get rid of all my clutter

The shelving unit took hardly any time to assemble.

The tricky part was working out the puzzle of how to clear a space for the task (and the assembled shelves) in such close quarters. Fortunately, I like puzzles. :-D

Now a whole bunch of bankers’ boxes that were stacked precariously on the floor and on top of a dresser are neatly parked on the shelves. (Some of those boxes won’t stay out there permanently: they’re part of the upcoming Great Box Purge Project. I’ve organized them so that the ones I plan to purge first will be easiest for me to get at.)

Still plenty to do, but it’s much easier to (a) see what needs doing and (b) get around out there to start tackling it.

Yay me!

I’m going to relax for the rest of the day: practice a little guitar, read a novel, maybe have a nice soak in the tub to reward myself for accomplishing so much in the past week.

...quick decluttering session, because most of my time was committed to away-from-home activities.

I used it to finish restoring the foyer to order.

This afternoon, I’m going to take advantage of the relatively cool weather we’re having to put in some concerted work on the solarium. I hope to at least get the shelving unit (a Rubbermaid item ordinarily sold for garages) assembled, clear a space for it, and put some stuff on the shelves that’s currently taking up floor space.

Will post progress report in an hour or so.

I’ve been continuing to work on the place in 5- and 10-minute spurts this week.

Bathroom counter is now tidy as well as clean, and dishes are up to date.

Foyer is now 95% done, thanks to the work I did yesterday on the coat closet, which created space to hang up most of the light jackets and sweaters that had spent the spring crowded willy-nilly on the hooks behind my front door.

This morning I rearranged the corner of the bedroom where the wardrobe stands so that the bedroom floor fan is better situated, and the power supply and cords for my cable modem and wireless router are tucked away more neatly.

I also resolved a problem in the computer corner of the dining room by reshuffling some of the stuff that’s temporarily stacked nearby so that my rolling chair can move around more freely.

Total time: 15 minutes, in three 5-minute chunks.

Bathroom has been de-grossified: counter could be tidier, but at least sink and toilet are clean. Kitchen isn’t getting any more attention – I’ll just turn off the light in there. :-D

Foyer isn’t perfect, either, but it’s 90% better. (Bigger job than I anticipated due to how much rearranging I had to do in storage closet to get wheeled cabinet in there.)

Living room looks much, much better – and I even vacuumed the rug before stashing the vacuum back in the storage closet.

Tidied some more in bedroom, including finally putting winter clothes – which had been piled on a chair – away in suitcase, and reorganizing floor of clothes closet so that suitcase fits neatly in there.

I now declare this decluttering crisis over. ;-D

• Picked up a bunch of stuff in the bedroom, which I needed to do in order to even get to the space I originally planned to clear in there.

• Taking various items from the bedroom to their proper homes elsewhere in the apartment meant that I wound up walking past the dining room a number of times. Somewhere in that process, I had a scathingly brilliant idea for reorganizing it so that the 10 new boxes can sit in there. They won’t block anything crucial, but they’ll be more visible and easier to get at, motivating me to purge them by the two-week deadline I’m giving myself before asking my friend to bring me the next batch.

• Dining room is now all set up for computer use as well, with the requisite power cord installed (furniture had to be pulled out in order to do that) so that I can plug in the fan and task light along with the laptop.

• Living-room rearranging is under way. The solarium shelving unit still isn’t assembled, but I’ve at least moved it out there, which helps in the living room.

• Dishes are done and pots are soaking.

1. Clean bathroom.
2. Tidy foyer – move small wheeled cabinet into storage closet.
3. Finish in living room. Vacuum?
4. Finish tidying kitchen and bedroom.

...of deadlines, committee meetings, and social stuff. Between juggling all of that, and using my “down time” mainly for rest and ordinary maintenance (e.g., laundry), I’ve been unable to do more than whittle away at this.

