clutter style

No time for a real blog, but in the meantime this is nifty - http://www.oprah.com/home/Whats-Your-Clutter-Style-Peter-Walsh-Declutter-Tips/3

Passing along the organising energy tricks

Today's update is a little reflection on one of my earliest lessons while writing this blog.  That of 'ask an expert'.  This concept of asking an expert was a critical component of my 'Inspirational motivation' blog entry.  Over the months, I've come to realise that the expertise of the experts you ask varies depending on the circumstances. We can't always access the best person in the field of our interest, but we can find out from others what is working for them!

So without further ado, my two 'expert' pieces of advice that I've gained this year are
1. Do both regular cleaning and decluttering simultaneously / take regular turns. This simple concept has taken me quite some time to adjust to. There have been challenges in accepting this simple advice.  I'm learning to accept that our house may always resemble a cyclonic fallout zone at first glance.  How deep the debis lies is the critical thing! When all the clutter seems to look like piles of junk from floor to ceiling there is a problem. When one can distinguish obvious recognisable furniture and fixtures and the floor is not inches deep in toys, then that is maybe as good as it will get. I'm also learning that the more decluttering I take on, the more I need to be wary of falling behind the normal cleaning - I still need to empty the fridge, do the dishes and handscrub some laundry items. On the other hand, I also need to be forgiving of myself if I do accidentally forget the damp towel in a bucket in the laundry and have to throw it out. I'm only one person and I'm taking on extra with the decluttering. Some of the things I used to have in a routine might suffer as I am adjusting.

and

2.  Write one big long, huge list of things to do (in the phone).  Now this concept I find particularly confronting. What if the list just keeps growing and growing and growing I said? "so?" replied my 'expert' friend. Let it grow. It was going to grow inside your head anyway, at least on the list it is written somewhere safe.  She had a good point.  And so I have reluctantly begun using 'REMINDERS' on the iphone, not as 'reminders' but as the depsitory for the greatest longest list of all-time things to do.  The logic behind this apparently functional (yes I'm still skeptical) idea is that when you do feel inclined, or have a sudden moment alone, or an insane urge to do something truly useful, there is your list of EVERYTHING, waiting for you to peruse it and choose the exciting job of the moment.  I have to say that I have hardly been an enthusiastic recruit to this system, however it does seem to be quite effective.  It is said that writin things down makes a difference (you are also supposed to write down goals), and it seems to be proving true in this case. The jobs that are written down seem to be at the forefront of my mind without having to really 'use' the app to 'find busy work'. This is a bit of an experiment in progress, so I'm sure that like the balancing act of regular jobs and extra decluttering, it will in time grow on me.

Do you have any expert tips to share on the theme of organisation?

Juggling all the balls

I've had my eldest child back for nearly a week now, and survived the transition after bringing her home Monday night and having a blood pressure spike on the same night.

What have I learnt during this past week of chaos, mayhem, stress, fun and frustration?  Not a lot I'm afraid. I've learnt that I feel like a hamster in a wheel, spinning round and round and achieving only a bad headache and temper to match. 

In contrast I've also enjoyed the small things. Because as so many times we are reminded by little inspirational memes, they ARE the big things.

I've hugged my boy so tight, I've giggled with my baby. I've heard my elder girl explain to me her economic theories of life. I've enjoyed a visit with Dad where we held a normal conversation about his living arrangements, and how we would both prefer he be somewhere else.

I've felt blessed by all my family this week, as well as infuriated!

And I have no answers. Not one. All my blogging, and theorising and mantras continue to boil down to the fact that I have to make a huge effort for happiness, that it doesn't just 'come' and that order in my life similarly doesn't come easily.

Interestingly I did see this YouTube clip about how as we get older, we see time as speeding up; and that if we increase our new, novel experiences, we improve our memory making, and our sense of time going more slowly, with more meaning.

This inspired me to stop complaining and to start moving. At the moment that means working a little more towards some travelling, and also to look at seeing more live music, getting ready for 2 birthday parties and doing something meaningful with this last week of school holidays.

Seems like a lot doesn't it?  It IS a lot. No wonder I'm tired just thinking about that, plus all the other details!  Maybe that's what I need to work on next / most of all - how to make everything SEEM simpler!  Get the 'clutter' out of my mind!

Day 5 of the Happiness Challenge.

Today was supposed to be a day alone in the house while hubby took the two small children out for the day. Boy child did not want to leave the house so the day went a bit haywire from the beginning.

