There’s nothing like a massive floor overhaul to force me to make a desperate attempt to organize. It never works; it always ends up with me shuffling every little doll shoe and puzzle piece into an old Pampers box and while telling myself that THIS time I’ll remember where this or that is RIGHT here. In the closet. Next to 3 other boxes of little nick-nacks and crap off my counters and book case wherein lies the same whispered promise that I’ll come back soon.
Ha! Really, I have gotten to the point where I laugh at myself anymore during these situations. I whisper sweet nothings to myself such as I’ll come back and look through that box this weekend.
What’s funny is I’m not a pack rat. Not anymore, anyway. (That’s a conversation for another day.) I’m happy to get rid of stuff via the trash or donation, but it’s hard to find the time! I’m very low maintenance, personally. Quite a minimalist these days. (Man, someone around here should be!) Working from home affords me the ability to keep a limited wardrobe for work and no one notices if I pick up my kids from school in the same jeans as the day before. (And if they do, I don’t want to be their friend anyway.)
So yesterday I’m going through a bookcase where I’ve been saving up to five years’ worth of this one little magazine that I really like to read called Guideposts. (Notice I haven’t read any of them since my first kid was born?) I’ve been saving them with the hopes of reading them. I should add that I don’t have any other magazine subscriptions, not that I subscribe to, anyway. My mom sends my kids Highlights and my husband gets a gift subscription to one of the Golf magazines. I don’t care how cheap those subscriptions are, I’m positive that they get money selling your name to a hundred other places and that’s why the subscription fee can be so low. Since I stopped ordering subscriptions, junk mail has practically ceased! The down side is no more Publisher’s Clearing House mail. Awe, shucks. (Not.)
So, I sucked up all the courage I had and put all those magazines in the recycling bin! (Not without tearing off all the address tags to go in the shredder.) That was hard to do AND even harder not to let ADD set in and get sidetracked reading some stories! They’ll keep coming and now I won’t feel like I need to read back issues before delving into the current one. The stories are really touching and I think I’ll read some of them to my kids so they can get a glimpse of life and struggle in the big world (which apparently revolves around them, donchaknow?) I ended up with a bucket of books that got relocated to some shelves downstairs and more papers added to my husband’s box of personal stuff that I keep adding to, yet he never goes through.
I read something recently that really hit home for me. Everything in your house should have a home. A light bulb went on in my head when I read that. THAT right there is my biggest problem! I’m always asking myself why my house is such a pitiful mess when it seems I’m always cleaning?! Because all I’m doing is shuffling crap around in my cupboards and on the counters. Back and forth, round and round. It’s maddening!
But now I am armed with that knowledge and have already made some improvements with my kitchen cupboards (detailed in a future post) and since I made those changes, they remain mostly organized still. My little 3 square feet of counter space that I cleaned last week is still clean. I got it to a maintenance level of clean — my key goal in any of my organizing nowadays. Many things that seemed to have a home on that counter now have a home elsewhere (the toaster and bread box are what remain on that spot).
Like I said, major floor overhaul going on right now. I spent the last two days cleaning & moving crap around and pulling up carpet and vinyl tile. The kitchen, dining, and living areas are a disaster right now with stacked chairs, bare floor, and praying I got up all the 6 billion staples that held down that flooring. (I’m not a fan of flooring installers right now. There’s just absolutely no way that floor needed that many staples. Damn.) I’ll spare you the picture of my blistered hand from my staple yanking fun.
Near future post will entail all the fun I’m having with this renovation.
Molly B'Golly 