Sunday, March 10, 2013

17. Keeping a Clean House



I am disorganized. Very disorganized.

It’s a bit discouraging really. Once I’m by myself I begin feeling like I can live as messily as I want. Currently, after two loads of dishes, my kitchen sink is still overflowing. I believe I might have used every dish in my cupboard before I started cleaning today. Half of my room is covered in sewing supplies. Underneath my bed are at least three boxes overflowing with scraps from old and current projects. I have piles of homework, old tests, and other handouts lying around the living room and stuffed into drawers. I haven’t seen my dining room table in weeks. Both of my closets are hazard zones that I fear to venture into.

How do people de-clutter? I’m so afraid of suddenly realizing I’m buried under piles of what I call “crippy crap”. It’s that junk, like old batteries, pens, pieces of toys, scraps of this and that, that you never know what to do with. Usually people keep them contained in one junk drawer. But lately I feel like I’m living in one big junk drawer.

I know what I need to do. I need to haul everything out into the daylight and start sorting. But ugh, you know what that leads to. About two weeks of an apartment even messier than it is now and then finally stuffing everything back in place out of frustration. So I went out in search of an answer that might help my cluttery woes.

I found one tip I really liked. If you have stuff you are unsure you want, let time sort it out for you. Place the unsure stuff in a box and date it. Put it out of sight for a whole year. If you’ve left it undisturbed for so long, you obviously wouldn’t miss it much. Out to goodwill or the garbage can it goes. I could definitely get behind this. Especially, since in one year I’ll be moving. I’ll certainly be on the lookout for things I don’t need to move into a new apartment.

I find a lot of suggestions for plastic bins, shoe hangers, and double closet hangers. I suppose throwing money at a problem is one way to deal with it. I do most of my storage in cardboard boxes, because hey, I’d rather be cheap than well organized. What I really need to do is not reorganize my closet, but reduce it by about half. It’s hard when you have sentimental value to a lot of your t-shirts, but I know that some of them really belong in a thrift store by now. You only need 2 or 3 for pajamas, and I have about 6. I also have an unfortunate tendency to buy cute dresses when I know I’ll probably never wear them. I’m the most comfortable in cargo pants and loose shirts. I either need to give my closet or my fashion a serious overhaul.

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before, but I really should just give myself a chore list. Big dry erase board on the fridge, different duties every day. I guess because I never had chores growing up that this didn’t occur to me. Getting a schedule down would certainly help me out with the dishes and sweeping. But schedules have let me down before. I would have to stick with it for weeks before I would get used to it.

Bleh, so this is what happens when I try to do two blog posts in a day. I start whining about how dirty my apartment is. I’ll try to keep up on this particular schedule so you guys don’t have to go through this again. Well anyway, I did learn some nice tips on how to de-clutter and clean my home. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit more inspiring.

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