Remarkably I still managed to get through a significant amount of the housework catching up that I'd earmarked as today's jobs. My clean laundry is now sorted and put away, not a giant pile threatening to take over the laundry room! I made some interesting discoveries about how to clean stains from the toilet - gumption has shifted a lot of the marks, and Tea Tree Oil seemed to help lift some of the stubbornest areas.  The Tea Tree Oil was a bonus find, as I was simply trying to add a freshened-up smell to the room by pouring it into the bowl, and the chemical fizzy reaction was unexpected!  I managed to clear off the shelving surface in the entry, it is back to being functional, with only family photographs on top, not the flotsam of our lives!

On the downside I've made a spectacular mess by attempting late in the day to clean off the top of a bookshelf that was a dumping ground for all the children's craft - it now covers our kitchen table in a layer of unidentified muck, despite my having sorted and removed half of the pile already!

I was fairly grumpy by day's end, as I didn't exercise, or see my Dad today, both of which frustrates me. The intention was to do some Tai Chi tonight, but I fell asleep instead, so no exercise endorphins for me today.  And for some reason (let's blame winter) my diet seems to be firmly grounded in 'bad food' still, despite the threat of ear infection (I am prone to them if I eat too many grains), bread remains firmly at the centre of my dietary experience!

Am I grateful today? Very much so, grateful that I am making progress on the house project, grateful my children are so delightful and very grateful for the snippets of Bruce I managed to play today in the gaps between children's movies on the computer! 

Tomorrow morning I'll make seeing Dad the first stop of the day, and make sure to not only walk, but to get some peace through enjoying the beautiful surroundings I'm blessed to live near.  Yesterday evening waiting for the boys to see Despicable Me 2, I was blessed with this gorgeous riverfront dusk.

Daily Mantra - an effort in consistency

"things go horribly wrong despite my best intentions." - This part of Monday's blog has me thinking. After all it is kind of the crux of it all. Why would things continue to 'go wrong'? Unless of course I perhaps am not doing one of the below things, like expecting the best of myself, and giving myself reasons why I CAN do things, believing in myself.

william paisley‏@YourPocketGuru20h

If you always expect the best out of yourself & life you will get it! You are worthy of having it all... never forget that! #ypg

Organising Energy‏@OrganisEnergy20h

@YourPocketGuru and always believe in the best of yourself - I find I need to believe, not just expect, I am the best me including quirks!!

This conversation went on to discuss how if you don't believe, then its not expecting, its wishing. Quite the interesting thing for me to contemplate. I think I have a very strong tendency towards 'wishing' and calling it something else altogether. To check out the conversation, follow me @organisingenergy on Twitter.

Fitness Motivator‏@Fit_Motivator23 Jun

Instead of giving myself reasons why I can't I give myself reasons why I CAN.

Something I saw on twitter suggested that I should believe in myself more - believe that I can be the best me I imagine - that's worth thinking about!

a comment...

Organising Energy‏@OrganisEnergy24h

“@Fit_Motivator: Instead of giving myself reasons why I can't I give myself reasons why I CAN.” good 4 when inertia strikes 2 get you moving

(yes the graphics are clumsy, but its midnight!)

I also said that "I feel like I need a plan, or a mantra and a plan." So my mantra for the week is to make an effort daily to give myself reasons why I CAN, to expect myself to be able to, and believe in myself. Maybe that isn't quite a mantra, but I'm sure I'll get there with some fine-tuning. 

 

What I'm finding is that just having recognised the need to be mindful of my attitude is helping me.  Today despite not feeling particularly positive, through the whole day, I have simply kept going doing what needed to be done, sometimes slowly, sometimes with a great deal of energy.

 

And I'm proud of my efforts, I have a somewhat sorted toy space, I've scrubbed a floor, looked after the animals, and I've even had a lovely chat about the very sad state of politics in this country.   I'm filling in my little spreadsheet daily, and doing whatever is required to get over the little (and big hurdles) that life throws at me.

 

Here's a pic of today's cleaning up efforts. As you can see I'm big on practical, light on for image, with very haphazard labels! Might get pretty ones to replace it if I could be stuffed going to the shops.

