only thing they had to help me move a few last things out of the room...nothing that was furniture just empty boxed & a puppy pen that I wasn't using any longer. I had purchased the transitions for the flooring between the rooms & the closet & found out that what they suggested was the wrong thing when it came right down to how the flooring was laid.....so glad I didn't stain it.

Dang....I have enough extra linoleum & materials that my kitchen can be done........that would be interesting....2 rooms for the price of one......but that's going to be far out in the future.

Anyway, now I have this beautiful wood grained looking flooring in the master bedroom that I'm going to use as my craft room.....& I'm going to move all the things like my tools that I had spread all over the dining room floor.......so now the organizing starts & the moving & boxing.....it's encouraging to have all that space to actually make good use of.....& I still love my cozy little bedroom but some of the boxes that I had in there waiting for the flooring to be done will be moving back into the finished room.......I will get around to painting the walls.....the whole room needs freshened up now.....but I can paint my organized room......got a lot of work to do getting everything organized & boxed in an organized way.....but this is a wonderful start...& it will get things into one room where I can find things now as right now things get dropped all over the house never to be found. I couldn't even find my purse to find the keys to my truck to move it for the guys yesterday morning.......I felt so lame & so out of it.....but I finally found where I dropped my purse the night before when I got home from a birthday dinner I went out for......it will be nice to have an organized house where I really can find the things I am looking for rather than wandering around the house like a chicken with my head cut off saying "I know it's here somewhere".

So the work begins...........


We had a discussion at the birthday dinner.....about how I tend to be where I am & do what I'm doing at the moment.....the comment was that I was a compartmentalized thinker......& I realized that's seriously my problem because I will be working on something & if I don't get it all finished & get distracted with something else....then that something else is where my focus is & I don't get back to what it was that I was initially working on.....I am where I am at the moment....good thing about it is that when I go somewhere....I am home wherever I am...so I never get homesick....& most of the time I never look back at my life....except for a few major things that have happened & the trauma I went through.....but when I get so totally involved with the now & what I'm doing...nothing else is really on my mind......however I must say....painting the floor allowed my mind to wander....it took no brains so my mind went all over the place because I was definitely stuck doing the painting as it had to be done by Tuesday morning......I don't have a working phone at the moment so I couldn't call to postpone the installation.....good thing for me as it forced me to get it ready & not distract myself with anything else or procrastinate any longer.

Congratulations on the new floor!!!!! It must be so nice to have that done!

Hvert: Re dishes feeling like an accomplishment - yeah it will be nice when that isnt the big thing i report to t on monday that i did on the weekend!! also i was thinking of getting a timer. My mother made me leave her my old dial one when i left. But my microwave (AND my watch) has one on it, so i told myself, no more buying stuff. But i think its great that we are both rowing in that direction.

Eskie: when i last had a 2 bedroom apartment, i loved using the smaller room for my bedroom and the larger for my office - books - sewing - whatever. Plus being in an apartment building, it was insulated from the other apartments because it was in the middle, so it was very cosy and cocoony! Its definitely better having more light and room for art.

Dishes washed, and its only thursday! Usually i accomplish NOTHING on thursday, im too exhausted from the week. I do still need to clean out the fridge and take down the garbage, but compared to usual, i am doing great. My new t schedule is working out as i had hoped, where i would have more energy on my long weekend to actually clean.

BIG ACCOMPLISHMENT FOR ME TODAY!

Cleaned my back yard. I'm ashamed to say that I had a lot of dog poop in my yard from procrastinating about cleaning it up for 3 weeks, maybe 4. It was a bit messy. You could still walk around in the yard; it wasn't covering the yard. But I usually clean it up every week, so it seemed like a ridiculous amount.

Came home today determined to get that crap out of my yard, quite literally. And we did! Cleaned up the yard, cleaned up the bunnies' cage because of impending rain, & I even took the time to rake the dead pine needles out from my trees & cut some of the lower branches off of all 4 trees so it's easier to see my dogs at night.

Granted, I did not bag all the needles & branches, but at least they will be ready to pick up the next time I clean in the yard, which probably won't be for a few days because of the rain because our stupid yard floods. By then the branches will have dried out.

Even got rid of an old ratty chair that we have been meaning to get rid of for quite some time.

Beat the rain by about 20-30 minutes. Now my yard looks normal again, except for the grass that is creeping in here & there. My dogs seem to enjoy eating it, though, so I don't know how long it will last! Now I just have to get someone out here to clean up the weeds in the front yard.