I did manage to finish straightening out the havoc that my friend and I created in the process of transposing those two big pieces of furniture on June 11.

I also made space in a closet to store the various space heaters I bought last winter.

But today the friend who has been storing boxes of my old books and papers in his garage since last November (when I couldn’t afford to continue paying for off-site storage) is bringing 10 more boxes back. Alas, I still haven’t been able to tackle the 5 he brought back sometime earlier this year. They’re parked under the dining-room table. He has been extraordinarily patient about this, and he’d like to have his garage back at some point, so I’m going to have to make room for them somehow – not an easy task in this tiny apartment (at least not without blocking access to something vital, like my bed, my desk, my clothes, or crucial current papers).

• Clear out space in bedroom for incoming boxes: includes finding temporary homes for huge wicker hamper and small two-door cabinet on wheels.
• Finish what needs to be done in dining room so that I can start using computer desk again, and have a decent, well-lit surface to use when I’m working at home (instead of the rickety TV-table/lap tray setup I’ve been making do with).
• If there’s time, put up sturdy shelving unit I bought for solarium last fall but never managed to erect (it sat in my kitchen for ages, and has been parked in the living room next to the solarium doors since April or so), and transfer boxes currently on solarium floor onto those shelves.
• Rearrange bits and pieces in living room to create more space.
• Clean bathroom at least – and preferably foyer and most visible part of kitchen as well – so that I’m not completely mortified when my friend delivers the boxes.

And this needs to be accomplished in the next few hours…after which I need to put in several hours’ work to meet tomorrow morning’s deadline. I’d planned to take care of that first thing this morning, but had a bad night and wound up sleeping three hours later than usual. Sigh.

Will try to post a progress report later.

... while I struggled through and back up from another major depression, my reasonably neat apartment began once again to reflect the emotional mess I was in.

Thankfully, things didn’t backslide all the way. But it certainly was no longer “company-ready.” And even as my physical and mental energy levels returned to something closer to normal, I was so busy chasing down documents for various social assistance programs, getting trained for a volunteer gig, volunteering, and helping friends with various projects that until this week, I haven’t really been able to focus on doing any significant reorganization.

Even whittling away at the mess was stalled for several weeks, because I needed to rearrange some large pieces of furniture – as well as moving a bunch of smaller stuff in order to clear a migration path for the large pieces – and the neighbour who’d offered her help was unable to shake loose the necessary time.

Finally, she and I managed to co-ordinate our calendars yesterday to get this job done.

After she left, I continued working on the place off and on for several hours (punctuated by brief rests and one lovely long nap), and made a satisfying dent. The furniture rearrangement will make my ongoing decluttering efforts easier.

This morning before I left for an appointment, I took out several bags of recycling and trash.

My current goal is to have the place looking nice enough to have another Open House some time before the end of the summer. Short of another health crisis, that ought to be eminently do-able.

OK, here’s the kitchen now. The matching “Before” shot will follow as the first comment under this entry.

...which used to be my home office, until I revamped it last summer with the help of a professional organizer.

When the organizer and I had put in all the time we could during my vacation last August, the reclaim-the-bedroom project was well on its way. Not long after that, I fell ill, so the remaining tasks waited many months before being completed.

There are finishing touches yet to add – art for the walls, and a proper window treatment (that one is a dollar-store special: a fabric shower curtain strung across four stick-on plastic hooks).

But I’m quite pleased with the space right now. With the gorgeous oaks outside my window, it feels like being in a tree house. Magic.

The matching “Before” shot follows as the first comment under this entry.

OK, folks. It’s been a hectic few days, what with a training session, volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build, and other priorities, so I haven’t had a chance to post more Before-and-After shots of my place.

Here is an After shot of the bathroom as it looks today. We’re looking into the bathroom from its doorway: the toilet’s edge is just visible at the far right, and the bathtub (not visible from this angle) is on the other side of the toilet.

The Before shot follows as the first comment under this entry.