 

 

 

On another note, a funny thing happened to me on the way home from Tai Chi tonight, I ran out of diesel going up a hill!  I was only about 2.5 kms from home, and aside from the first 500m of steep dark hillside, the rest was on my regular walking route that I cover in about 10 minutes from home.  So I simply turned off the engine, hopped out and walked briskly home (my mobile phone wasn't working so I did feel a little bit of need to be hasty). It was the best feeling to be able to just do that without thinking twice! Bruce Springsteen and the ESB have had such a big influence on my whole life, not only am I fitter, and calmer but I'm more insulated against the negative than I realise!  I am finding a whole new level of intolerance for negativity that I believe is self-preservation kicking in, allowing me the emotional space to deal with my own problems!

 

I'm looking forward to seeing what tomorrow brings in the way of successes and challenges; so far I feel like I'm doing great with my routine, especially regarding the children and getting them regular with brushing their teeth.

Challenge Day 2 - found here

Challenge Day 1  - found here

(I am experimenting with ways to make this blogging process more navigable for myself here, so far no breakthroughs)

 

A daily routine

What a novel idea!

I'm going to make an attempt at this in the coming weeks of the school holidays. So that I can be a 'real Mum', something I apparently have been slack at recently.

My idea of what goes into a daily routine would be:

Morning routine, consisting of breakfast, brushing teeth, getting dressed and putting on laundry & dishwasher.
Early morning cleaning focus - getting stuck into the often ignored projects, like cleaning out cupboards, sorting toys.
Mid-morning snack, followed by craft / food time with children - so while they're eating, I'm setting up for a late morning of entertaining cooking or construction
playtime for them, washing up / laundry folding / daily routine task time for me OR this is when we do errands / shopping needed for the evening's meal.
Lunch
post-lunch cleaning focus - tidy up and 'make nice' whatever room the morning was in
afternoon learning time with children - reading or playing, maybe toy sorting every afternoon (there are lots of toys)
Then afternoon tea, me cooking dinner, more general 'daily' tidying, including clean clothes put away from laundry to bedrooms.

Then tea time, showers, night-time routine. Read a book and tidy up all clothes and toys.

Little people to bed, wash up, adult night-time routine including taking out bin, cleaning the sink.

On days when I am left alone in the house I need another routine, more like:

1. Tackle major project
2. eat and relax
3. all 'daily' cleaning
4. either another major project or a significant 'regular cleaning' job, like scrubbing floors / vacuuming.
5. relax!


Thats what I'm going to go with for now, hopefully something like this will come to pass.

Taking care of yourself - an epiphany.

I've had an epiphany. Not a very pleasant one, but an incredibly poignant light bulb moment. I'm sitting in my broken down car, on the side of the highway, waiting now for over half an hour for a row truck to collect myself and my disabled car in the pouring rain.

I have been watching European concerts for Bruce Springsteen with increasing agitation and envy  (check this link for why); what if this is his last tour? What if he stops touring and goes home to New Jersey for the next 2 years? These thoughts are what fuels my desperation to see him one more time, while I can.

And then there it was. My 'oh hell' moment, when I realised that had I argued more, or better, 10 years ago to have my frequent flyer points reinstated after they expired when my credit card company stopped automatic affiliation with the frequent flyer points, then I would have enough for my family to travel to Europe. (This happened in the traumatic year my mother got ill and died, so I was not paying attention to such things until it was too late).

What this is teaching me is that to not take care of something might seem to only have 'imaginary' consequences, the reality is that I am now sitting in THAT moment, where my much saved, loved points would have transported me from my suburban existence and taken my whole family on an amazing overseas holiday. My consequence for not sticking up for myself 10 years ago is right now, this very minute, realising that yes, that vague time in the future does come around! It's like when you are young the idea that smoking will ruin your health is a vague notion at best - some imaginary calamitous future disease - it does come to pass!

Here's my tow truck - the consequence of not paying attention to my car - now it's broken :(

Lesson for me? Take care of things, all the things. Just like my health, the whole of my life is my responsibility and there are consequences to doing a half hearted job.  I knew that eventually this new sense of self-actualisation regarding my health must begin to permeate the other facets of my life; however I'd always imagined that the transition would be more instantaneous, in the way that seeing Bruce Springsteen in concert instantly transformed my perspective on my responsibility for my own health well-being occurred overnight.  I had imagined that overnight I would have the exact same goal oriented, no-setback accepted, driven and calm resolve about decluttering my house.  This somewhat obscure little 'light bulb moment' that annoyingly seems to require me to find every distasteful incomplete or neglected task in my life and place it as a matter of priority is not what I imagined as the next logical progression of realising my life is wholly my responsibility to live in a happy way.  It may take some getting used it, despite the way I already see parallels between the concept of 'jobs left undone' and the state of clutter in my house. I see many instances of too lazy to find a home for items, or too lazy to return items to their proper place; of jobs half done rather than completed.

