Excuses:
- Excuse #1 - I work ridiculous shifts. My schedule is a rotating shift of sorts so I work a few 12-hour days and then I work a few 12-hour nights. I also play volleyball. And my commute is an hour each way. So What I'm saying is I don't have a lot of time.
- Excuse #2 - I've been in planning mode.
- I follow a coupon blog, Queen Bee Coupons. Recently the blogger, Heather, de-cluttered and organized her house in about a week. She chronicled the process here - creating a plan and tackling specific areas daily. It was quite impressive but actually a bit depressing...for me because I truly couldn't figure out how she could do it all. She has mentioned that she is more of a type-A personality when it comes to organization and I am a total Type-B and sentimental, hoarding sap. She is a stay-at-home mom so works 24/7 - although her kids are old enough to help her out a bit with the process. I couldn't figure out how she could do it all - run a highly successful blog, watch two kids, cook, clean, organize, plan. SO I stopped trying to figure it out and just use her work to motivate me to do something to change my current living situation.
- Now my personality type (not necessarily Type-B specific) needs to read about my problem before I can do something about it. Perhaps this is procrastination... I was the student, typing the paper at 3am and getting A's. I am a night owl who is most creative under pressure. HA! That's probably why I am writing this post instead of cleaning off the table so it can be moved by tonight. But I know it will all get done. I found that the book Does this Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? by Peter Walsh was pretty spot on with the issue I have around the house (and my weight). It is a letting go process for me, but one I need to do.
So what's the plan?
- Background
- I live in a small basement "apartment." The layout is terrible. The combined entry/kitchen/dining/living room/laundry is about 500 square feet. We have one standard size coat closet.
- The other half of the basement is also about 500 square feet, but did I mention the layout is terrible? We lose about 100 square feet from the hallway which is just wide enough to walk through. In this second section we have a "den," the bathroom, and a bedroom. In the "den" we lose another 30 square feet because of the non-functional fireplace (no longer code to use it). There is one standard closet in the bedroom, one "hall" closet and one standard closet in the den. the bathroom splits the den and the bedroom (so a door on either side). Essentially we end up with about 600 square feet of "living space." The rest is not usable because of the floor plan.
- We have pets - five dogs and three cats. Yes, even in this tiny space. We have carpet in most areas (kitchen and bathroom have vinyl). The genius who chose the carpet went with a light tan so every paw print, spill, and snag shows.
Not to scale - just to show you how stupid this is.
- The Initial Fix
- Laminate flooring. Yes, we will be pulling out the carpeting in the dining room area and putting in a dark laminate floor. Okay, I won't but my beau will (our agreement since he is a stay-at-home caretaker).
- Purchase smaller dining table. I was able to, thanks to a tip from Queen Bee, get a $200 furniture voucher for $49 at a local store. Funny enough I was going to buy a table from them about six months ago and didn't get around to it. See, procrastination pays off.
- Read my book.
- The Timeline
- I think one of the best things Heather did was give herself a time-line. Now I know myself well enough that I won't stick to a timeline. I have things get in the way all the time. Things I think are more important at the time. "The Book" already has pointed out that this isn't always true. When I think about all the time I waste because I can't find things and have to move around all the junk in my house, I really do have five minutes a day to put things away.
- Flooring needs to be done by Monday, yes this Monday, because I go back to work on Tuesday night AND because we have dogs that need to go out to potty.
- Complete de-clutter needs to be done by March 30th. This is the next time I have a long weekend and I want to enjoy it, not be sitting in junk still sorting. There is gardening to do darn it!
The de-clutter part scares me. I have tried to do this so many times and yet I keep coming back to the same starting place. Even as a little girl I had a messy room, but knew where everything was. I enjoy looking at things from long ago (I majored in history) and see value in keeping these items. I just don't know HOW to keep these items. I read a great blog, Empress of Dirt, that breaks down the type of clutter we have. This really did get me thinking - enough actually that I took two paper grocery bags of stuff to Goodwill last night! It's stuff that "almost" worked for me, but didn't quite work for me and I was holding onto it "just in case it maybe did start to work for me" or because "I could put up with the shortcomings" and my favorite, "because I spent money on it."
I will start posting before and after pictures as the process kicks into high gear this afternoon (dining area will be cleared out, table will be taken down, and carpet will come up). Fingers crossed this works...
