Goal Tracking: Declutter and Cleaning

My room just became a huge mess after searching everywhere for something. Now I have to clean it again this weekend

Music-junkie, throw some of those papers you need to shred in with your work stuff while you are thinking of it!

Angelique, I like the idea of throwing the boxes away without looking, but it's impossible for me to do it. I always find 'treasures' in there. It can be fun to go through those things, too.

Strawberry_bunny, congrats on all your progress! I think I am going to have to watch one of these hoarding shows if I can find one online -- I need some motivation. I seem to ebb and flow with this stuff.

Blue-bird, I hope cleaning your room goes quickly!

We also have those chrome wire shelving units - my boyfriend loves them. I am kind of reluctant to get anymore because I would rather get rid of the crap we are storing on them.

I have really been thinking about 'does this bring me joy' with regard to the insane amount of food I have stored in my house. I made brownies the other day (which I almost never do because they aren't my thing) and thought it would be a good chance to use up the cocoa my boyfriend brought when he moved in ... SEVEN YEARS AGO NOW. I started looking at it. Maybe it was fine, but I decided to throw it out.

I also threw out the special hiking sneakers I bought three years ago that have been giving me blisters for the past six months (at least). Why did I keep these for so long??

I sometimes don't throw stuff out because I think 'oh, when I move to a bigger place...' but I have been here ten years now and am not in a position to buy something else.

I can't believe how fast time goes by and how long I have lived like this.

I keep worrying I'll never make significant progress in clearing the place up and I'll die here like this. It's very depressing.

I just have to remember to grab a stack in the morning & bring them to work. That's it! I just have to do it.

I go back & forth about the shelving. Sometimes I feel like you do, that it's just enabling me to keep more stuff. But at the same time, I just want everything off the !#%&(@$ floor!!! Unfortunately, I have 2 different sizes, which is dumb & I didn't realize for a long time. But it's okay. There are worse problems to have.

Angelique, I hope you can find some help moving those boxes soon. It may take a while, but it will get better some day.

I think we have more than one size shelving unit, too. The only problem I have with them is that we organize everything on the shelves and then have room to pile more stuff up. No matter what our intentions are, it seems to happen.

I haven't been keeping up with my keeping the kitchen surfaces clear experiment. Everything got piled up on top of the microwave, counters, and stove again. I like how I can write that as if the stuff just magically appeared and didn't have anything to do with either of us putting it there.

I set a timer for five minutes yesterday and managed to make the kitchen look much better than it had. I remain amazed at the five minute bursts. Maybe I should live my life this way, working up to ten minutes at some point.

Thank you hvert, I really hope so. Have to save up money for movers and packers.

At least I'm not adding to the clutter in here with a lot of new purchases. But things that do come in, like bags from prescriptions, don't get consolidated and thrown away. I have to be more mindful about getting it done.

Of new purchases, the only significant ones were a stick vacuum and the new shower seat that's coming and shower head. I just pray I can use them well. But otherwise I'm not adding new things to the mess, it's old stuff (except for some new shirts, which were necessary since I gained weight).

I cleaned a little bit today and found my brand new 32gb Flash Drive that I have been looking for. I bought it in the summer and haven't used it yet. I was figuring I'd have to buy a new one when I buy a new Laptop in February, so that saves me $15-$20.

What I've decided to do is get rid of some stuff everyday until around Christmas time then organize and clean (sweep, mop)

My goal for tomorrow is to clean out my closet and my desk drawer.

I found this holiday/greeting card organizer for $10 on Amazon. I may get that, I always end up losing cards or they end up buried in a bunch of stuff.

Today I cleaned out my closet, my desk drawer and bathroom sink

Tomorrow I will organize my clothes in my dresser and see what doesn't fit me anymore.

Cleaned and organized my dresser today, tomorrow I'll do my other desk.

That's awesome that you found your flash drive! I love it when stuff like that happens.

Angelique, I hear you on not wanting to add to the mess with new clutter. I've been much better at the resisting the temptation lately, although I keep thinking about how nice it would be to have a battery powered dustbuster

I like the cleaning up before Christmas challenge. I have a sort of informal challenge like that going on with a friend. Yesterday I threw out two pairs of mittens. Someone gave them to me last year and I never noticed that they were a) way too big and b) mismatched pairs!

Oh I'd love a cordless dust buster too! That's one of the problems with the stick vac, the cord is too short so I have to get a good extension cord.

Cleaned my two desks today. Now I'm just going to wait to the weekend to organize everything else, sweep, and get started on the living room.

