<p>Another case of TMI. S posts this on FB today - “just used his charm to delay the due date of his essay by 5 days. suave.” Okay, the midterm grades were great, but this, really??? The procrastination that limited his college options rears its ugly head again.</p>
<p>Time for a glass of wine.</p>
<p>RM- It’s not the actual cleaning that I get into, but the organizing and cleaning out. Love to get rid of excess “stuff” and than neaten up and organize what’s left. I actually have a small excel spreadsheet printed out which lists different areas of my house and a space for the date I last went through them. It works for me because it is broken down so that it only takes about 15-20 minutes to go through most of the areas (like “linen closet” or “cabinet under kitchen sink”) that way I can just do an area when I have a small amount of time here and there. If I get a call or email from a group looking for donations, I always say yes which gets me going. Church rummage sale is tomorrow so I have been cleaning areas for a few weeks.</p>
<p>I don’t do crafts, try to avoid working out (except a lot of dog walking), so in a way this is a hobby for me.</p>
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<p>You are a goddess!!! I haven’t been so impressed since someone on CC posted that her D organized her clothes in the closet not only by color but by sleeve length.</p>
<p>Cleaning out is so difficult to me because I have a major disablity in that regard: my husband!!! He’s the one who cannot/will not throw anything away. The presence of those four containers of baby powder that have been in the cabinet since about 1996 bugs me, but I truly can’t get rid of them until H is out of the house and I have time to take a bag of stuff to a dumpster (because yes, he does open up garbage bags to see what “good” stuff I’ve thrown away.)</p>
<p>No, not a goddess (although I like the compliment!), I am an accountant which I think plays into my desire for order.</p>
<p>H is a (recovering) pack rat. Through the years I have gotten him to realize that some of this “stuff” we don’t use can be used by others and some of it is just trash. He has also realized that all of the “stuff” his parents (otherwise lovely people) have saved is “stuff” we may someday have to go through.</p>
<p>Fallgirl, I am so impressed.</p>
<p>and MP, I have been looking forward to Saturday all week: DH will be out of town and I want to organize all the shoes and cr*p on the floor of our closet. No way can that be done when he is around.</p>
<p>Fallgirl - can I just say “Unbelievable!!”. I would start with say the linen closet. Find something in there that really “belonged” in say my D’s closet. So I would go there and see the mess and start moving things there to put the lone item that I had found from the linen closet. I would then find something that “belonged” say in my closet and then got there… You get the picture. And because of that I would have a tremendous mess with nothing where it should be or organized and probably everything pulled out. So I would get stressed and just throw everything back in. So – why bother?</p>
<p>I’ll knit/sew/scrap book/read and basically procrastinate. H says that I’m a hidden mess. In other words – it looks good on the service – just don’t open a closet/cupboard (sp?) without covering your head!!! :)</p>
<p>Friday being our “trash” day I took the opportunity to clean out the freezer this morning before work. We had literally cartons of ice cream that were partially eaten (before I started my health/wellness kick) and they are all curbside this morning. I was all excited that I had managed to create an Excel sheet for budgeting - don’t know that I’d ever be able to do one for organizational tasks! But that’s a great idea. </p>
<p>Son is headed out of town for a week. A friend is graduating from college and her parents are taking him with them to grad. He’ll come back on the train next weekend. We’ll be headed over to the cc on his return to figure out his next steps. </p>
<p>D reports that her engineering team had great success with their project. It’s interesting- she always hated team projects in high school but this is a whole new dynamic for her- one she is enjoying. Foxfield horse races are this weekend- horrible forecast which is unfortunate. </p>
<p>I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend and week to come.</p>
<p>If I made a spreadsheet surrounding cleaning/organizing, it would just be concrete proof of my inefficiencies. Does my self-esteem need this? Most definitely not!! I finally managed to cut back the perennials, but since I really am over the whole yard work thing, I really just want to see it, not work in it. It used to be that I spent a lot of time in the yard when the kids were younger. Now? Not so much. </p>
<p>D16 has a surprise birthday party to attend tonight… 8 girls, dinner out, limo transportation. So I will go and try to find her something fun to wear since she has absolutely no time whatsoever to go since she doesn’t even get home from practice until 7 on most night. I am almost sure I am going to fail miserably.</p>
<p>Fallgirl, I am in awe. I am definitely in the RM camp - when I try to organize, one thing leads to another to another to another…until nothing is really organized.</p>
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I wish my H could say that! My mess is far from hidden - it’s everywhere :eek: His home office on the other hand is the only neat room in the house and he guards it obsessively.</p>
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Ooooh, I have one of those. Thank God I accidentally flooded the basement one year by filling the hottub and then leaving the water on a little while it froze overnight and burst a pipe – destroying piles and piles and piles of obsolete technocrap in the basement wrecked room. (Darned if he didn’t have replacement value!) On one hand, it was heartbreaking (because I lost much of my own sentimental stuff.) On the other hand, it was liberating (there was a lot worth losing.)</p>
<p>When we first merged households, it took an 18 yard dumpster and a month of prep before McSon and I could actually move our stuff in (and we’d pared WAY back). And although old, this is not a tiny house, and certainly was not in anyway too small for a bachelor. (We each have our own “living/rec room” (McSon included.)
End even though he’d filled that dumpster, there are still today closets full of things that might have fit him 30 years ago but no way now. Oddly, McSon periodically raids them, wears em, going for that retro look.
