July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 30, 2013

It was almost overwhelming trying to decide what to do tonight.  Why?  Because I only have one more night left after tonight, and there's so much more to do.  But seeing the progress I've made will actually inspire me to do some cleaning even after this month's challenge is over.  And that, my friends, is the whole point of doing it For Just One Month.  It will start me on a positive path for things I need to do, will help me wheedle out hobbies by making me put significant time into them, and will teach me new skills that will come in handy in life (can't you wait until the month I teach myself surgery?  Just kidding.  I don't do blood).

So, I went back to the sewing room.  If you saw the shelves in the background of the days I've spent in there already, you know part of the sewing room problem is the shelves.  I tackled eight squared.  First, I worked on this set of six (plus others adjoining it as necessary, but unpictured):

Seriously, do you think I can find anything I'm looking for?  Do you have any concept of the times I've bought hand sewing needles, because while I know I have them, I can only find applique or quilting needles?!  And, with good reason.  Look at those shelves!  Organized, it is not!  This is an IKEA Expedit 5x5.  The shelves on the bottom (at least on this side!) are actually pretty nicely done--there are quilt books on the second to the bottom shelf, and clear IKEA boxes with fabric on the bottom shelf (but they don't make the clear bins anymore!  I'm heart-broken, because I still need more to get the rest of my fabric in, but it hasn't been in the budget since I bought the first three!).  But these cubes?  Oof.  So I started moving things around, and have two piles on my table now of things that belong in either the den or the family room downstairs--making me wonder what they were doing in the sewing room in the first place!

In the middle left cube, I have some white background fabric, but also a large pile of plastic or tin containers.  I love little containers, and many of these are from my day as a candy merchandiser, so they're heart and tree shaped, and originally contained candy.  But I couldn't bear to through them away when I could surely find a use for them!  Right now, I'm hoping to be able to store things in them, but I may have to relegate them to gift boxes if I can't find things to store them in.  But now they've been gathered from various shelves (both pictured and not) to sit in that cube.  Sewing supplies were put into the various drawers they belong in, and many things that didn't belong in the sewing room (that basket on the bottom left cube had a lot of pictures and such stuff that belongs down in my den).  And suddenly, these shelves look a little more organized.  Hooray!

I hadn't planned to move over to the smaller shelves (Expedit 4x4), but I found a box of sewing patterns--for clothes (rather than quilts).  I realized I had a basket on these shelves that would probably work perfectly, if only I could get to it, so I decided to clean out these two shelves to get to the basket in question:

I think henceforth I'm going to try to dedicate the 4x4 to clothing and supplies, while the 5x5 can be quilting and quilting crafts (like making purses).  It's not that way at the moment, but I think that's the goal.  At any rate, the right cube is fabric for clothes to make, and I had no idea what was in that basket.  Batiks and other scrap fabrics, it turned out.  Those could easily go into a shoe box that held some of the patterns, but was very ill suited for that task indeed.  Plus, that plastic bag on the left?  That's a quilt project that I've been working on for about seven hundred twenty two years, give or take a few months.  Maybe someday...

The basket now holds patterns!  Some day, I need to go through patterns and have active possibilities in here--the clothes I want to make myself, plus a few other little things I want to make for my nieces (should I get any) and nephews.  For example, right now that box contains some patterns for formalwear and bridal wear.  I'm done with weddings in which I'm actively involved for the foreseeable future (and possibly forever), and can't think of any formal occasions requiring me to sew formalwear and accessories.  Those can be put to a less accessible spot and some other patterns I may have more interest in at the moment may move down to this basket.

But right now I need to do a little research on August's project, before I start it, and then get to bed!

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 29, 2013

I realized I only have three more days left--well, two after today.  And I'd done something in every room in the house--even the stairwell!--but nothing in the family room.  I'd only spent one day in the den (yesterday).  My poor neglected basement.  Being down there reminded me of one thing--well, two, I guess--in that I need a second dehumidifier (one is in the utility room, but it's just not cutting it, since the family room and den are shut off, thanks to a lovely kitty who likes to remind of his presence, aromatically speaking, which is the second thing I need.  (I did order some Feliway diffusers that are supposed to help with this problem.  I guess we'll see.  Problem?  They say to plug these in where there's nothing in their way.  My house is small.  It has limited outlets, and all of my outlets are placed such that there is furniture in front of them.  I'm going to have to figure that out!)

