clean out the clutter

well… you know what they say… two steps forward, two steps backward.

i didn’t work on the office this week. instead, i went back to another zone… the dining room.

at the corner of the dining room table, my mom piles all chaeli’s craft/art supplies. it looks like a monstrosity.

so i went back to chaeli’s closet, found a drawer of old school supplies which i had planned to keep for chaeli, emptied that out and found the appropriate area in the office (since half of the office is more organized and spacier), and organized ther craft/art supply in that one large drawer of chaeli’s room.

at the same time, i thew away any unnecessary packaging, of which i think all are unnecessary, while my mother feels the need to keep them. in all honesty, i think the packaging just takes up too much space!

i organized her markers and other drawing tools into one box, and her painting/stamping supply into another.

the dining room looks like it has a complete makeover… just because i cleaned up that one little area!

the sad part is… our kitchen and living room needs to be cleaned again. but that’s too be expected as that is where chaeli spends most of her playtime.

nothing today. i dusted a little, and whiped down some dirty spots but spent some quality time, otherwise, with chaeli. we needed it.

we’re all this week anyway, i’m positive we will find time to continue with our ‘attack the clutter’ project.

due to a busy schedule, we’ve been on haitus from our attack the clutter project. we still have to complete zone 5, the office, and zone 6, the 2nd floor bathroom.

unforunately, doug is working this saturday, but i feel that it is too important to put off. i’ll be attacking this section myself… probably while chaeli naps and after bedtime.

if i can find something to distract her, i may even do some more while she is awake and in the same room with me. not optimistic about that, but one never knows…

it’s almost 5pm. in a little less then an hour, i’m going to have to call it quits for the end of the day as my mom will be heading out for the evening… and i’ll be taking care of little miss.

i’ve gotten my side of the office cleaned up pretty nicely. it’s not perfect but so much less cluttered. you can see the floor infront of both books shelsves! the piles were at least knee/thigh high. i think that alone, is a victory in itself.

also cleaned up the computer table. very good – as before the piles of crap and paper covered the entire surface. almost to the point of toppling over.

both book shelves are cleaned up with only books that we want remaining in our office (as it also poses as a library).

the shelf by the windo will be taken down and tossed. but for now, we’re using it to keep our boxes of paper work of which will be filed away in a systematic order when we finish the rest of the office.

my husband’s half is about… oh… 30% done.

he’s got more crap then i do. and has a harder time letting go of things. hence the extra clutter in hour household.

argh! this is horrible… HORRIBLE! this is the worst room to clean in our house. and i’m completely upset that we won’t get it done by today.

zone 5 – THE OFFICE. or junkyard, depending on who’s point of view. i’m leaning towards the latter. more boxes… WE NEED MORE BOXES!

aaarrrrrrgggggggghhhhhh!

today, we cleaned out chaeli’s room… zone 4! two of the closets filled mainly with my old things (most from highschool/university years). it was by far, much more difficult to clean, mainly because chaeli, after learning how not fun it was the last weekend we cleaned out zone 1, she knew right away that it wasn’t going to be a fun day when she saw me disappear and working away (she’s obviously becoming much more keen with her memory).

tantrums – ALL DAY LONG!

however, i ploughed through.

it was really interesting taking a trip down memory lane. so many things i had forgotten i had. old photos, old letters… knick knacks.

anyway… it’s done. her room has been cleaned out except for two drawers, mainly because we need to keep a few things there until we have more room from the office (the next zone to attack).

i did, however, clean out the drawers so what remains is orderly and of things we actually need.

as i clean, i’ve noticed some weak spots of areas i need to go back. but i’ll keep on working at the areas that need it the most, and go back to the few areas i want to tidy up a bit more (at least those areas are very minor and will be more manageable).

zone 5, the office. i fear it. it is the place we’ve dumped bills, paper work, documents and knick knacks into… saying we’ll get to it one way, but haven’t yet.

it is not a monstrosity.

will be taking time off from work just to tackle this one. and we’ll be sending chaeli to my parent’s place for those days. ugh.

it’s thursday… near the end of the week. i was starting to sweat that i would never get a chance to continue the ‘attack the clutter’ project.

but finally, tonight, as my husband took FOREVER to get chaeli ready for bed (why is it that he takes THREE times as long as i do when getting her ready to bed? our little cheeky monkey goes to bed one flippin’ hour after her bedtime whenever he is dealing with her – arrrrrgggh!), i had a chance to head down to our living/dining room to start clearing and cleaning out zone 2.

it looked like a bomb went off… and i know that tomorrow, when i come home, it will look like another bomb went off. though not as much. my little miss has a way of whipping through a room like a tornado.

but… i did it. i chucked the extra junk (flyers, scrap, and three little koala bears that pinch onto things with their arms – you know the kinds i’m talking about – exactly what would i want with those?) i dusted. i re-arranged. i hung up jackets of EVERYONE’s. and most importantly, i cleaned up her toys.

and not just stack them up or side by side. i took all of her toys (minus some books and anything to do with art/craft, because those are things i believe should always be around for a developping child) to the basement. in the basement, i sorted and tidied all her toys there. i packed up some that she’s gotten bored with, and took a couple of key toys out.

chaeli has enough toys to play with. so much that i think she gets bored of them easily because she’s so use to have so many. and because they get disorganized in one heaping mess, it’s not always as clear cut what toy goes with what. at least not at her age.

so… i’m going to do what i’ve heard others do – rotate toys every 2-4 weeks.

