Too busy cleaning to post . . .

Nobody believed that title right??? Good. Though it was partially true, in spirit anyway. I had planned to post on Sunday and Robert demanded a deep cleaning of both the living room and our bedroom. I HATE HATE DESPISE HATE LOATHE HATE cleaning with my husband. He takes the O.H.I.O. rule to some rare artform and just moves so fast and seems to simply chant "What do you want to do with this?" "What do you want to do with this?" "What about this?" "And this?" There is not time to sit and hold and think and absorb and decide and it makes me furious. In fact in devouring the now infamously debunked memior "A Million Little Pieces" and he was talking about the Fury and oh how I could relate to the inner rage of cleaning along side my husband.
And yet . . . In less than five hours the living room and bedroom were truly clean. Done. Only daily upkeep needed. No boxes to sort through later. No maybe piles. No shelves still lingering with potential yard sale items. Just a trash can full of trash, an overflowing box for the yard sale and a clean and freshly made bed. I HATE HATE DESPISE HATE LOATHE HATE when my husband is right.

In other news, I have a new plan for motivation. I am going to take pictures of my house every Saturday morning and post them here. They will no doubt often be accompanied by excuses but I think it may keep me a bit more dilligent in my maintence phase. So this week my goal is to get the digital camera and the laptop talking.

The yard work also continues to move forward. I have finished the flower bed. and then promptly bought more clearance flowers and am in the process of planting those. The yuccas still need work and I am momentarily out of potting soil and mulch, but my shoulders are sunburned and nothing has died yet. So it's going well. Pictures on that front soon as well.

Summer vacation has FINALLY arrived so post should be more often and hopefully more positive in nature. Now if you will excuse me, I have laundry to swap out . . .

Lateral Progress

There were lots of things I could have done today. The resume needs to be updated, and then of course there are the cover letters and applications. There is also the ever present reality of dishes and laundry. And I suppose it would be nice to see the entire rug in the living room again, but it was such a lovely day. So I de-cluttered outside instead.
I have quite the weakness for clearance perennials. It is just such a good deal. And there are a couple of truly sloped areas outside our properly fenced yard that are just back breaking for Robert to weed eat. So today I spent the vast majority of the day putting the vast majority of my clearance rack finds in a proper flower bed. All 15 plants are in the ground, fertilized and watered. There is truly the potential for a fabulous spread in a year or two of growth.
However this still leaves quite a list, which is as follows
Put weed barrier down.
Mulch over weed barrier
Mulch around butterfly bushes
Finish transplanting Yucca plants
Mulch around ALL Yucca plants
Fertilize the weeping willow and cherry trees.
Plant the clearance Hydrangea
Mulch around Peony Rose bush.
Plant tomato plants.
Pot the pink Gerber daisy WALT insisted on buying over the weekend.
Remember to water all the above plants for the remainder of the summer.

And on the never ending chore of keeping my son rational and the dogs out of harms way, and well no wonder my house is a mess. Actually keeping everyone outside seems to be helping keep what is clean -- clean. (Except the bathtub of course)

I know I promised pictures. I am now on the laptop full time and need to install the camera stuff, so soon --- like when it rains I don't spend the whole weekend watering!

Relapse

"They tried to make me go to rehab, I said NO NO NO!!!!"

Actually I would go, willingly, please someone send me to mess rehab!!!

As you can probably guess by the long absence, and the previous posting on facebook. I fell off the de cluttering bandwagon. I hit the big speed bump of being a single mom while Robert was in Florida, and by the time my ass stopped flipping over my head the wagon was out of sight.
Then came the federal review and after that the nice familiar feeling of helplessness.
Tammy came to the rescue, but again, and sent a very handy link of what to do when it all falls apart, and everybody knows how often things fall apart around here, and one of the steps was to just let it be for a minute. So I did.
But now I'm refocused, at least for the second, and starting to make in roads. The kitchen is back in sound working order, and it took a fraction of the first go round. So that is a small victory. The bathroom was attacked by a mixture of sand, dirt, leaves and quince fruits that WALT lovingly calls "slop" but that is a work in progress now as well. It is not such a novel notion this round. Its honestly more about time management and my total lack of skills in that department.
In truly unhappy news, my position is not being refunded next year and so I am mere weeks from unemployment, but I suppose that will temporarily give me more time to clean. So we'll keep looking on the bright side. . . . . does anyone else hear a Monty Python song in the background????
In small victory news, I did have the first yard sale and it was successful beyond my wildest dreams. I went into the sale with the single vision of "lightening the load" with whatever cash I had in hand at the end as a bonus. So I under priced everything. I'm sure there are some savvy yard sale shoppers still talking about the good deals they got. In fact two complete strangers insisted on paying me more than I asked for their items. The point was that it was going away and not going to be carried back into the storage building. The quarters and dollars added up however to a whopping $256. WOW, all for stuff i didn't need or even want.
I also took 2 boxes of clothing, 1 box of plastic hangers, and a large gift bag of worn but serviceable children's books to the local thrift store just yesterday.

Life is far from perfect and there are miles, as in 26 of the 26.3 miles of a marathon left to go, but I am running again, and for today, anyway, that's enough for me!!!

Notes from the Frontlines . . .

Lest I forget . . the x-rays were delivered to the classroom and the kids were super thrilled and actually had some amazing observations/questions. And they all talk about Blue like she is still alive, and so in a way she is. I still miss her very much. Her death probably signaled the beginning of the funk and this resulting disaster of a house.

Despite my husband's best efforts to sabotage the endeavor, by opening the junk closet and emptying it all out to find a singular Def Leopard CD that could have been download via itunes SO much easier, there is some progress being made in land of tough decisions.

