I know, without a doubt, that if I would have felt like it, I would have blogged on Sunday about my exhausting yet extremely productive Saturday.
I had decided earlier in the previous week that the weekend (last weekend) was going to be the most productive weekend of my life. I had a schedule written out that detailed what I was going to do hour-by-hour for a full three day weekend... the schedule lasted all of about five hours before I got so mad that I was "running behind" and crumpled the damn thing up. I rationalized that if I was the one that made the schedule, I could also be the one to get rid of it.
The main reason it didn't work was that I had allotted two hours to clean my bathroom. Now, some naiive person who has never seen my bathroom would probably gasp at the thought of having to allocate 120 mintues to clean a small-ish room, but allow me to explain...
This bathroom is huge. It's got a double sink with two huge cabinets, one under each sink, a decently sized closet and a nice jet tub. This isn't a typical bathroom for a 20 year old living at home but I rarely complain about the amenities. I wish, with everything in my heart, that I would have thought to take "before" pictures of this bathroom. In the closet, there were three shelves and a floor PILED in bottles, containers, papers, books, clothes and other artifacts circa 1987. There were literally items in this closet that had been in there prior to my birth and never touched. Under the sinks? The same thing... medicines, lotions, spilled powders... you name it, it was in these cabinets. The shower/tub was gross because, as I finally forced myself to scrub it and clean it, I realized the ledge on the wall was lower than the tub itself so water couldn't drain properly causing it to be disgusting. The sinks were clogged (I had rather long hair before yesteday), the shower drain was stopped up and the toiled was in need of some cleaning, too. I'm not typically a dirty person, I swear. But I get overwhelmed easily. So easily in fact that I have managed to "facade" clean this bathroom before company comes over, minus Ethan because he comes over too much for me to fakely clean it.
But Saturday was the day. I literally spent five hours in that bathroom. By the end of the day, I had an odd red rash on my arms from the chemicals, a headache from the fumes and an increasingly aching back. But it was so worth it. I ended up with three trash bags full of decades worth of junk, (you can't see the third bag):
But in the end I had an organized closet, whose floor could be seen for the first time in years:
A sparkling tub complete with new floor sticky things and candles, along with impeccably clean jets and shower head:
And an over-all glow that makes me not even want to use this bathroom out of fear that it might return to it's previous state:
So after the hours it took to clean this bathroom, I decided that the only logical thing to do was clean my room, too. I'm pretty sure that it's impossible for me to keep my room clean and organized for longer than a week, but I'm determined to try. For me to be so OCD, my room and bathroom are in complete chaos 90% of the time. Here's an embarrassing before picture of what my room looked like prior to the 6 hours I spent cleaning it:
I look at that room and I am immediately stressed out. I once read that a cluttered house is terrible for stress, and that the cleaner your living environment, the cleaner your life is. The more organized our house is, the more organized you are. I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. When my room is a wreck, I avoid and it gets worse. I get irritated and it just leads to an overall sense of unpleasantness. I've decided that my goal is to de-clutter the entire house before Christmas. At times I resent that it has to be my goal instead of my mom's goal. She says she's overwhelmed and that she's not the one that created the clutter...and she's about 50% correct. This was her grandmother's house and then her mom's house... their things are still stored away, their junk that they shoved into every nook they could find still resides in their temporary homes. Well, the time has come that someone break the cycle and if she refuses, I'll do it myself.
I didn't take an after picture of my room because technically, it isn't done yet. I still have these boxes to go through:
Along with all my clothes that are currently sorted into laundry baskets in the hall way. I supposed that since they had all been chilling on my floor, it would be better to have them all washed. That'll be done this week. After that I need to dust and swiffer, but it'll only take about an hour before it looks like it should.
For the rest of the week I'll be finishing my room and then Wednesday, I'm on to my next task. I've decided it's the hallway closet. My mom has mentioned doing it herself but that'll probably happen when pigs begin flying. The goal is to throw out 75% of what's in there, box up another 10%, put the remaining 15% where it belongs and then have the majority of the space as free storage. My fear is that after it's cleaned, it will be the new "spot" to put things when someone can't find a place to put it where it should actually go.
The closet is atrocious, to be honest. It's got more stuff in there than most walk-in closets you find in master bedrooms. Pictures, cards, letters, clothes, linens... all of them collected over the last 50 years. You open the door and it's completely packed, wall to wall. It'll probably take hours to sort through everything but it'll be worth it.
My next project will start after I get back from New Orleans (which we leave for in ONE week!!!) is going to start on the day after we come back, in the afternoon and I'll finish it in three days. The laundry room is the room that NO company is every allowed to see. You would think we were hiding dead bodies inside of it. If, for any reason, one would need inside this room while someone was over, you literally have to do this, "Open the door only has far as needed, while squeezing yourself in backwards in order to hide the mess without turning the light on and then shutting it as fast as possible" dance. Ridiculous. As much as I'm not looking forward to this, I AM looking forward to this. It's like an OCD Organizer's worst nightmare and dream come true all in one. The possibilities are endless... I do think I'll paint it with some of the left over paint from the hallway...this could get interesting!
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