Finally home again

[carbonel]

The funeral and three days of shiva are over. I am possibly more peopled out than I ever have been in my entire life -- so of course tonight I'm going to a public event. I won't have to talk much, though; I'm just there to listen to Abby Franquemont, who is a Big Name in the world of spinning.

I'm also taking a two-day course from her over the weekend, which I'm very glad I'm back in time for.

My house is a disaster area, and I don't even know where to start. Note that this is nothing new. It was a disaster area before I left. But two weeks with my neatnik mother makes it look worse than usual. Just before I left, I hired an organizer to help get the place into shape, and then had to put her on hold because of all the other stuff. The essential problems are a) I don't have places for everything, b) I have too damned much stuff, and c) I'd rather do other stuff than organize/clean/put stuff away. I'm working on a) and b), but I'm not sure there's a cure for c).

Comments

[guppiecat]

I have project-managed emergency house cleanings in the past. It's apparently a core skill.

If you wish help and can line up about four other people you'd trust handling your stuff, you might be surprised at how fast it can go.

[carbonel]

This isn't that kind of emergency house-cleaning. At least, not unless I die suddenly. I'd trust people to handle my stuff, but I'm not sure I could trust them to properly triage the keep-vs.-toss decisions.

I think the houses you've been involved with have had a lot more sheer junk. I have some of that, but what I get embroiled in are tasks that need tasks: "I want to get rid of this spare computer. But I need to scrub it before I do that. And to do that, I need to connect it to a keyboard and monitor. And that takes a lot more time than just taking it to a recycle place." That's just an example, so please don't try to fix that specific instance. Just multiply that by many.

Sometimes the Gordian solution is the correct one. For example, in my office I have a box of Win95-era software and data, and I should probably just toss the whole thing, even though it's vaguely conceivable that there's data I'll miss if it's gone. But lots of other things require either decisions or additional work.

And (as another example) in my office I have a box of miscellaneous office supplies. It's a cardboard banker's box. It has been sitting in my office for about 10 years, because I haven't found a better solution to the problem of where office supplies should go. This comes under the aegis of "there is nothing so permanent as a temporary emergency," I suppose. It's not an ideal solution, and it's vaguely annoying, but it does work.

[guppiecat]

I didn't mean to imply that it was that sort of emergency house-cleaning, just that processes would be similar. And frankly, of those I've done, I preferred the one with the living inhabitant.

In general, the way I've done it before is to clear a room (or yard if weather and situation permits) and quarter it. One quarter means toss, one quarter means keep, one quarter means "decide later" and one quarter is a staging area. (If needed, you can add a fifth category for "emotionally triggery, I don't want to look at it again", which is stored elsewhere.) Then, the person who owns the stuff is given 10 seconds for each item to decide where it goes, the rest of us playing mule. Once one quarter is full, stuff is boxed up and put/thrown away.

Eventually, you do this to each room and wind up with a big pile of "decide later". Then you come back the next weekend and tackle that.

Recursive dependencies are, in my opinion, best handled by documenting what the tasks are. This can be done in a "decide later" phase. How it's done depends on you. I do most things in Trello these days, but some people work best off of dated notecards taped to the item in question.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Oooh, Abby. I'm envious! Today I taught myself to spin with a twiddly French hand spindle. It is, in fact, a fancy stick. My yarn is awful but so was my drop-spindle yarn my first day!

I too have a habit of growing Fannish Clutter! Last year I started following the Unfuck Your Habitat system: work 45 min, break 15 min; or work 20 min, break 10 min. Never marathon. Make your bed every single day. And that's it.

Making your bed sounds kind of dumb, but I can tell the difference when I fall off the wagon. I'm flexible with the breaks; sometimes I break 45 and work 15, if that's what I can manage right then. The underlying idea is pretty much just "something is better than nothing." And it isn't horrendously perky like Flylady! (There's a tumblr and a website if you want to do her weekly challenges and so on, which I usually don't.)

And now it's time to start the laundry, which with my current setup takes 45 min. Ta-da! Sorry for the tl;dr...

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Welcome home. A spinning class from an expert sounds like a wonderful way to spend the weekend.

I look forward to hearing how things go with your organizer and any particular things that you notice work well (or don't) in working with her. Because, yes, my abc;s match yours.

My theory of stuff encompasses the joy of stuff, the comfort of stuff, and the burden of stuff. Any particular item can be all one thing, or aspects of two or three. Having dishes to eat off of is comfort; the fact that those dishes were originally part of the Kosher for Passover dishes in the Yalow household is joy, as is the fact that they have two square corners and a half-round. Fun shape.

Unorganized stuff is all burden. If I know I have it but can't find it (at all, or without a lot of work), there's no comfort or joy in it.

So, yeah, I want things to be organized, and I celebrate each and every time I go to place X to get item Y and it's right there! But I've needed to prune my closet for the last...oh, 4 or 5 years...and I keep doing other things. I've been going to clean and tweak my office for nearly a year...and I keep doing other things. I used to clear most of the excess stuff out of the garage at least once a year...but it's going on 4 years since I did it last...or is it 5?

So I want to be tidy and organized, but I don't want to put the work into actually getting to that point and then maintaining a pattern of habits to keep me there.

In the meanwhile, I continue to excel at accumulating stuff, at filling the Cardis and hauling more home....

[moonlightmead.livejournal.com]

By now you will have been to the event, so I hope it was good. And that the weekend is good too.

Uncluttering: argh. Best of luck.

[parsleigh.livejournal.com]

Sorry for your loss.