The bed is made, I’m up and dressed. Well mostly anyway, have thick socks on instead of shoes and since I’m not the fly lady, my hair only got a quick comb and clipped back out of my eyes, plus no make up. That’s okay though because it seems today is a snow day. Yep, we have a beautiful layer of snow coating the ground so I’m not going to work.
I am going to make this snow day a productive day. Instead of napping the morning away and lazing around I am going to use it doing stuff that I really need to do.
1. Finish the task of the cleaning and organizing the hallway closet.
2. Tackle the kitchen bar area and catch up on washing dishes. I’ll also need to clean off the kitchen cabinets as much as I can. Both these areas are still holding some of the breakable items that came out of other rooms from when they were pulling the floor up. Some of them are also items from my grandma’s house, so I’ve been trying to keep them safe until I can get the little curio cabinet gets moved in. I’ll need to sort through some of this, and see which items of mine I am willing to let go of.
3. Deal with the I don’t know boxes from last night.
4. Put my bathroom back together, at least for now. I haven’t made the decision on the cabinet I want to go in there, so until I do I am just going to put it back together as was. This will get the stuff out of my living room, and will allow me to find things more easily while I figure things out.
I think that is enough to get my day started, and if I keeping moving forward through out the day, should all be easily accomplished. I’m off to crank up some music, find breakfast then get going!
You know when you are coming home from a long trip, you’ve been in the car forever and that one thought keeps flowing through you mind. Are we there yet? You know the feeling you get when you see that first mileage sign that your city appears on? That feeling of we are almost there. Yes, of course you are still a hundred or more miles away from home, but you know the end is in sight and that you are indeed heading the right direction.
That’s how I am feeling tonight. I know I’m not done. I still have a lot of work to do, just to get to a point where I can switch over from cleaning out and organizing to maintaining the order. Again I’m not there, yet. But I’m closer. When I looked around my house tonight, I for once, felt like the end was near, that I was almost there.
I’m hoping these feelings mean that I am adjusting the thoughts in my head. I said last night that cleaning had always felt like moving things from one place to another then to another. You’d clean off the coffee table, and sure you’d throw away the trash that always seemed to pile up on it. But then you’d be left with all these random things that you ended up tossing in a box, because if they had a place they belonged you hadn’t figured it out yet. Okay, so I am guessing with the average, dare I say normal, person would probably be shaking there head and saying no I don’t. But I do. Because when I didn’t know what to do with something, I’d throw it in a plastic container. And that container would work its way from the living room to the kitchen, and then get shoved somewhere else.
If I actually got the house completely cleaned up, and yes there were many times I would do it, all the random boxes of things would end up shoved in to the ‘cake room’ which could also double as the all purpose I don’t know what the hell to do with it, dumping ground. And that door would be closed. Because isn’t that how you clean house? As long as the surface areas looked good, and no one opened your bedroom or closet doors or the ‘all purpose dumping ground’ area, the house looked clean?
Before long though, the coffee table would be covered and I’d put off cleaning it off. Or I’d get it in my head I was going to start organizing this or that, usually the ‘all purpose dumping ground,’ and get started on it, only to get distracted and everything would lay where it was.
Then there’d be so much stuff to deal with it was easier just not to deal with any of it. Much like when you were a kid and you were told to clean your room. You’d stand in the door way and stare inside, because while you knew the goal you just didn’t know exactly what steps to take first to get there, because at that moment it all just seemed impossible.
I’m learning now, through this process, that cleaning shouldn’t be about shoving everything into a container and not dealing with it. I’m sure a therapist would have a field day with that statement, and I’m sure it says more about me than I even want to think about at this point.
What I am focusing on is that I am learning. I’m learning that cleaning should be just about dusting, sweeping, and vacuuming. You know the little things that really honestly don’t take a whole lot of time to do, but when you have to dig all of the furniture out from under piles of stuff, ‘cleaning’ takes on a whole different meaning. Cleaning meant you spent a full day in a room, getting it all in order only to look at the next room and realize it would take just as long to do the same thing. And when you got done, you had a pile of stuff you didn’t know what to do with.
I’m working on that too. I’m working on all those piles of things.
I told someone today, I’m a work in progress but at least I am making progress. I realize that I will at some point have to come back and go through things again and let go of more stuff. I’m okay with that. Maybe when that time comes I’ll see that I haven’t used something and be able to trim things down even further with out all the thoughts in my head. Right now I’m doing baby steps. Because I am afraid if I try to do way to much all at once, I will get completely, totally overwhelmed and quit. I have before.
As I am going through the things I’m having some new conversations with myself. Once you have every bottle of lotion you have in the house all in once place at the same time, you see just how much of it you have. This process is reminding me of something I’ve already known, which is that I need to curb my spending. I do feel though, that the visuals are adding impact to the thoughts I have already had. I have always known I have too much stuff surrounding me. But seeing it sitting there in front of you and really dealing with it, adds a whole new level to it.
I did go ahead and throw out some lotions, body washes and body sprays. Okay honestly, I put them in the garage sale pile. While I do realize that is crazy, I just had trouble throwing away some almost full bottles of stuff. Part of it is the money spent, but the other part is the ‘it’s still good, it can still be used’ thoughts. I knew though, that I just didn’t have room for it, and even if it gets thrown away before the garage sale, it is now currently out of my house, or will be as soon as I brave the cold and move it to the store building.
No matter if something ends up in the trash or in the garage sale pile, the important fact is that it wasn’t shoved somewhere in my house, taking up space.
I feel I can call today a success. I have a few more little things to do, before I could honestly completely cross all the items off my earlier list, but I completed the majority of the main elements.
To me that is a success.