I’ve often thought a good strategy would be to buy another house, which would force a purge but, you guessed it, HE doesn’t want to move because it might force a purge ;)</p>
<p>I’m in a wicked mood and am throwing stuff out/sacking it for give-away right now. But that’s because I’ve run out of places to store things…</p>
<p>Nephew who graduated last Dec. in Civ Eng had a job interview this week, his first since graduating. The person in line behind him was a May 2009 grad w/o a job. What a rotten job market!</p>
<p>We have a small closet-sized pantry. One of our best home improvements was replacing the wire shelves with rolling wooden ones, so we can see what’s in the back.</p>
<p>BUT, that was in 2001 and H still has all that wire shelving. What does he think we’re going to do? Get tired of our very convienent custom wood shelves and re-install the cheap wire ones??!!! The garage, house and attic are full of things like that.</p>
<p>And yes, in case you’re wondering, he does take things that other people have set out for the trash collectors, so who knows, we may have other people’s wire shelves, too.</p>
<p>If his mind works anything like McHusband’s, the reasoning is that those wire shelves will make great slotwall shelving in the garage one day, just as soon as he re-engineers them, buys an acetylene torch, and moves all the crap so he can GET to the garage wall.</p>
<p>Or, he’s saving them because someday, when he installs the solar paneling on the roof, he’ll need something handy to protect the panels from hail.</p>
<p>Or, perhaps someday, the mothership will come to collect him and he will learn his home planet is completely bankrupt of wire shelving, and he will be crowned king for have had the foresight to save that wire shelving that will cause the time machine to work again.</p>
<p>This is the internal dialogue I suspect goes on with McH, at any rate 
It’s very entertaining to divine.</p>
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<p>ROFL!</p>
<p>The thing is, his dad saves things forever but* uses *them. He built a room onto their Minnesota lake house entirely out of cast offs…when their neighbors in Illinois replaced their slidng glass doors in 1987, FIL took the old doors…and behold, they appeared in Minnesota in the new room in 1999. Every door and window is different because they were all other people’s cast offs. (Amazing but when they’re all trimmed out the same, they look okay.) ANYWAY, H has the “save it I might need it some day” gene, but not the “willing and able to build stuff” gene…so here it sits. Kind of like a cat who brings it’s people a mouse…</p>
<p>^^kmc~and very entertaining to read…thanks for the giggle</p>
<p>I would never have even imagined doing a spreadsheet for organizational purposes, shows how different minds work alas, in our home, it’s my older s’s room which shines as the shrine for all things organized, as d, s2 and I are ADDers–we don’t know how he does it?? younger s wants to take over big bro’s room and simply abandon the tornado known as his room. (I have taken to avoiding looking at it since my bdrm is downstrs, but his last two friends visiting have confirmed my fear, even other 8th graders have been aghast)</p>
<p>I can top the wire shelves… H saves cool branches and limbs of trees, right down to the entire skeleton of a ficus tree! I have no idea what to do with this stuff as it’s in the garage. He keeps saying he’s going to make a sculpture and I keep saying, bonfire. And just to be clear, the likelihood that my H will create a sculpture out of anything is right up there with never gonna happen.</p>
<p>Last year we had a funny run of lists we made of odd things sitting in our offices (home or work), often that we had kept for just these kinds of reasons (might use/want some day).They always make me laugh and I could use some laughs this week:</p>
<p>What is one thing you (or family member) is “saving” in garage/basement/closet that would completely puzzle those who do not have the “squirreling” gene:</p>
<p>Some of mine would be: </p>
<p>Cardboard for school projects, etc. (when children are both now at college)
Too many “good boxes” for mailing packages
Old roller shades
Notes from my college geology class which I loved (but never look at…)</p>
<p>My BIL and SIL lived in the Dominican Republic for a while and now have one of those Christmas trees that is really just a dead tree…the ficus skeleton would work great! Spray paint it white and you have a charamico!</p>
<p><a href=“Design Sponge Online – Get your design fix…”>Design Sponge Online – Get your design fix…;
<p>35 year old scuba diving flippers that weigh at least 10 lbs each
never been in the water since and never will be as the new ones are so light weight</p>
<p>dozens of albulms for the day when he buys a turntable. Stored now for a couple of decades.</p>
<p>Oh–we moved 7 very very heavy cartons of medical books to 5 DIFFERENT houses and paid for the moving. I finally gave him one year to open them and make decisions–nearly everyone of them was so obsolete that even H was willing to part with most of them. I shudder to think what collectively they cost to move over and over.</p>
<p>Hey, I can top that. I spy with my little eye:
A 25-year-old VIDEOPHONE prototype, 10" screen and full camera mounted
A 20-year-old “smaller sleeker version” (eg. about a square foot!) of a video phone
(ever wonder why they never took off? I DON’T)
A Macy’s mannequin, arms akimbo, with a monitor instead of a head.
An Apple Macintosh II circa 1979
A 3-set, 50 lb volume of DaVinci Codexes IN ITALIAN (nobody here reads Italian)
A Hitachi portable vhs deck recorder, circa '83
Laserdiscs. Remember those?</p>
<p>You get the idea. Finally, my Mc-employee and I decided to “curate” the objects and stick little explanation cards by everything with historical info, calling the series “Uncle McHusband’s Roadside Museum of Dead Technology.”</p>
<p>Clients seem to love it. Little do they know what madness lurks behind it ;)</p>