So, my den.  There are a few things in my den that don't belong.  For one, I have a shelf that belongs in the bottom of my stairway, but it's an open shelf, and that doesn't work well with previously mentioned kitty.  I need to make a plexiglass screen in front of it.  That's in the middle of the room, and as you'll see, it's not a large room.  (Hmm, maybe I should move stuff and put it against the wall temporarily...)

This is my TV.  It's the only in the house, and it's been so long since it's been on, I am just assuming it still works.  I'll have to check it out someday when I have time.  I bought it mainly for my Wii, which I also haven't turned on in a long time, so I need to get back to that, too.  I should note I'm not a gamer; I bought it for Wii Fit, but I'll admit to enjoying Guitar Hero, too.  I actually enjoy my DS a lot more, but that's really only some mind games (I loooove Touchmaster!)  The DVD and VCR (not hooked up) were presents from friends, I guess you could say.  As friends got married and combined households, one had an extra DVD player and another an extra VCR.  I have some DVDs (Guilty Pleasure: Good Eats.  I also have some workout DVDs and a few limited movies that I also haven't watched in so long I'm not sure what I even have anymore) and at least one VCR Tape (for my serger; that's the only one I really remember having).

But now it's at least slightly cleaner in front of it.  Please note that the Wii Fit stuff is now next to the TV, which makes infinitely more sense.  If I would've had more time, I might've tried to figure out how to get the Guitar Hero stuff, as well as the box the Wii came in, which I still have.  (I also still have the box my iBook came in.  I purchased that in January 2005.  But it's so pretty!)

I also worked in the opposite side of the room--I didn't quite make it to the corner, though!

Those suitcases have a lot of clothes in them.  There are a few special outfits that I loved, but mostly it's T-shirts that I plan to use to make a t-shirt quilt someday.  Maybe when I retire...

I have a lot of tools and woodworking projects in here.  They don't belong in here, so I've moved some out of the room, but some are still in a pile on the daybed waiting to move.  It's a slow process, because I need to find places for them in my utility room or garage before they can get moved.  I also have things moved to the Den (clothes that should be in the closet there) and brought back upstairs.  My IKEA catalog from 2009 managed to stay hidden down here since, well, 2010 so that's now in the recycle bin!  (I'm kinda excited to get the 2014 IKEA catalog.  I'm kinda nerdy that way.  I just happen to like IKEA stuff, because it fits my life and style.)

Two more days.  Sadly, my house won't be completely cleaned by working 30 minutes per day for a month.  But guess what?  It's going to be 930 minutes cleaner!  And when you look at it that way, that's a lot!

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 28, 2013

I haven't spent a lot of time in the basement.  It's not where a lot of people go, but this isn't (entirely) about other people.  I'd like a neater house for ME.  So, down to the den we ventured.  This is one of two rooms entirely closed off to the cats, so they were pretty eager to help me. They were less than pleased that they weren't allowed in the closet.  I really hope it's because they're cats and they hate closed doors, and not because there's something in there I should know about.  I'm betting on the cats&doors thing.

I worked on two opposite corners tonight, but don't let that fool you.  The room isn't that big in the first place.  It's 93.5 square feet, to be semi-precise.  I have a 1950's house, too.  That means I painted the walls without the use of a ladder or a step stool, because I can reach the ceiling, and I'm about 5'4 1/2".  Heh.

Just stuff.  I pile stuff in here.  Ideally it would be my home office, but I need to work on about two problems before it will fully be that.  One: there's no natural light in this room.  While I'd love to add a window (which would have the bonus of making it an official bedroom!), I don't think that's possible.  I'm only feet away from the property line on the North side, and I know the gas comes into the house somewhere on the West side.  And the one overhead light in the room is a small pot light in the opposite corner.  Plus, I need a new, comfortable desk.  And a new monitor to fit the size of the room.  My current monitor is from the late 1980s, and takes up approximately half of the room.  So now, I store stuff in here.

But when the wrapping paper goes into the closer where it belongs, it helps things a lot.  I also found a lot of things that needed to be taken upstairs (when I'm up there, I find stuff for down here, so it all works out...).  And that lamp needs to be taken out to the trash.  The light bulb burnt out, and I don't know how to replace it, nor do I really want to because it could really heat the entire room (not quite, but it does burn very hot, and the metal shade gets very hot).

