Still Slogging

Somehow all manner of other aspects of life have taken over the past few days.

Saturday was a beautiful day that would have been perfect for cleaning out the garage, except we had a bunch of other stuff that we did instead of that.

Today was also busy with alternate plans.

I still managed to spend some time this evening on the clothing situation, mostly in preparation for tomorrow's "donation pickup" appointment.

I managed to sort through the last half of the laundry baskets (I have a lot of laundry baskets) and now I have a couch covered in piles of clean clothes.  Which will do me no good if I can't figure out where to put them before they fall over/become covered in cat fur/get subsumed by more clothes.

Taking the next step, I decided that Bailey's dresser would be the least odious place to start.  And most possible since through some sort of inept logistical decision making, it was the only dresser not located in a room where people are sleeping.

So...I am maybe not going to go into this whole thing.  But I manage to sort out the stuff he is wearing from the stuff which, for whatever reason, he is not.  Mostly.  And got his laundry into the drawers in a somewhat functional way again.  I hope.

I also have multiple bags of clothes for the donation tomorrow.

It is clear from the clothing being piled on the couch that the main clothing problem is me.  Although Andrew might have some stacks of pants as well.

He does persist in sorting through the multitude of papers that had been subsuming a considerable quantity of counter space in the kitchen.  Go Andrew!

I also realized that today, by posting the link to this blog, I have revealed myself to be person who does not have her stuff together, who, in fact, probably should not be trusted to ever buy anything again.  The good news is, as Sara points out, I haven't managed to have a cat pass away unnoticed amid the clutter.  Things could be worse.

First Showing Prep And BOOKS

We are up against quite a deadline here, so fewer photographs are being taken than I would like... but the blog must go on!

We had our first showing yesterday morning, despite the fact that many walls need to be painted, many items still need to be sorted and tossed or recycled or donated, and carpet needs to be replaced downstairs.  The more we clean the more I find more places where dirt is lodged.  I just looked at the door to the deck, for example.  I had wanted to wipe it down and then maybe re-paint it at some point.  I didn't realize how grimy and disgusting the lower edge of the window is.  Who ever looks at that?  Well, I did yesterday.  It is still grimy.  There wasn't time to fix that... yet.

On the other hand, we have made an insane amount of progress, much of it due to Austin.  I'm not bad at packing, cleaning, and organizing but he is amazing at it.  Not to mention that he worked two 19 hour days of painting and cleaning... so much so that I was a little worried on Friday night that he had physically harmed himself by pushing himself so far.  (Note: the guy runs marathons sometimes, but he still needs sleep.  Thankfully he got some sleep this weekend and now seems fine.)

So.  Some painting has happened.  Our front entrance has new flooring.  The kid's bathroom has been almost totally re-done (that was in the works before we made an offer on a house, though).  And we have put a LOT of books into storage.

I love books.  Austin loves books.  Alex loves books.  Julia loves books.  I'm pretty sure that even our cat, Apollo, loves books.  We have put perhaps a third of our collection into storage so far.  This first photo is of a bookcase that is still standing, but which Austin switched out some of the less-used books and magazines.  Apollo enjoyed checking out the temporary empty space.  Also note the flurry of random books and papers in the foreground; those were put away in a box for the showing.

The other photograph I want to share is of the brick and board bookcase that housed our fiction books.  Austin dismantled it, packed the books and took all of the books and materials to storage.  Now he's painting the dingy wall a beautiful cream color and we are hoping to re-carpet the entire area.  Hopefully I can share some "after" photos in the near future.

And... that's it for now.  More soon, possibly related to packing and moving more books.  We have a lot of books...

A Secret and Some Clothes

A Cool Secret:  I saw the R-C house today and...They appear to have WON the challenge.  Sara maintains that there is a great deal more to do, but it is an incredible transformation they have accomplished this week, along with their storage unit and many, many hours of work, I'm sure.

As for me, I am grappling with clothes right now.  How many clothes are enough?  How many clothes do I have in this house that fit NOBODY?  How am I going to resolve my 8 (now 4) laundry baskets, dresser drawers, etc. etc.

I don't have an answer, but I do know that I should have been cleaning out my garage on this perfectly warm November afternoon instead of eating cheese in Sara's lovely, clean basement.  Ah well.

The Best Part

I feel like I'm treading water, not getting anywhere.  Certainly not moving very fast even with the current.

Today I got to the point where I decided I HAD to do something about the clothing situation.  Sara's post on laundry + Scott talking to Lucy about putting away clothes and how there was room in the drawers because they had cleaned them out + 8 baskets of clothes (at least!) in the bedroom...

So I moved the baskets of clothes out to the living room.  It's not anything but shuffling, but...I need to go through them.  I need to get things out of drawers.  It's a big project and this is step 1.

In the process, I did find 2 bags of donatable clothes, 1 bag of pants with holes all in the same knee and 1 bag of yellow stuffed animals.  A big elephant, a Pluto and a Pikachu.