My dear friend Kate offered some good advice. Considering my hectic life and limited attention span a whole room is an awfully big bite to chew. Indeed this disaster had me spinning my wheels demolition derby style. So she suggested one specific spot at a time.
First up was the dreaded file cabinet. It went better/faster than expected. The pre-school work was also amazingly easy to toss, it just looked so infantile compared to what is hanging on the wall now that all the proud mommy factor had faded away. I kept the important stuff. According the comparative thickness of tax years 2005 was a big deal in this family. I also kept the health department record of the infamous cat bite from Ninny, lest we forget that madness. Nevertheless enough stuff was weeded out that I am not sure in fact why we have such a large filing cabinet. But it is large and very heavy, so Robert will have to be consulted on that change.

I have also come to the painful conclusion that there are some de-cluttering techniques that elude me. The OHIO rule for example (Only Handle It Once) I understand the concept, but I thin that assumes that once you decide to keep it there is some system in place to properly house it. I am only now creating said systems, so I have my grimy fingers all over stuff.

I have cleaned out 2 shelves from the bookcase to start to house the massive photo collection. One is full of completed photo albums, the other of boxes of photo madness. Baby steps, at least said boxes are no longer in the living room.

I told Robert that this room would be done by his return next Friday. I am already starting to panic about that deadline. His pile of junk to sort is growing though, this is not my mess alone. Let's not get me started about keeping every single set of Marine BDUs he owned. And who knew you could get so many trophies for playing basketball. Guess I really did suck. But hopefully I can get a little time this weekend to make a big push. When I take out the trash and recycling bags and the "outta here" boxes I think I will see a bigger difference.

Also in this collection of random musings it should be noted I sold 6 more books. I have also got the boxes to gather up photos/items that belong to David and Uncle Mack and they should be in the mail next week as well. This whole "spring forward" debacle is rocking my world and so I am to bed early tonight in prep for the always lovely Wednesday sensory OT. Bluck!

And suddenly it all becomes so crystal clear . .

It took a few days of real effort to dispose of the top layer of this heaping mess that would be an office/spare bedroom. It was mostly just toys and clothes and artwork and the left over parts of bills after they have been paid, and a receipt or two, some homework notes, and correspondence. For the most part easy enough to find a home or chunk in the garbage.
But with the crust pulled back, its now becoming obvious as to why the clutter is here in the first place. I have renamed this room "the land of tough decisions." And for those you that know me well, the tough calls are not my favorite to make. But all those years of riding the fence waiting for the obvious answer seems to have caused my knee deep clutter. There are boxes of military mementos, a trunk that is doubling as a class of 1995 time capsule, textbooks from Tech and ODU, a collection of quilts, a fair number of unfinished art projects along with all the materials to finish them, 4 generations of pictures, Robert's upper deck figurines, my Audrey barbies, and much much more. Decidingly less cut and dry than the number of wash clothes I need on my bathroom shelf.
I am trudging through, getting rid of anything that I forgot I had, and some other things that no longer apply. The Robert needs to decide pile is growing, almost as fast as the maybe pile. Though I do have a tiny success story to report:
As you should well know by now I work at Head Start. One of our missions/goals/objectives is to provide as many hands-on/real world opportunities as possible. So this week while in one of the teacher's room I became part of a class room discussion about the upcoming field trip to the vet, and x-rays. In my room of clutter I just happen to have a collection of dog x-rays. (they are all I have left of my beloved Blue, and therefore over a year later still emotionally charged) So next week the x-rays are going into the classroom, hopefully to be used for years to come. I don't think I would ever had been able to simply throw them away, so this is really an ideal situation.
There are still miles to go before anybody sleeps in here, at least anybody of the two legged variety, but I think we may be down to shin deep disaster, at least until we open the closet!!!

Weekly progress report . . . .

The beast (of a room) is being, well in all honesty, a beast. Two 20 gallon tubs of clutter out, as well as 2 trash bags of garbage and another of recycling, and it actually looks worse in here. It is most definitely more difficult to get around. Only the elusive cat is happy in this situation.
On the bright side I did find 2 photo albums I didn't remember having, and enough unopened wrapping paper that I will be good until Christmas 2020. I also posted more books online at half.com bringing my virtual inventory to 56, add the 4 that I have sold, and that is 60 books off my collapsing shelves. The bad news is I opened the closet and then just shut it back. It is crammed to the top (must remember to take pictures). Some is mine but most is Robert's from either his glory days of basketball, or in the Marines.
Not being in college for a semester (yea) I had forgotten that it is spring break season. So that would pretty effectively mark when we got the 3 month notification. And though the rest of the house was in decidedly better order, this room was already jacked. I have this vivid memory of mom trying very hard to not cry and dictate these diagnosis "facts" and then just stopping to declare "we have to do something about this room."
A year later I am. A year later, with a lot more stuff. But even as I type this the WALT man is downstairs tinkling the ivories of the family piano, and the circle continues. If I am lucky then there will be spring that one of my grandchildren must purge to make room for that piano.

On a lighter note, Mr. Clean bathroom cleaner with Febreeze smells REALLY REALLY good, it is not however an ideal floor cleaner. I thought perhaps with several misadventures this week with the incontinent cat, that it would do the trick. The floor does indeed look and smell better, but it has the grasping abilities of a Venus fly trap. WALT lost a sock on the way to the toilet (the whole 3 steps). Guess I will be re-mopping today with some old fashion spic and span. Live and hopefully learn. It's all we have any right to ask for . . .

Pictures are worth thousands of words, so no words can justify this . . .