I also worked in the opposite corner, but the before pictures don't really show what I did, but I'll give it a shot with these two.

You can sorta see the messy bookshelf there.

And you can sorta see some of the mess in front here.

See, it doesn't look much cleaner, but the bottom of that shelf is filled with rubber stamps that were all messy (plus a few in a plastic bag in front of the shelf that couldn't be put away because they didn't fit in the box), and the ink cartridges--both here and in the box, were a jumped mess.  I now have them stacked neatly.  I also put a few more things away in the black rolling case you can see in the first picture.

So, not a ton of progress, but I also did a tiny bit of cleaning of my desk, but it's not really visible because I had to rearrange a lot of things that I didn't do anything with, so it looks equally as messy.  But I know there's progress, and that's what counts.

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 27, 2013

Oops. I meant to post this yesterday.  But this is why nothing got done on Saturday:

My 10-month-old nephew Michael came to spend the night with me.  I met his parents for lunch, and took him home with me.  (My brother and sister-in-law had plans with the two older boys that Baby Michael would make more difficult, so they asked me to babysit.)  With this whole house-cleaning process, even though it's nowhere near clean, I felt confident in saying I could do it, because my house was clean enough for a wee tot to not get in too much trouble. 

And, as you can see, my kitty Oliver made a new friend.  For the record, it wasn't always Michael crawling towards Oliver.  Sometimes it was Oliver coming to lie down by Michael. 

But, no.  I couldn't really do a whole lot when I was making sure a small child wasn't getting into anything he shouldn't!

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 26, 2013

I just realized I have five more days, and still a ton to clean.  But I can say this: the progress I've made has been wonderful, and I'm enjoying it a lot.  I also don't know if I'll be able to get much done tomorrow, but I'll post pictures explaining why if nothing gets done.  It's a cute reason, if I do say so myself.

But tonight I was back in my sewing room for a little more cleaning.  I have a lot of boxes in my living room now that need to be sorted through, so it's a false cleaning in some ways.  And tomorrow those boxes will move back into my sewing room until Sunday or Monday.  I can't believe next Thursday I'll be starting on my second month here--and a whole new project.  (Full disclosure: I'm both nervous and looking forward to it.  It will be a wonderful learning experience, I hope!)

So, sewing room.  I found more stuff that needs to be washed, but that will have to wait for another day. 

Look at that pile of stuff.  Well, you really can't see it all, but there's stuff just piled there.  Not as much as I thought, but more than there should have been.  And now?  It's much better.

The bags on the floor there are more bags of things that don't belong in here, and will be sorted out and new home given after the weekend.  The pink bag on the chair is keeping it away from kitties.  I like the bag, and don't want it wrecked.

Look at that huge pile of bags and fabric.  And a beach towel I won at work.

And now because I have significantly less stuff, I can move my ironing board much closer to the bookshelf, so I can actually move around in my sewing room!  Weird!!  And in other good news, I finally found one of my good shoes that's been missing since this spring sometime.  I had one shoe, but had no idea where the other one was.  I finally located it, and now I can wear those shoes again.  They're open-toed, so I can only wear them in summer, and I haven't been able to.  I'm not sure why a bag with three shoes in it was in my sewing room, nor why the pair of shoes got separated, but that's all irrelevant.  What's relevant is that now I can wear my shoes again!

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 25, 2013

The sewing room.  Dear me, the sewing room.  I could probably have one month dedicated to the sewing room, and STILL not get any sewing done.  But since I NEED to get some sewing done (I need a new purse--literally, the handles are almost completely shredded on my current one), I need to get this room clean.

Full disclosure: some of this stuff was just thrown in the sewing room to making my living room clean from the day before.  My house is like a constant re-arranging of stuff.  This needs to stop.  On the plus side, I did throw away two things today when I decided that they outlasted their novelty/usefulness.  It was a hard decision, but it's definitely for the best!

But what sort of mess did it look like before?  First, let's look at the table...

There's actually a sewing machine on this table.  Plus the cover for the sewing machine.  I know you don't believe me, but there is!  That pink quilt was on my bed this winter (yep, down blanket, wool comforter, and this quilt...).  The crocheted blankets were on my couch and chair this winter.  The crocheted blankets are my youngest cat's favorite blankets.  But they don't belong on my sewing table!  (Right now they're on my couch, waiting to be washed tomorrow.  Then I'll have to find a summer home for them...)