Perhaps the link isn't so obscure after all, and this will have a significant affect on my life's clutter!

Household madness and other cleaning conundrums

Has three months of blogging helped me to keep the house cleaner? If I look at the question critically, then the answer would be not a great deal.  The state of the house is still very chaotic, my 'hot spots' where junk collects appear to have grown in size and number.  However overall there are a few positive differences that would not have happened without blogging.  These make the optimist in me say YES, blogging has made a difference!

The most obvious change is my entry. Having followed "Inspirational Thursday"  and taken the advice of my friend, I 'made over' the entry over a month ago.  And it is still looking pretty spiffy compared to the mess of bags and shoes on the floor that I had previously.

I am happy with that result!   The second change is more subtle, but possibly has a much greater affect on our household. Since blogging, and my Bruce Springsteen experience, I have been much calmer and happier. My husband has  therefore been calmer and happier, we have better routines and it has become unusual for the chaos to get as out of hand as it used to when we were under pressure.  Now that I think about it, I think I've achieved a little glimmer of 'being prepared', something I so admired in my mother in law during my first week of blogging.

The more time I take to contemplate my household management and cleaning, the more I realise that the progress I'm making has everything to do with my positive attitude.  It is amazing what can get done when you stop finding excuses and simply begin doing!  This is particularly inspirational to me today, as yesterday I was feeling a bit unwell, I felt my positive attitude and energy had left me, yet I managed to cook 3 meals for a weekly cook-up with my hubby, and still went for a 20 minute walk for exercise.  Pre-Bruce, pre-blog, neither of those things would have been achieved on a 'bad day'.  I would highly recommend blogging, or journaling to anyone who is struggling with progressing in any aspect of life. Writing things down and practising self reflection are incredibly powerful tools for positive change!

Setting Achievable Goals - Life lesson Day 3

I've been very pleased with myself since the great Thursday of happiness (aka motivational Thursday) Since then, less than a month ago, I have managed to transform the look of 2 rooms that we use every day, the entry and E's space.

This week I've started on a third project, the 'Front Room'. This room used to be the living room. At one stage, when our roof was leaking and yet to be repaired, it was our bedroom and living room, many years ago. Now it has given itself over the main residence of the decrepit cat of all blindness. He hangs on in this little spot, we've kicked the children out of the room, so the TV went back upstairs and its no longer the living room. In a stroke of opportunistic genius, I've decided to transform it into my husband's 'cave', alongside the cat :)

However before I can get carried away with the idea of a home to put the thousand screwdrivers, nuts, bolts and other man-stuff that hubby leaves lying around all over the house; the whole room needs a thorough cleanup. A daunting task, as its been allowed to turn into a bit of a cesspit in recent months.

I spent a few days pottering, using the simple principle of leaving the room better than I found it, and not achieving a great deal. I really had no idea where to start. The solution came to me more as a desperate idea than a full-blown certainty. In order to give myself somewhere to simply BEGIN, I decided to break the cleaning down into sections. Normally I'd clean the floors first, but in this situation that seemed pointless as the floors were basically acquiring flotsam from the junk falling off the piled up surfaces. So I took my phone and photographed every surface area that was junked up. Sadly on its last legs (like the cat), my phone managed to make every photo a hazy milky tone. Here's an example:

It does a wonderful job of highlighting the junk, even with the surreal effect.

Surprisingly, as soon as I'd taken the photos, I was resolved to tackle all the surfaces first, and to finish as many as possible today. I remarked that it would be a miracle if I got through them all.

I should have had more faith because as I write this, all 5 areas of the room that were the same and worse than this have been totally cleaned off. The Wrecking Ball soundtrack helped, and it took the entire album to get through it all. I have one tiny nemesis of paperwork and fiddly rubbish in the bottom of the green 'Trofast' drawer in this picture. After finishing this blog, I'll be working on that till bedtime!

I've exceeded my expectations for the day, all by simply breaking down the job into smaller pieces that were not so daunting. There were still hurdles along the way, and plenty of interruptions and breaks. Having the photographs helped to keep me focussed on how I'd progressed, and finishing off one discreet area at a time was terrific motivation to move on to the next area and the next. I even did a lot of bargaining with myself, deciding I was going to stop when I finished the top of the bookcase, and was so inspired by finishing that I kept going and started on the couch, then moved on to everywhere else!

