more house

[quietann]

So, I have been steadily doing this and that in the house. Things are not a lot cleaner, but I am making some progress just organizing the process.

I think part of the reason I am unhappy about the state of the house right now is that my free time is going to diminish significantly once I am working, and I *know* I will get resentful towards Ben, who I sometimes (incorrectly) view as sitting around all day doing nothing.

I got a lot of good feedback from y'all (or I should say the *female* y'all, because the guys had nothing to say about what to do about house maintenance. Odd, that :)

On flylady -- picking and choosing with that approach seems OK, but I find the website and some of the underlying Christian culture hard to take.

One of Ben's issues, I think, is just how ruthless I can be about clutter once I get started. I would toss *immediately* about 75% of his papers -- and a fair amount of my own, too. I would send all the car magazines back to Ben's father with a pointed note about how *he* owns two houses, so he should have plenty of room for them. At the very least, I would get rid of all the ones that are not relevant to the cars that Ben and his father collect.

Ben witnessed the ruthlessness when I was in San Diego, when I finally went through a lot of my stuff that was stored at my dad's house (which he is now renting out, except for one room for Thomas family "stuff"). I filled a 4 by 2 1/2 by 2 1/2 foot recycling bin, plus an equally sized trash container, and sent about that much stuff again off with my brother to donate to Goodwill and to his students. Out of the huge pile, exactly *six* boxes got shipped back here, and two of those contain things that I would like to sell on Ebay. My father was impressed, but I think Ben was mildly horrified (He kept trying to get me to keep more stuff, but I would have none of it... I tossed all the ribbons and records I had kept from when I used to show guinea pigs, all the notes I had kept from classes, some old research data, and much more.)

Comments

Tossing old stuff.

[dhs.livejournal.com]

I need to do that. Lots of that.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

if one of Ben's issues is with how ruthlessly you clean up, he can start actively keeping the place clean so you don't hit a 'now, must be RUTHLESS' state ;-)

[quietann.livejournal.com]

so far, I am (mostly) respectful of his stuff. But there are mice nesting in the pile next to the bed, and that's squicking me... and once I start tossing, he will have a hard time stopping me!

[thespian.livejournal.com]

see, that's WAY different. that should go, now, whether he'll help or not....

[frotz.livejournal.com]

I haven't had much to say about it that hadn't already been covered by the time I saw your original posting, though I agreed with the bulk of the replies. (I'm also not particularly into the mindless repetitive "me too! *hugs*" game that clogs some people's livejournal pages.) That said, I'll happily register my opinion as a male who's horrified and depressed by excessive clutter, especially my own. I'm still far too good at producing it, and there are still two rooms in our house that really depress me to be in, but the only thing that's really worked is to find the motivation to deal with things, even if just a little bit, on a regular basis.

I've come to realize that, for me, there's a lot to be said for removing needless complexity from one's life, and clutter (and stuff in general) is a big part of that. Good luck!

[bookly.livejournal.com]

I tossed all the ribbons and records I had kept from when I used to show guinea pigs, all the notes I had kept from classes, some old research data, and much more.

Yow. Can I borrow you when I start going through all my stuff in storage in Boston? :)

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Suggestion, from my own experience as being the one with the domestic streak in at least 2 households (consecultively) where no-one else had the urge to clean: If the idea is that when something bugs you but doesn't bug someone else then you should be the one to deal with it. Then in the same token, if not having the space you live in be clean bothers you, and you don't have enought time to clean it, then rather than resent others for not pitching in and doing their share, you should do whatever you need to make the cleaning happen. My mother used to resent my sister, father, and I for not doing as much cleaning as she wanted us to do. In my case, when I stopped freelancing and got a full time job and no longer had time to clean for myself and my housemates, I hired a cleaning lady. And I stopped resenting my roomates for the time which I spent cleaning and which they spent having fun. Having a cleaner once a month vastly cuts down on the ammount of scrubbing and labor intensive tasks that I need to do. I consider it a gift to myself that I can give a large portion of my cleaning urges over to someone else and focus on other things in my life. And I no longer resent the people I love for having different habits than I do.

[gingicat]

With Wolf's papers, I've adopted a policy of "all the stuff I would toss if it were mine goes into a box, unorganized, and goes to the basement" when it gets to that level. Hasn't in over a year, which is very nice. :)

With my own, I'm not as ruthless as you, but one of the projects for this week is FILING.

[iamlisabee.livejournal.com]

AMEN! I'm all for throwing things in boxes just to get them out of the way. (out of sight out of mind?)

And then, if it's been in the basement for 3 years and you haven't used it, well, you KNOW it can be tossed!

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

I'm not one for telling anyone how to organize, but if you guys have piles of magazines mixed in with papers, here's a suggestion:

Get a "magazine filer", like this. They're cheap.

http://www.ikea-usa.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10101&storeId=12&productId=13668&langId=-1&parentCats=10115*10297

You can either have ben sit down and separate papers from magazines, or you can do that separation, then hand ben the stack of magazines and tell him to sort them by year and put them all into those filers.
Then they can more neatly be placed on a shelf, or tossed altogether when he realizes he doesn't need years of car mags dating back to 1974.

At least then you'll be down to Papers only, which can further be sorted by type (bill or advertisement or private correspondence) at some future date.

It might help get the stacks down?

[quietann.livejournal.com]

The magazines are, for the most part, separate from the papers. And we do have a filing system for them, but I need to make Ben sit down and file everything that has accumulated in the past year.

[tb]

One thing I've found that has helped is that we've both agreed on a few spaces in the house that are kept relatively clutter-free. This means we usually have a place in the living room where guests can sit down, for example. Other rooms in the house are downright scary, but at least they're relatively contained. That has made a big difference in my willingness to have people over.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

AT the very least, when the kitchen remodeling is done, I have already told Ben that there *will* *not* be clutter on the kitchen table, or in the kitchen itself. As for the rest of the house, we'll see.

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

I recommend getting a cleaning person and making it be a shared house expense. It has made me so much less homicidal around the house...

For the clutter, ruthlessness about the shared space can be good- Maybe exile the really egregious clutter from public rooms into the satellite area or into boxes in the cars' garage..? Well, there is a barn, too... I have been tossing P's livingroom clutter into his laser lab for some time, and it seems to work.

The scariest thing is to see old people who have become prisoners of their stuff, and live in decades of old newspapers, etc... Yeek! Makes one want a spare and elegant Japanese house.

[roozle.livejournal.com]

I know this is old news and an old topic, but I was just thinking
about this again.

Having someone come in to clean means you have an incentive to
declutter at least the common areas on a regular basis -- so
they are clear enough to be cleaned.