It's not a whole lot better, but at least you can see the sewing machine and its cover!  The shoebox, by the way, has some fabric in it.  It's a set of fabric, that I was originally thinking about using to make a purse, but then I remembered that it's very light colored fabric and purses should be bright or dark...light colors get dirty too fast!  The denim is a skirt that I think is in here for mending, but maybe it should go in my pile of denim to make a denim quilt with.  Hmm.

Anyway, I also worked on the floor.  I couldn't take a good before picture of the floor because I couldn't really walk far enough into the room!  I had to move boxes to get INTO the room.

You can sorta see a Target bag, as well as the cat cubes (formerly in the bedroom, now back in the bedroom; I took them out last night to vacuum, and figured my bedroom could look reasonably nice for my my guests today).  And under the blankets?  fabric.  Piles and piles of fabric that are now in the wash because a certain cat doesn't like to use the litter box that much.  :sigh:

It's still dirty and messy, but it's getting there!

On a side note, I really need to purchase a steam cleaner vacuum.  Add it to the list if I ever get employed again...

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 24, 2013

My computer was running too slowly last night, and it was pretty late, so I went to bed.  My company comes for lunch today, so I spent much more than a half hour, and still ended up throwing a lot of papers in a box that I'll have to deal with later (this afternoon or tomorrow, with luck!).  I was thinking today that in my previous job we were given an open office--no one had an assigned desk (you had an assigned "locker"--a filing cabinet in a bank of filing cabinets).  My desks at work have always been reasonably messy, because I had a tendency to save everything.  But when I was forced to carry things in a backpack, or had a very limited space (my job required me to keep a lot of binders of presentations from external sources), I managed much better, and rarely felt that I had missed something I had gotten rid of.  To be fair, we requested a lot of things to come electronically, rather than paper files, but the fact remained: I kept things under control much better.  I need to go back to that mentality.  At any rate, I cleaned my living room last night.  This included vacuuming cobwebs and cat hair from the walls, which was sorely needed.  I kinda forgot to vacuum the curtains.  Oops.  Such is life, though.

Here's two before pictures:

Yeah, you can see why I needed to clean.  And vacuum!  It's just crazy.  It already looks like I need to vacuum my living room rug again, but part of that comes from dirt stirred up when I (this morning, so not pictured) put the blankets on the furniture to protect guests from cat hair.  I need official slipcovers.  Maybe I'll add that to a future project.  Although, really, I need new furniture, too, so it makes me less included to make slip covers.

The computer will be put away (as soon as I finish this post, or my company comes, whichever comes first.  But at least it's reasonably acceptable.  I also did a bit more cleaning in the kitchen in terms of unstacking and restacking the dishwasher, so I have clean dishes in my cupboard, and dirty dishes in the dishwasher again.  After my company leaves, I'll disassemble the cat fountain, and throw that in with the dishes and run the dishwasher again.  I also have my ceiling fan on low, and turned my AC down, so it will be more comfortable for my guests, and not stir up so much dust and cat hair!  (I did vacuum the ceiling fan, but there's still plenty of dust and cat hair to be stirred up!)

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 23, 2013

I just agreed to babysit my nephews tomorrow afternoon, plus I have church tomorrow evening, and my company is coming for lunch on Thursday, so that means tomorrow will be a lot of work.  I don't know how much I'll post of pictures, but really: based on what I've done so far makes me a lot more confident about not being completely stressed out about cleaning tomorrow.  And if I'm less stressed, I'll be able to enjoy my company more.  These are all very good things.  But what did I accomplish so far today?  My kitchen island.  With my limited counter space, I knew I needed more, and a little more cupboard space would come in handy, too.  (I really wish I could whittle down my pantry so it could all fit in the kitchen.  Maybe now that I'm not working at a place with free samples, I'll be able to do that more readily.  Plus, I'm not earning any money right now, being unemployed, so I really need to just eat what I have.  I still have to do some grocery shopping for milk and a produce, but I'm doing what I can.)

But my island became a dumping ground for whatever I needed to put down and didn't know where to put it.  Or was too lazy to put it away, so therefore, the extra counter space really didn't exist.

Some of the things are quite precariously situated, too (like that coffee mug).  And the reddish purplish water bottle is actively being used, and it's just a coincidence that it's sitting there.  It generally follows me around the house--I've trained it like a puppy.  Face it, the cats aren't going to help me!