I organized my room today, swept, and sprayed some air freshener. Tomorrow I will start on the living room and kitchen

Started cleaning the living room and kitchen today. I found my mouse pad that I lost and had thought I would need to buy a new one

Cleaned up my room today. There wasn't much to do, the kitchen is clean. Next is finish cleaning the living room which we'll start working on Friday so we can put our tree up on Sunday

Update, the entire house is now clean putting up the Christmas tree today

I am envious of your clean house.

So I've spent two hours on cleaning the den where my ex spent 75% of his time playing video games & watching netflix.

This end table in the pic above had sooooo much $h1t on it. It was above the little lamp in the photo.

May not look like much but I have a huge amount of cleaning to do... one day or weekend at a time. Heck, one corner of the house at a time.

Btw, we have about 3,000 cds which I have to gather, alphabetize, and then divide up.

Love the bookcases!

You make me glad that I'll never have to divide my 2,000+ cds up Good luck with that very daunting task! I hope they're in some sort of order.

By way of an update, I have cleaned basically nothing in a while now

I really need to get to it, of course, but just haven't had any motivation! We don't decorate inside for Christmas because of our dogs, so there's no pressing need to do it.

Our table WAS clean for a little while, but now it's covered with laundry, cds, & some Christmas presents we just bought. You can still SEE the table, LOL, but it's not cleared off anymore.

We really need to vacuum the living room. My dog keeps pulling fluff off of her dog bed & it's all over the floor now.

My garage did have a cleaner pathway, but then some laundry fell over & messed it up a little, & I put my bunnies in the garage to get them out of the cold & keep them out of the house (it's too warm for them). So now my cleaner garage is a little less clean again

My gf did start cleaning the stairs, though, so about half of them look pretty good. She still needs to do the other half, LOL.

We'll eventually have to clean the table to wrap presents.

Bluebird, I want you to come to my house -- you are so focused!

Achy-turtle, your room looks *great* -- everything is so shiny and clean looking.

musicjunkie, I am in a similar boat. I have been scared to come to this thread because I haven't done much. Today I finally stuffed the balsam fir from last year's Christmas tree into a crappy pillow and did the same with four quarts of catnip -- I started off making catnip mice, but after two of them... forget it! Too much work!

I need to keep these recent craft projects in a prominent place until I rid my house of all other craft project supplies. I just do not have the patience or talent for those things. I can sit for hours making a webpage look nice, but I can't be bothered to rip out a seam that's not straight. I still need to sweep up the mess I made in the living room and dining room dumping pine needles and catnip all over the place trying to cram it into tiny holes

I also need to clean out a spot for a tree and spots for all the stuff that we need to move to create room for the tree.

I did manage to throw out enough spices I will never use so that I could throw out this horrible over the door shelf unit I've had for ten years. My kitchen looks much better without that junky thing in it. The only thing I have felt like decluttering lately has been food.

I haven't made any headway yet. The electrician was here doing something and he shifted a bunch of stuff that was against the wall, back, and then back in place again. He put a pair of sweatpants that had been on the floor on top of my coat on the ladder and I took them and actually threw them in the kitchen trash bag. That was good.

I have not thrown out my old mirror yet or anything else. As things get replaced they have to be thrown out. I wish I weren't in such a weird depression. I pray I'll come out of this before it's too late.

This week I'm going to force myself to start cleaning again, even if it's one doggone thing every day. I didn't realize how much time had gone by without me cleaning anything (or without posting to this thread!. This thread really is keeping me more accountable at least with how much time I spend goofing off & not cleaning. I actually STILL have not put up those shelves I bought like 3 weeks ago. That's just sad.

Angelique, that's awesome that you threw out your sweatpants! Last week I made two cat beds with two of the cashmere sweaters I need to toss... and will have a much easier time getting rid of the rest without worrying about reusing them

musicjunkie, I find the thread has the same effect - I started to go through to see when we had the basement flooding issue - I STILL have not picked up everything in the living room that got moved as a result of that.

I just did all the dishes and went through my plastic containers, throwing out the ones I never use.

I used to work for a very large thrift store operation and acquired a lot of stuff that way, a lot of it right when I bought my house. It was usable stuff and very cheap, but not necessarily to my taste now. It feels good to toss some of that stuff.

I am not sure what else I will get done today. It's a rare warm day out (in the 40s, lol), so I feel like I should enjoy the sun for a bit.

I put about 20 books I'd been saving to take to a thrift shop into the recycling bin for tomorrow's trash pick up. I also cleaned up the Christmas tree area and persuaded my boyfriend to throw out some of his stuff that has been sitting in the living room for months. Why is other people's stuff so much more annoying???