Hankster: I use my microwave timer. I also like the internet stop-watch, a web-based timer-- definitely no reason to buy something else!

I guess it's time for me to do more dishes... it never ends! No idea what the day holds in store. I sat down to make a list an hour and a half ago... still no list, just an hour and a half lost to the internet.

MusicJunkie, congrats on the huge progress you made in your yard! I wish I could take the pine needles off your hands-- they make great free mulch for acid loving plants

I don't know how the timer topic came about, but I like to use the one on my cell phone. I keep it on a holster on my hip pocket, so no matter where I am, I'll hear it go off. I don't use it as often as I should, but it is very helpful.

Our kitchen is a mess right now with dishes all over because we found ants in our cereal cabinet, so all the dishes we keep on the shelf under the cereal had to come out, & we haven't washed them yet.

It's supposed to rain all week, so who knows when I'll get a chance to rake up all the pine needles! Probably not for trash day this week.

Oh dang, the dishes in the kitchen.....I had been so busy, they piled up in the sink.....& wouldn't you know it....yesterday morning when I went down into the kitchen....there was a huge spider the size of a silver dollar (legs span) sitting on top of one of the dishes. There was no way to kill it other than with bug spray.....so I sprayed & sprayed it......then left the dishes alone to make sure the spider died before I get anywhere close to those dishes.....so they are still sitting there......now I have to clear out my dish washer where I usually stack my hand washed dishes....because I have to wash all those dishes in the dishwasher to get the bug spray cleaned off & make sure it's safe to eat off of.

Dang spiders & bugs....it's about the only thing I don't like about living in the country.

Spider webs all over the place in the basement & little tiny baby spiders dangling down from the web streams......I found a poor little lizard caught in a spiderweb mess in my basement the other day....it was squirming around trying to get loose. Luckily I found it because I have found several other baby lizards that didn't couldn't get loose....anyway, I took the broom & brushed it away from the web....then picked it up & pulled all the sticky web stuff off it's legs & body.....then set it loose under my front porch hoping it doesn't get back into my basement.......don't even want to talk about the disgusting mess the basement gets even with no one down there messing it up......I have 4 dead mice that I have to get picked up & tossed into my sink hold alongside my fence......rather put them there than throw them into my woods where some animal might get them because of the decon that killed them.......floor in the basement is filled with dead red wasps also. I go down there to do my laundry, but that is right off the stairs & I really don't look around the basement very often.

I am not so sure about using the bug bomb because of my dogs being in the house & not sure how it might effect them....it's bad enough spraying the bug spray around when I'm aiming at a specific bug.....the other problem is that I need to duct tape my AC/Heading ducts back into place as a couple have fallen down & it's not that easy for it being a one person job......with so many things on my to do list.....when something becomes a priority....it gets done.

Still working on cleaning & getting things back into my newly floored room....but I still have to buy the flooring threshholds & get them stained.....that's on today's list after going to DBT & my psychologist as Lowe's is in that town & I usually try to get things done all at the same time when I drive that far to go somewhere.

DANG....I really hate those huge spiders.....but also hate the black widows & the recluse.....luckily I haven't come across any as some of my neighbors have....I'm sure they are hiding....so I am always cautious.

Have to get to the lawn mowing also.....as the grass in front of the house is getting way too long & is growing up around my lawn tractor when I left it the last time I did my mowing about a month ago......the field to the left of the house is a bit overgrown but still manageable while the side & back field & the yard inside the chain link fence is totally OUT OF CONTROL.....would need a bush hog to take care of that....not something that my little lawn tractor could handle.

Those bug bombs are scary. I set one off when we had fleas in the house I grew up in - I had no idea it was going to explode as fast as it did! I didn't even want to go back in the room for days afterwards.

I still haven't done any dishes. I did buy four bags of mulch and spread one bag over the leeks I replanted last week. I guess I didn't need as much as I bought. I duck taped the canopy that tore during the last thunderstorm (do not think it will hold), and now I am about to break up the rest of the chiminea to toss it in tomorrow's trash. It's really hot out there, so I am enjoying my break.

It takes me seven minutes to wash enough dishes to fill the dish drain. I have timed this multiple times and keep coming up with the same number. There is no excuse for putting this off!