Look!  Empty counter space!  Whatever will I do with it?!  Realistically, I'd love it if I could find a new place for all my insulated glasses (see the end of the counter), but I'm just not sure where else I can put them.  So, for now they shall sit at the end of the counter, taking up space.  Such is life.

Clearly, that task wasn't going to take me a half-hour, so I moved on to my next task: the floor in front of the island.  (The back side of the island is the wicker chest, which I believe was two days ago.)

See, I have cats, and they're messy with their eating.  I also apparently have ants helping my cats eat their wet cat food.  Anyway...  The rocks are from a plant to keep the cats from digging in the dirt.  However, the cats never did dig in the dirt of that plant, so when I repotted it, I didn't bother putting the rocks back in.  I'm not sure what I'll end up doing with them.  They're sitting on plant run-over trays, for two plants that are currently outside for the summer.  Since the plants are outside, they don't need run-off trays (the grass is their run-off tray).  They're downstairs in my utility room, although not in a good spot.  I need to get back down there and find a better spot for them.  But that room will have to wait a while.

Look!  Clear floor!  All the dead plant parts that fell off are elsewhere (garbage.  In retrospect, they should've been thrown into the compost), and the power strip is back on the wall.  It's held up with a 3M velcro strip and likes to fall off the wall.  I think a second strip would help, but until I find where I put the package, one will have to suffice and I'll just have to remember to pick it up every time I knock it off.  (It doesn't fall off on its own, but if I bump it lightly, it will.)  The power strip is because the only outlets are behind the IKEA cabinet (Expedit 2x2 with add-on drawers and doors), and I bought that before they made caster wheels for the Expedit, so I needed easy access to the outlet.  Right now, the cats' fountain water dish extension cord is plugged in there (the fountain is on the other side of the Expedit) and the fan, because there's no air movement in my kitchen.  There's no HVAC vent in the kitchen--the closest one is on the other side of the island, between the wall and wicker chest.  That's probably why there's not an island there, because that vent is FOR the kitchen, but with my set-up, there's no room for it.  The fan was purchased for my sewing room, but that room does seem to be cool enough without a fan, so I've moved it out there.  When I get into my sewing room, I may have to move the fan.  Also, the cat food tub and watering can are now in that little space, and will have to move if/when I need to get into that far cupboard.  A small sacrifice.  The cats food mat is slightly more cleaned than this picture shows.  I cleaned up all the leaves and dry cat food, but I didn't actually scrub it.

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 22, 2013

Ah, the kitchen.  I will never keep up with it.  Partially because I'm just not a cooking type of gal, but more because my kitchen is so tiny, I never know how to deal with things.  I'm fascinated with tiny houses, so I'd like to have less stuff, but I never know what to get rid of. I should work on that.  Today I worked on the counter area above my dishwasher.  (Please recall, this is pretty much the only area of significant counter space my entire kitchen came with.)  While the 30 minutes really isn't THAT accurate, because I needed to take something downstairs, and while I was downstairs, the smell of cat was very strong, so I had to take some things out to the garbage, and then I sprinkled carpet cleaner powder on the floor, and...well, see, things happen.  (Note to self: you need to vacuum downstairs.)

So, let's look at the cupboard above my dishwasher. 

I can't even begin to think about this.  Clearly, I need to unstack and re-stack my dishwasher again.  That's pretty much any day in the thisisbeth household.  And that baking powder and baking soda just need to be put away.  (Now I'm hard-pressed to recall what exactly I made that required baking soda and baking powder...  Oh, yes.  Cookies for Father's Day.  I feel better now, because it was only a month ago...maybe I shouldn't feel better.)

So, I did a lot of cleaning.  To get some of the dishes in the dish drainer put away, as well as the dishwasher unstacked, as well as the baking soda & powder, I did have to do a little cupboard cleaning.  It's not totally clean, but the old baking powder (and some cooking oil) was thrown out, and the old baking soda was relegated to cleaning duties.  I also measured and found out that some of the baskets I bought for my refrigerator will fit into my narrow cupboard, so that will be a future project.  But, YAY!