i brought up two of her key toys to the living room. and that’s all she gets. there are, of course, some of her really big toys in the basement that will alwyas be available to her – too big to put away anyway.

the dining room table is spotless… aside from one little corner where we keep a bag and basket of her arts & craft supply, of which i will find space for in a drawer in a cabinet we have in the corner of the room.

which is where i stopped. i wanted to attack the bottom two drawers there but could not get to it due to the four foot high pile of newspaper, half of which my dear husband never reads.

i’ve decided to cancel our subscription. i warned him – if he couldn’t be religious in tidying up his stacks of newspaper, then i was going to cancel them. of which i’m about to.

i have… the messiest and least organized husband in the whole world. but that’s another story…

kitchen, the last part of zone two… hopefully tomorrow?

yesterday, we completed the scrub, chuck and basic clean of our master suite bathroom. it’s a large bathroom, no doubt, so it took a lot longer then we thought.

unfortunately, we didn’t get around to the diving/living room and kitchen. i’m hoping to get to it sometime the end of this week when i know i’ll have more time.

we actually could have worked on it after chaeli woke from her nap but we really hadn’t been there for her. she was constantly trying to get our attention and while we kept her close to us, and tried our best to play with her in short spurts here and there, it was obvious that she wasn’t herself – grumpy and upset that she had no quality playtime with mommy and daddy.

so… come sunday afternoon, i made an executive decision to call it a day, and spend the remainder time with our daughter.

one thing i am proud of, though… in the evening, i had two more large baskets of cloths to fold (this is addition to the large heap piling in the corner, which i completed the night before).

in the past, i would have just left it, thinking i would do it the next day – which i would never do. as mondays, the start of the week, are always crazy-busy.

so i did it last night, put the cloths neatly away, and was able to go to bed peacefully, knowing the baskets were empty.

well… except for the underwear and socks we wore before going to bed. :)

i’m done may share of the room. i can’t believe it. looking at it, it still looks like a mess but only because we have the bags and bags of cloths to move to our cars tonight (for our travel to various charity locations) and a pile of misc. items we’re not too sure what to do with. i think most will be chucked into the garbage bin tonight.

what’s left is doug’s cloths. he has so many unworn items. i hadn’t a clue how much worse he is then i am. i’ll be amazed if we get through his tonight.

tomorrow morning, i will start with our ensuite bathroom. i’m sure that will take a good part of tomorrow morning.

tomorrow afternoon, while chaeli is napping, we will work on zone 2 – the living room and kitchen. neither should take too long as we normally keep the place uncluttered (due to hosting parties and dinners).

it’s doubtful that we will have the chance to sort and chuck anywhere else for this weekend.

zone 3 will be chaeli’s room (her closet is still filled mostly with my junk (pre-doug before he moved in). it shouldn’t take too as it’s been cleaned out to make room for when chaeli came into our lives.

zone 4 is the scariest… the office. the office is our collection of junk and paper-work. when guests arrive, it’s simply, “put it in the office for now!” i hate this zone. the computer is in this zone and as we speak, i can’t stare anywhere but the monitor for fear of self-combustion.

zone 5 is the 2nd floor bathroom. it’s a small bathroom. but the bathtub has been used for storage. yes, i know… sad.

zone 6 and 7… the basement and laundry room respectively.

when we find ourselves hitting zone 6 and 7, i will feel more relief then anything else. for i know that we will find half of the things belonging to my parents where we can say, with glee, “here. take this back. now.” nothing will give me more pleasure then to shove back things that they are storing at our place. even though they have 5 times the more storage space then we do.

sigh

when i’m on a roll, i’m on a roll. the question is… do i have the stamina to keep on doing what i’m doing?

the challenge isn’t tackling the job. the challenge is finding time. AND doing it while i have a toddler who wants to be involved in everything.

alas, it does feel good to get started…

this morning, after breakfast, we went grocery shopping. i bought 20 garbage bags KNOWING that we would use all of them by the time we finish our ‘attack the clutter’ project.

we came back, had lunch, put little miss down for a nap and marched right upstairs to zone 1… the master ensuite.

since my husband and i moved together to this place, we sort of just stuffed and jammed things in storage spaces. it doesn’t really make that much sense how we organized.

no wait… let me correct myself. there wasn’t any organization. it was just a quick fix to hide the mess.

what resulted as the three years passed, was that the clutter started to accumulate. and because there was so much clutter in the already, small storage spaces, we had no more places to hide our newly acquired clutter.

well… i’m fed up with it. we’re going to clean this place from top to bottom. ALL FOUR FLOORS (including the basement that is! just like we would if we were selling and moving from this place.

anyway, i digress…

as i was saying, we are tackling zone 1 – the master bedroom, which takes up the entire third floor, which includes the master bathroom.

i have successfully, in the two hour nap that chaeli took, cleaned out my walk-in closet, while my husband sorted and chucked through all the crap on whatever surface one could find (and he dusted as well).

i have now, a bag of cloths for my mother to sort through, one for a friend of doug’s (who’s not too well off and could use some nice cloths that we don’t touch anymore) and FIVE BAGS of cloths just from ME to give to charity.

this… just from my closet alone. i have not touched doug’s closet nor my drawers yet… which i’m about to attack after this short break.

i’m hoping to clean out the bathroom tonight. and tomorrow, i want to clean up the main floor (kitchen, dining room and living room). we will also drop our cloths off at the charity bins.

hope they have room for us.