Do the apartment therapy 8-week home cure

I love this goal too much to let it go. So does anybody here know when the fall cure 2009 starts?

edit:
“Next week will be Week 0 for the Fall Cure, which means that you have over a week to get a hold of a book or find the one that you put back on the shelf last spring. Week One will start on Monday, October 12, which will allow us to end after Thanksgiving and not right on it.” And they’re also doing a Green Cure!

There’s some life in the old goal yet! We vacuumed and dusted throughout the living room and bedroom and decluttered the book cases. The plan is to have something of a library one day, so we’re hesitant about giving books away, but the cases look much better without all of the concert ticket stubs and postcards and dust mice. It took us all of Saturday and when we went out for dinner around ten p.m., we were exhausted. But happy. I told my boyfriend that that he’ll get to tackle the cord octopus next week (or next time we continue with this). Anything to keep him interested…

We did so well and then the work load got too much. His bikes live in our living room thanks to work on the pipes beneath our cellar room’s floor, and half of our our stuff from the cellar is momentarily stacked in a corner of the living room too, dust mice inbetween. It’s seriously dirty, such a mess – newspapers and magazines I’m not allowed to throw out bug me the most. We haven’t had anybody over for dinner in months except for a friend whose apartment in the East of Berlin hasn’t been redone since 1989 or something.

When I lived with other people, we also had something of a cleaning routine; with this guy, it’s hopeless. But I don’t want to give up. We need to set dates and stick to them. Fill a shoebox with stuff one night, sort out the most ridiculous music the next night. Tiny tiny steps, but it can be done.

The official spring cure should be at week six (light therapy) right now… I lost track. We were stuck with our entryway and kitchen for an eternity. But, finally managed among other things to apply new paint to the area around the kitchen window this weekend, something we should have done four years ago. We are such slackers.

The big project this time around was to redo the so-called landing strip (after months of this, the phrasing only elicits tired smiles). Thanks to a new hatrack from IKEA and other stuff, we can finally hide all that, err, colorful biking gear. Also, my boyfriend complied with my request that he throw out years’ worth of his favorite newspaper (size: think Sunday edition of New York Times).

In week three you’re also supposed to think about how color works in your apartment and apply the 80/20 color rule if possible. Impossible. But week four with its focus on decluttering the living room might come to the rescue.

Apartment Therapy has just started its big spring cure, they’re currently at week two. Very exciting to see what people are working on!

We got sidetracked during our first attempt at “apartment therapy” in October. After implementing the new dishwasher, for which we had to tear out the old sink and get a new one plus kitchen counter top, we were exhausted. Financially, too. Now there’s a little more money in the bank and the list of things to do/buy/repair/throw out has reached perfection. No stone will be left unturned, and so on.

I’m just not sure what to start with, but that’s something we’ll figure out in the coming days. The company car, another thing we didn’t have the last time, will be mine for a whole weekend. Glad about that. Bringing IKEA things home on the subway isn’t that much fun after doing it for the umpteenth time.

We’ve decided to get a dishwasher! I wonder if we can even seat four people when the dishwasher is in place, but I hope so, and it will be so great to have one. Some talk about wanting to make progress – usually this is related to non-material matters such as love, our relationship, or the Ph.D., it’s rather weird to think of a dishwasher as, well, “development”.

Other things: Vacuuumed, but still haven’t mopped all floors. Removed many more items. Still did not buy flowers, but put herbs into new plant pots. Completely cleaned the kitchen, threw many things out, cupboards are much emptier now, and the tea… yes, the tea is organized alphabetically (in homage to Amanda Palmer).

Is this really the correct way to do “week one”, or are we going about this in a rather chaotic way? We went over the list of repairs and solutions, added comments. Looked at dishwashers, ordered a kitchen countertop (in a Kermit-like green – love at first sight) and cupboard, and took home a menu/palette of room colors to figure out which shade of yellow resembles the paint already on our kitchen walls. Realized that we’re least sure what to do about the hallway. Need to figure out where T. can put his bicycling equipment – the weird shorts and such.

What else to do:
- vacuuum and mop floors (postponed. it’s too strange not to do upper levels first)
- remove one item, not used, but valued (some books)
- buy flowers (forgot)
- sit in part of home one never usually sits in (hm, a bit weird in place as small as ours)
- look into ecological cleaning products (did that already)

I just chuckled at an entry by someone who did the cure earlier: “Now I just need to convince my sweetiepie that we need to go to Ikea….” Hooray for hot dogs! I’m glad that my partner was very committed and motivated yesterday… hope it continues that way.

We bought some new furniture this spring, threw out some stuff and put a few boxes into the cellar. But we never got around to a lot of things on our mental “to do”-lists, such as painting, repairing, and decluttering. My boyfriend thinks that our apartment would probably say “help me! I’m suffocating!”, if it could speak… In other words, we are like the “warm people” described in the book, complete with dust bunnies under the bed.

As a first step I updated the list of all the things we need to repair, paint, organize, throw out, reconsider, give away or sell. Phew. This home cure will mostly be about letting go of things, and I predict some drrrramatic moments.

Admittedly it’s easy for me to make fun about this – - – the biggest clutter factor are piles of newspapers that my boyfriend subscribes to, but hardly ever has time for. Instead I’m the one who gets to read them. It breaks my heart when he gives in once in a while and brings a year’s worth of newspapers into the cellar (never the trash). Such a deep emotional attachment to material objects, those symbols for the kind of life one isn’t leading – I have that too, but not so much, and I crave space. I hope that the home cure brings some momentum to our lives in this regard.