So, anyway, after things were put away, and such, I wound up with a counter that looks like this:

So much better!!  I should find a new place for those tortilla chips, but for now they can sit there.  I'm also really happy I bought a cheap letter holder to hold up my cutting boards.  The large IKEA ones in the back are actually sitting behind it, but that works fine, too.  They won't be falling over all the time when I pull one out.  I may find that I need to add some weight to this thing (probably just adding a board underneath--or making a new one out of wood and wire), but I'm hoping it just works.








And now I'm going to have to do some more work in the kitchen--washing some dishes, etc.--so I can make supper.  Because food is good.

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 21, 2013

My uncle gave me a wicker chest for Christmas a few years ago.  I like it--not only because it's a storage basket, which I love, but also it was a wonderful gift.  Upon it sat my candy bucket.  I used to work in the food industry, dealing specifically with candy.  I got a lot of samples of candy.  Plus, it was kinda my duty to buy some candy when special promotions would come out.  So, yes, candy.  There's no shortage of it in my house, as evidenced by my waistline.  And pretty much that whole area of my living room/kitchen was kinda a mess.  Don't believe me?

Yep.  And what's more, that doesn't even show what's under or IN the chest.  Alas, I didn't take pictures of that.  But I did take a picture of the after!

Doesn't that look much neater?  I threw away some candy I knew I'd never eat--either a kind that didn't appeal to me as much as I thought it would, was smashed, or was older and of questionable flavor.  The candy fits in the bucket again--although just barely, and some of the bigger packages are still hanging around out of the bucket.

What's interesting is that I had no idea what was in the chest.  It had probably been years since I'd gone in there.  Now I can tell you: some quilting batting, and some sheer blue fabric from my "drapes" in my living room in my apartment seven years ago...  That was in there before, along with a lot of papers, some magazines articles, as well as some magazines themselves.  And some clipboards.  The best part is that I found a calendar from 2005.  I now know for certain that my iBook was purchased in 2005.  That means the old thing is nearly 9 years old.  While it's too old for software updates these days, the thing is still chugging along.

This project didn't look like much, but besides going through an initial look at the papers--some things got recycled right away, the others put aside for further perusal--I also did some more detailed cleaning.  There was dirt in the cloth-lined chest.  I don't know where that came from (maybe a plant was on top of it at some point?  I don't recall that situation, but I have a notoriously poor memory), but I felt the need to vacuum that out.  I also had spilled some lime juice on the floor a while back and finally got around to scrubbing that up.  Plus a swept up a lot of crumbs under the chest.  I'm not sure what that's about, because I didn't recognize what it could be, but there were ants hanging out, and I'd prefer not to have ants in my house.  So there was vacuuming, scrubbing, and sweeping going on, besides sorting candy and papers.

As much as I'd love to focus on other rooms of my house--like my sewing room, because I'm dying to sew again--the next few days will be focused on the public rooms of the house.  I have company comping for lunch one day later this week.  As that's the case, I need to make sure it's appropriately clean--and de-furred!

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 20, 2013

I continued working on the living room shelf tonight.  Tonight was cubes 2 and 3.  It was nice to get further progress.  A lot of stuff on those shelves didn't belong there (a common theme).  Much of it, to my surprise, just needs to be filed.  I really need to get my filing cabinets in my den set up properly--and I also need to go use my den more often.  But it's the farthest away room in the house--which when you realize that my house is approximately 26' by 26', you know at most it's not that far away.  But I need to move some boxes before I can get into my den easily.  Maybe it is time to get back to my utility room...

Anyway, Cube 2 started off pretty easily--it had a couple of phone books (yes), envelopes, a gift bag, and some tennis shoes.

I keep the phone books for one reason: recently we had a power outage.  Someone I know mentioned that they couldn't get to the internet (I'm not sure whether or not they have a smart phone, so I have to leave it vague).  They had thrown away their phone books because they figured they could always look up what they needed to online.  Okay, I'll keep a phone book or two around.  Just not the giant old fashioned ones. 

But not in Cube 2.  Tennis shoes and phone books aren't things that belong together in any way.  And as soon as I have a better spot for the tennis shoes, they won't be there, either.

So, Cube 3 was my biggest mess, because I can reach it from my living room chair, where I'm now sitting.  I could just stash stuff there as I was working on my computer(s).  It's entirely too convenient.

Going through this had to be like an archaeological dream!  There were quite a few things thrown into the recycling bin--or shredded!--and a number of things put into my giant pile for filing.  Someday, I'll get through that pile, and we'll all be happy.  But for now, it's not on the convenient Cube 3.