And there were bags.  Bags that had not been unpacked from trips.  There was a fastpass for Space Mountain in 2006.  Needless to say, we missed the freaking window on that one!

Then I started going through those bags.  From the trips.  My medals from 2009 - my first year of racing and I got the first Coast-to-Coast medal.  It came off its ribbon, but I fixed it.

There were postcards from Chameleon shows in 2009 - Cabaret and Suburb: The Musical.

And there was this little gem.  Which has been missing for, obviously, years:

And which Justin has been pining for lately.  He'll be excited in the morning, for sure.




I also found a little notebook.  I had clearly taken some notes on a class or seminar or something. 

Among other things, it included this wisdom:

What are the conditions that foster respect?
3 things to boost self-esteem

not IQ, not location, not education, not ncome.

3 things

1.  Unconditional Love.
2.  Reachable expectations
(less permissive environment, non-negotiable rules, not too many)
3.  Respetful & Democratic Environment

(Listen - what kids want more of)

Presence is critical.

I still haven't contended with those baskets of clothes and don't have room in the drawers for them anyway, but...I'll get there.

My Office, The Place Where Stuff Goes to Die

Things I have found while clearing out my office:

A Gymboree receipt from 2005
Fisher Price Little People brochure (my kids are 10 and 15 and all the Little People have long since left our home)
About 25 Disney World brochures from Epcot, Typhoon Lagoon, etc., along with schedules from dates in 2001 and 2006 (useful)
Crinoline for my wedding dress (extra useful)
Lots of information about vaccines from my previous job as a Mayo vaccination nurse (recycled most of it)
A piece of paper that I got in a Kaplan class in 2010 that helped me pass the NCLEX-RN (keeping that and copying it for the people I work with who are currently in nursing school)
Approximately ten zillion photographs of various people from various eras (no time to organize this all now!)
A half-used beeswax Christmas ornament kit that I bought from Chinaberry at least eight years ago
At least thirty jigsaw puzzles
A basket that my Mother-In-Law, Eleanor, gave me several years ago.  It is meant to be decorative but must be kept away from the cat.  Also it is full of yarn.
A LOT of yarn from various projects that I have finished.  More yarn from projects that are half-completed.  More yarn from projects I haven't started.
More cross stitch patterns than I could use in fifty lifetimes (not that I won't try)
Random puzzle pieces
Random bits of toys from toys that are long gone
Random game pieces from games that are long gone
An exercise DVD Corinna lent me


What is scary is that there is still so much left in here to be sorted and packed or donated or tossed or recycled.

I need to do better than this at the next house, that is for sure.  This place is like entropy on steroids...

Some days.

Some days it seems like I am a clutter-reducing machine.  I have focus, I have drive, I have faith it will all get done.

Some days...it feels like it's all on me and there is no hope.

Some days all I can do is tread water and prevent too much backsliding.

Today is one of those days....but not the first one.

I did get Andrew to start attacking the Wall-O-Paper.  He's made better progress on it than I would have, I think, and has already filled at least one bag of recycling.

Magazines must all go.

I have a love/hate relationship with paper bags.

I just want to get rid of everything, until I start going through it and then I'm not sure what to get rid of and what to keep.

I unpacked the rest of the groceries and cleaned off the counter.  There was a "natural disaster" and/or "biohazard" from some tomatoes.  Why?  Because apparently I can't even manage to keep tomatoes from rotting on my counter.  I need a little dose of hope.

Corinna

Closet Decluttering Funtimes

It is a little distressing how fast Corinna is outpacing me already, blogging-wise.  But I've been busy the last two days, signing papers to buy a new house (yes, for real) and also participating in Halloween hijinx.  And then today I went to one of the local elementary schools and subbed in the nurse's office.

But now, back to my closet, because I know you have been dying to see pictures of the horror, the horror that it was.

The closet had a LOT of stuff in it.  Shoes all over the floor of it, plus two bags of toys I'm gathering up to donate, a bag of knitting projects, and all kinds of other random items:

The shelves held a huge mishmash of sweaters and clothing - mostly my husband's, because I'm too short to reach!

I had piles of sweaters, pajamas, and exercise clothing in a mishmash on the side shelving, topped by a sloppy pile of handmade baby blankets.  (Note: my babies are now 10 and 14 years old).

I cleared out a bunch of stuff and bagged it up to donate to Epilepsy Foundation or Goodwill, and pulled everything off the shelves and sorted it.  Some things needed to be washed and many things needed to be re-folded.  The baby blankets are now packed away in a box to go into storage for a while.

Meanwhile, Austin (my husband) was also inspired and he cleared out a LOT of clothing and put them into a bag to be donated later.  He also tackled those upper shelves that I can't reach, sorting and re-folding everything.

Here's a view of his side of the closet:

Here is what my side of the closet looks like now:

And... now it's finally possible to walk into the closet again.  Weird.  But I like it.

Next up: working on the disaster area that I call my office.