July 2013: Cleaning the House. July 1, 2013

It's no great secret I suck at housekeeping.  It's a conflict within me.  I very much enjoy the minimalist look, but I also like to have stuff.  I also am very much an "out of sight, out of mind" person.  If I can't see it, it ceases to exist.  I never got over that object permanence thing that babies don't have.  But I really need to get this place cleaned up to non-pigsty levels.  I'm not quite in danger of being on an episode of Hoarders, but if you recall the old show Clean Sweep (and later Clean House or something like that), that's kinda the levels I'm approaching.  As you'll see.

Please bear with me as I try to learn blogger.  Trust me, one month I'll go back to teaching myself html (I used to know it reasonably well) and at that point, things will start looking better.  I hope.

So, for the next month, at least 30 minutes each day will be spent on cleaning.  I started today in the bedroom:

This is my laundry hamper.  Yep, somewhere under that pile of clothes is a triple-sorter laundry hamper.  I'd really like to just get a real laundry basket (or two or whatever), but for now, it's what I have.  It's also surrounded by plastic plexiglass because I have a cat who doesn't always like to use the litter box, and found my canvas laundry "basket" too tempting.

And after re-sorting the laundry and doing a couple of loads, this is what it looks like today.  I suppose I should've cleaned up in front of my nightstand, but that's for another day, I guess.

This is my armoire.  You can't really see how much was done, because it's all behind doors or in drawers.  Also, the baskets of clothes you can't really see in this picture (it's on the bed), plus the clothes drying downstairs are folded and put away.  I also didn't picture my closet, because I really just hung up a lot of clothes that were on the chair (see next pictures) or on my dresser.

See?  It hasn't really changed that much.  But it has!

Here's my chair.  You can almost see it under the pile of clothes.  This is where the clothes I decide not to wear get discarded, rather than put away until I'm ready to wear them.  There were sweaters on there.  It's July!  I haven't worn a swear in weeks!  (I live in Minnesota.  Alas, we wore sweaters in June.  I wore flannel pajamas in June, for goodness sake!)

And here's my chair after most of the clothes were picked up and put away--whether thrown in the laundry (sweaters that won't be worn again until next fall...I hope!), hung in the closet, or folded and put in the armoire.  In fact, all that's on the chair right now is pajamas and other "stuff" that needs to be put away.  I think I need to get this chair out of the room, because it will always become a spot to throw things when I don't know what to do with them.