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The Great Cleaning has begun!
Jun. 19th, 2018 02:02 pmMy first thought was that I would get motivated by reading Unfuck Your Habitat, but I very quickly realized that that's for a different audience than me. The things unmotivating me from keeping stuff together have been:
- the soullessness of my apartment: with square rooms, beige walls, and a hard, brown/grey carpet, literally nothing looks "good" in it
- its size: there are very few arrangements of furniture that will fit in the space without being wasteful or awkward
- nobody sees it: a couple of times a year one or the other of my parents will visit me, I have no friends
- I don't plan to stay: I'm always applying to jobs in other towns and regularly consider moving out of here just for another place in Canton, should one appear
There's nothing to be done about the first three, but I can at least get over the fourth and tell myself that that doesn't mean I shouldn't put the time in. So Sunday and Monday evenings I cleared out an awful lot of junk from the floor and the shelves in the tv table, putting it in the recycling or in a box for storage; took everything off the bookshelves and the designated book piles, dusted, sorted, and reshelved or boxed for storage or donation; moved my antique garment collection to the shelf in my closet from the floor in front of the table; and vacuumed every time I made new floor space available.
It's the kind of cleaning that makes bigger messes in some areas (as I move sewing stuff from the living room to the sewing area, for instance) but overall it decreases the clutter, so it balances out. So far I've ordered a utensil organizer for the "everything" kitchen cupboard (there's only one drawer in this kitchen. ONE DRAWER), a hanging file organizer for everything I would file but has been living in my highly secure filing system, "between books on the shelf or in a pile", a box for batteries, and a big metal shelving unit for pantry stuff. Don't anticipate needing much more, except maybe some decorative boxes for sewing supply storage and something to put on the coffee table to help with the inevitable current-sewing-project clutter.
- the soullessness of my apartment: with square rooms, beige walls, and a hard, brown/grey carpet, literally nothing looks "good" in it
- its size: there are very few arrangements of furniture that will fit in the space without being wasteful or awkward
- nobody sees it: a couple of times a year one or the other of my parents will visit me, I have no friends
- I don't plan to stay: I'm always applying to jobs in other towns and regularly consider moving out of here just for another place in Canton, should one appear
There's nothing to be done about the first three, but I can at least get over the fourth and tell myself that that doesn't mean I shouldn't put the time in. So Sunday and Monday evenings I cleared out an awful lot of junk from the floor and the shelves in the tv table, putting it in the recycling or in a box for storage; took everything off the bookshelves and the designated book piles, dusted, sorted, and reshelved or boxed for storage or donation; moved my antique garment collection to the shelf in my closet from the floor in front of the table; and vacuumed every time I made new floor space available.
It's the kind of cleaning that makes bigger messes in some areas (as I move sewing stuff from the living room to the sewing area, for instance) but overall it decreases the clutter, so it balances out. So far I've ordered a utensil organizer for the "everything" kitchen cupboard (there's only one drawer in this kitchen. ONE DRAWER), a hanging file organizer for everything I would file but has been living in my highly secure filing system, "between books on the shelf or in a pile", a box for batteries, and a big metal shelving unit for pantry stuff. Don't anticipate needing much more, except maybe some decorative boxes for sewing supply storage and something to put on the coffee table to help with the inevitable current-sewing-project clutter.