Doesn't that look much better?  (I don't know why I have two boxes of business envelopes and one box of letter envelopes here.  Now that I think about, they should be in the basement.)  Plus my calculator and financial journal (where I keep track of my house payments) are easily accessible from my chair!  Win!

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 19, 2013

Shh.  I did this on July 20.  Last night I was about to start this task, but my back was so sore, I decided to go to bed.  So, I finally did my shredding!

Sitting in front of my shoe shelf is a huge pile of shredding.  I knew I needed to empty the shredder's can before I could do it, so I just let the shredding pile up.  However, before I emptied the bin, I shredded a few credit cards so all my plastic could be in one bin.

See?  A huge pile has amassed (the garbage bag was in place already to take care of getting rid of the full bin).

And now the recycle bin is in that space!  Yay!  And the bin is empty again, because I knew it was just paper, I took it out and dumped it in my compost bin.  Because I'm all green like that!  That's why I shredded the credit cards--the bag is in my garbage can already.

But really, shredding doesn't take 30 minutes!  So, I decided to tackle square one of my front shelf:

I found things from 2010 there.  (I actually found a credit card I never called to activate that EXPIRED in 2010.  I'd say "oops", but clearly I didn't need to activate it!) 

All that's left now is a couple of Mab Libs tablets, and some bicycle repair kits.

Obviously, I'll have to clean more later today to get today's post up!

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 18, 2013

This is my closet.  The shelves in my closet hold my baseball t-shirts and my sweaters.  I live in Minnesota, so these have always moved around for the season, and as I dug through the piles to get the item I wanted, the piles would get messy.  And it was all disorganized.  There was no rhyme or reason--not size, not color, not usage occasion, nothing.  See?

Yes, it's small; but think of this: married couples share a closet twice this size, so I'm not really that hindered by closet space.  But it's still messy!  I'm not using any sweaters presently, and hopefully won't be using any sweaters for a couple of months.  Don't even look at the pile of t-shirts.  Good luck finding the one you're looking for.

So tonight I took the time to take EVERYTHING off the shelves.  (While I was at it, I should've gone in the attic and checked out the situations there.  The attic access is conveniently in the master bedroom closet.  If you call it the master bedroom, which you should, because it's the largest.)  I re-folded them all and sorted them.  The things I'm least likely to wear (due to size or color--I have nothing matching it at present) are on the top shelf that I cannot reach without a chair, stool, ladder, etc.

The sweater clothes are even somewhat sorted by color!  I will now be able to go through my piles of T-shirts on game day and pick the one I feel like wearing without digging through the ones that are a little too tight to feel comfortable wearing.  And come winter, the "at home" sweaters are on the middle shelf to the left, and I'll be able to find the work sweaters I want to wear (provided I'm gainfully employed.  Then again, if I'm not, the closet it is a moot point, because I'll be living in a cardboard box).

July 2013: Cleaning the House, July 17, 2013

Today, the bookshelf.  Tomorrow, the world!  It's weird that I only have one half-sized bookshelf in my living room.  This might explain why my cedar chest is covered in piles of books.  What can I say?  I grew up on books, and I keep them around to this day because I love to read. :shrug:

I'm going to post this differently, because, well, I kinda didn't realize that it would be easier to take pictures of the disaster area with the plant temporarily relocated until I took the after pictures--because I had to move the plant to clean the area!  So, here's the whole slew of before pictures of the mess.

Much of the papers on the floor were things that had fallen off the armrest of the couch, as I'd sit on the couch and open mail, and put the opened mail on the armrest, and the mail would fall, and then it would pile up into an archeologists dream.  Or something like that.  At any rate, none of those papers belonged there, and almost all of them needed to be recycled.  Except the ones that needed to be filed.  We won't even start with all the random things in front of the books on the bookshelf.  Some of them could stay there peacefully (like my stereo remote and camera) and some simply had to move (like my crochet hooks).

Really, that box of winter stuff doesn't belong on that bookshelf, but it doesn't fit in the entry way shelf (which it was bought for!), so for now, it sits there, prominently displayed on a day the temperatures here soared into the mid-90s with high humidity.  Yuck.

Of course, now my pile of papers to shred and my pile to file are growing.  I should get around to doing both of these things one of these days...