Even the deep freezer had a mountain of stuff piled on it.

Now I'm feeling invincible and ready to have the whole room spick and span tomorrow, ready for its new life as the 'cave'!

 

We put up these little storage racks in a random spot temporarily as having them in use somewhere was better than all the component parts lying around :) Plus they are now filled with things, mostly all the tiny bits of Lego lying around.

And the most wonderful bonus of the exercise was that I found the first ring hubby ever bought me, it is more sentimental than my wedding and engagement rings and had been missing for over a year!

I haven't set the goals for tomorrow's instalment yet, but I'm sure that making the job smaller with manageable sections will be the backbone of how I get through it!

Motivational Thursday (Bruce!) - the results

I was surprised at how easy it was to get stuck into the Entry just the way my friend suggested!

Here are the results of what I called The Motivational Thursday Project.  For anyone who missed it, this was motivational Thursday.

Part way through. Still quite a bit of chaos.

This was moved from the main wall to make room for the new Expedit shelves.

Wall waiting for shelving.

Front corner less chaotic, and with temporary curtain!

Voila! New shelves filled with all our stuff! (and a bag packed ready for  the trip to Melbourne!)

Today I steam cleaned the rug and tidied the last junk off the pine hutch. It feels great! Inspirational music today was Shackled and Drawn.

Cleanup Challenge Day 3

After a couple of high-pain days I was ready to get back into the cleanup challenge. The front entry had been littered with various things, toys, a boxful of generic nonsense from the car, and 2 boxes of tools during the course of the previous week. So quite by accident, I spent over 40 minutes cleaning up just the entry, replacing childrens books in the bookcase, moving tools to the edge of the room neatly, re-tidying shoes and then sweeping the whole thing.

I also took the time to re-organise and stand up all my photo frames and make the room look a little more inviting. My 'end of day cleanup' swept the kitchen floor too, and swished the toilet, put on 2 loads of washing. So far, its a success, although I have had to be mindful of the concept of creating a habit, and not feeling guilty when I was too sick to get stuck into it the previous night. I've also had the opportunity to consider some information from "The Happiness Project" author in her blog, that you should not get more organised, and rather should just throw throw throw things out. It makes sense. There is too much stuff in my house, and I'm better off without most of it I'm sure. Her 'don't get organised' blog is a great read. What I'm going to spend the morning doing is following FlyLady's excellent plans for decluttering. 27 Fling Boogies and 5 minute Fire Drills here I come!

Laundry day 3 Cleanup weekend day 2

Yep, thats the inspiring title today. Labelling whats going on in the land of lets clean up. Todays goals were to clean off the kitchen bench, kitchen table, bills from my desk and 1 other job. I got through the bench and table, paid a few bills, left the rest for Monday when I can confirm what amounts I need to pay and then I got stuck into the overloaded medicine box. Which brought me up sharp against the fact that my husband is not a compulsive hoarder, but he is compulsively untidy. Everywhere I turn in this house there are signs of his neverending efforts to make the house messier. Every surface in our house looks like this and worse.

I googled a bit and found some good links that helped me realise I could keep going with getting the house clean around him. http://www.compulsive-hoarding.org/About.html has a good insight into some of the underlying hoarding stuff. I found this site particularly useful with great tips that seem practical - http://www.lifedesignstrategies.com/art/my_partner_is_a_clutterbug.html Basically going to visit those sites got me past the overwhelming sadness and despair that hit when I realised how insidious and constant the cluttering is in my home. I really need to continue every day taking the time to fight the clutter or I will never get on top of it. I discovered today that in addition to a big box of medicines at the top of our pantry, and a selection that had expanded above the microwave, that my hubbie had taken off with my large Tupperware cake carrier and loaded the lid of that up with more medicinal stuff!!! All of it got tipped out onto the kitchen table and I repacked and re-sorted it all out so that I have a small neat group above the microwave, the original medicine box and one small box for the excessive amount of bandaids I found! Tonight I'm continuing my laundry 20 minutes. I have finished a load all the way to put away and will head in there now to put away some more of the clean washing pile. It is helping to focus on the laundry to help catch up or get ahead on that area for this week. Tomorrow's cleanup focus is on the outside of the house, mowing the lawn and possibly tidying up the back verandah.