Seven minutes!! My dish drainer would have to be this big "--"

I did do a load of laundry this morning, so that is kind of the equivalent of when they used to say in the bible before they went on a long trip or some kind of adventure: "let us gird our loins!" Can you believe they kept saying that in church in front of little girls anyway im feeling all girded up - i got me a bunch of clean towels and underpants

I did laundry yesterday because I needed clean clothes for a meeting that afternoon... and remembered that they needed to go into the dryer about 10 minutes before I had to leave!

I am trying to gird my loins to deal with my basement. We had record rainfall last night and my basement flooded a bit. There's no standing water, but the entire floor got wet. It doesn't help that it's gorgeous out!

Cleaning the basement is extremely overwhelming. It feels like 75% of the crap down here is my boyfriend's junk. There is so much scrap wood. Everything is piled precariously and it's really heavy and tall so I can't move it.

What I can clean up is little stuff that makes no difference at all, like cans of paint. I have been trying to get him to help me clean this up for years, but he just tells me to throw out my own stuff and leave his alone. Now that I am actually down here, it is just about all his stuff.

We've started working a tiny bit on cleaning out the garage. We have a ton of stuff in there that we used to have in a storage space, but got tired of paying for the space. We've made a very small amount of progress but it's better than nothing.

Do you have trouble negotiating what you toss and what you keep?

I am actually kind of furious right now. Whenever I suggest cleaning the basement, my boyfriend says 'are you ready to throw out that desk yet?' referring to a desk I had as a child. Now that I am in the middle of trying to move stuff around, there is very little of 'my' stuff down there. He's using 'my' shelves and tables to store mountains of his tools and crap. and I'm not sure how I'm supposed to throw out my junky desk if he has totes stacked six high on it.

God forbid I suggest tossing something. He immediately wants to keep it, even if it's been years since he used it. He has boxes from when he moved in six years ago that he has never opened.

Do we have trouble negotiating about things together, or do I have trouble by myself? I have trouble with some things, but mostly we just both take care of our own individual things.

I also have boxes of stuff from when I moved back home after getting out of the military...10 years ago. I think I have some totes from when I lived at my childhood home, too. What can I say, I have a hard time letting things go.

My hardest struggle comes with letting school/office supplies go. I absolutely hate it & will try to find any reason to justify keeping every notepad, post-it, schoolbox, pen, etc. Other things, I don't have as much trouble with. I guess it's because I've always seen myself first & foremost as a student, & so getting rid of those kinds of items feels like shedding that persona.

There wasn't really enough space in my house for my own stuff, so when he moved in, there really wasn't enough space. I threw out a lot and so did he -- but we both need to do more. I just get aggravated when I feel like I am throwing out my stuff but he is not doing the same with his.

I also just find it moderately insulting that he is keeping junky pots and pans in the basement in case we break up. Dude, it's been six years. Buy new pots when and if it happens!

I also have totes of stuff from when I was a kid --- and all my papers from high school and college (guess how many times I've looked at them). Most of my hard to get rid of stuff is aspirational clutter, projects that I want to do on a someday that never comes. I also have a lot of trouble getting rid of furniture.

You should go through your totes -- we went through one of his last night -- it had various glass jars he had saved (pasta sauce, herbs)! We also found some neat dishes and things he forgot he owned

My task for this week is to go through 2 of the totes & get rid of whatever is in them. To be honest, I think one of them is full of coloring books from when I was a kid

I also feel aggravated when I'm cleaning & she's not. Like, really aggravated.

I'm right there with you on the school papers...never look at them but absolutely CANNOT throw them out!

Journal at least a few times a week

Giving myself a break ut feelinv guilty...but I have birthday gifts & baby shkwer gifts to finish & as usual...the things that bubble up to the top of the priority list have to get done....decluttering is a long term project & usually ends up at the bottom of the pile.....lawn mowing is moving back up to the top again. I parked my lawn tractor roght in front of my house the last time I used it...& the grass is growing all up around it...letting me know I better get that on the top of tbe list...it's been raining every day. We have had a really cool summer just barely in the 80's which is great for the electric bill & much better than trhing to finction in the heat & humidity...

Also have the goal of getting my front porch sanded, painted, & the lattice put up around the base wood posts of the porch. I have only had that lattice for 7 years trying to get around to getting that project finished....outside work in the summer, inside during the winter when it's too cold & snowy to do anything outside....bought brush killer to get rid of the overgrown weeds on the side of the house & my gravel driveway & along the road where I kesp getting my lawn tractor stuck...just KILL IT!!!!

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Ugh...still have not done my totes task for this week...I said I would do before therapy...tomorrow.

So guess what I'm doing tonight? Big thumbs down.

I need to get with the program.