Cleaning up the house (ready set go)

[afuna]

We decided to push forward with cleaning up our stuff. As usual, it's only my mom, my sister, and I who are cleaning. My dad and brother are not doing anything about it. *makes faces at them* Sometimes I wish they would take more responsibility for home stuff. They live here, too! But whatever.

We need to clean up about half a dozen areas, and decided to start with all the junk in the upstairs sala. We have a lot of I got to sixty before giving up. My sister went on and counted out (approximately) 138. That's probably three-fourths gigantic tupperware boxes, with the rest being slightly smaller cardboard boxes, or huge plastic sacks of... whatever. A lot of it is documents, which are going to be the hardest to sort through.


This is what we're up against:


That is just the right portion of our sala; there's another pile of boxes on the left that I didn't take a picture of. There are also several other portions of our house with clutter levels that are just as bad. I'm not even thinking about those for now.


Everyone in this family hoards, and it reaches a level of ridiculous that's just... um. Okay so today, among other things, I threw out a roll of calendars from 1969; receipts dating back to 1992; old newspapers; boxes that just contained empty boxes and plastic bags;

However, it's not all junk. We dug up a box of pictures, including some of my oldest sister at a Trek convention :D My oldest sister, my Atsi, introduced me and my older brother to sci-fi. She was also the one who sent us a steady supply, shipping back VHS tapes (ahahah :D) with recordings of ST:TNG, ST:DS9, ST:VOY. These days I could probably just hit up a torrent site, but back then there was no other way for me to see these shows. (A few years after my Atsi passed away, they showed a Filipino-dubbed version of DS9 on a local channel. I didn't follow it though. By then, I had seen many of the episodes in English).


By my Ditsi's calculations, If we each do one box a day, that's seven boxes a week each, or twenty-one boxes total, and we can be done in seven weeks (give or take half a week) -- just in time for my birthday ;-). I half expect us to fizzle out the way we usually do but OTOH we are better organized than we have ever been. Perhaps this time we will make it! *fistpump*

Or perhaps not. I went for it and did seven boxes today though. But that's low-hanging fruit :D We still have a couple more boxes of easy stuff (toys for example go directly in the donate pile), so I want to build up as much momentum as we can on those.

The hard boxes are going to be the stuff with my Atsi's and my Shoti's (little brother) stuff :( We have put off processing these boxes for years each, and thinking of opening those up and choosing what to keep and throwing away the rest is enough to cut into my jubilation.

Ugh.

ANYWAY, besides organizing the epic cleanup of our house, I am trying to organize my work habits. To that end I have bought office supplies (I love office supplies :D). Three whiteboards to supplement the two I already have, white board markers, and (the whiteboard having been so cheap that it didn't come with a frame or a ledge to put the markers on) blu tack to stick the whiteboards and the pens to the walls :D

I love this blu tack stuff. srsly.

Comments

[chemicallace]

Yay office supplies! Organizing work stuff makes me feel so productive.

I am not a hoarder, but we live in a very small apartment with no closets, so I have a similar stuff problem. I'm trying to get rid of stuff and usually tell myself I need to do one box a week. Perhaps we can be clean-up buddies and inspire each other to keep going. You might even inspire me to send you yarn if you get rid of enough stuff ;-)

[afuna]

Heeee. I am totally in favor of having a cleanup buddy!

[azurelunatic]

Yay cleanup!

And even if you can't face a whole box on any given day, fifteen minutes with a box -- just that and no more -- is not too big a thing to do.

[afuna]

Yeah, that is true. I must persevere! This is the third attempt we've made at getting things started, and the first that's this organized. Yesterday, we finally saw walls that we hadn't seen in ages! MUST CONTINUE.

[kake]

Good luck with the decluttering! It's hard, but so so worth it.

[starshadow_rivaulx]

You will prevail over those boxes. *nods*

I have a weakness for office supplies the way others have a weakness for chocolate. My husband has been known to cover my eyes whenever I look too long at the Post-Its display in bookstores. *chuckle*

(Though really, if you have to do a book report, nothing like making notes on Post-Its and sticking them under the relevant part of the book as you go along.)

[prettymanly]

Hahah, that looks like my place, except with even more paper. The danger with all this is how it tends to spread sideways.

I love office supplies. And now I'm all about minimalism and organization, I want to get hold of all those types of furniture and casings that are multi-purpose? Like those stools that double as cabinets, or things that fold into each other when not in use and can turn into small tables or stands. Even if it doesn't help you get rid of stuff, it might help you shove some of it out of the line of sight?

[afuna]

Ooh I like this idea. Will need to see if we can find anything like that that's suitable for here *g*

Right now we have shelves, shelves, shelves and more shelves -- and too much stuff to shove onto there even then!

[ephemera]

go go go team decluttering, and re-claiming your home.

[afuna]

Reclaiming our home --- mmm I like the sound of that :)