Week 1 review / Week 2 start

[rmc28]

Goals for week 1 were:

• get in touch with the gardener
• hours-of-power: Sun x2, Tue x1, Thu x2, Fri x2

Actually achieved:

• Sun 1x hour-of-power
• Freecycle emails

Yeah, it turns out I drastically ovestimated my capacity / motivation here. It doesn't help that I'm also behind on a language course, and given the choice between catching up on that, and decluttering: well I did my language study.

However, I did do that one hour-of-power on Sunday (i.e. 3x 15 minute stints with a 5 minute rest after each one), starting with the Display of Delight (i.e. the contents of a box of misc. small bits of plastic which I'd laid out across the now-clear mantlepiece). Elder Offspring had previously come and claimed pieces they wanted to keep, so in my hour I:

• added all the recognisably Lego / K'nex pieces to a box of same already living in a different room (Spouse's project!)
• put everything else in the bin
• finished sorting through the Bag of Miscellaneous Things I'd started working on during Saturday's effort, and sorted out two more similar bags

Results:

• a large pile of paper in the recycling bin
• a smaller pile of unrecylables in the bin
• a couple of very important documents filed in the filing cabinet
• some children's books and magazines added to existing teetering piles of same
• a number of notebooks, colouring pens added to existing teetering piles of same
• a stack of Interesting Clippings from my dad set aside to actually read
• a nice 2020 calendar and a pleasingly tactile stress-ball added to my bag to go live on my desk at work
• one small colouring book and pack of pencils to my bag as emergency child entertainment supply

(I made a point of sitting down after this with a nice drink and the pile of Interesting Clippings. My dad likes to save these things and bring them along when he visits, which is a few times a year, and I don't always read them in a timely fashion but it turns out he does have a good eye for articles that I'll find interesting and wouldn't necessarily find myself, and it was good to rediscover that. And then I put the pile in the recyling when I was done.)

I also dealt with Freecycle emails, resulting in people turning up on Monday to take away the armchair I listed, and also a bag of outgrown school uniform. Definitely the right choice to be rid of the armchair, the room feels significantly bigger already.

Next steps: there are no more Bags of Misc Things (in this room, anyway, cough), but there are multiple teetering piles and overstuffed shelves. What I need to do is start working through those the same way I did the Bags. I am full of the donwannas about this, but I can probably manage it for 15 minutes at a time.

Goals for week 2:

• contact the gardener
• hours-of-power: Sat x1, Sun x1, Wed x1

Comments

[kalloway]

Even though you didn't hit your initial goal, it sounds like you got a lot taken care of! Early in the process, it's hard to gauge time/energy/motivation/ability-to-make-rational-decisions so don't feel at all defeated if you keep having to adjust your plans these first weeks.

(Decision fatigue usually gets to me before anything else.)

[rmc28]

Decision fatigue is definitely a limiter on me, I'm pretty sure it's behind the donwannas because I can see the piles I need to look at and ugh I know I've got to go through them but it's going to be *work*.

[kalloway]

I'm hitting a lot of it even with just shuffling things around to get the bedroom closet empty. I know it'll all have to get sorted before it goes back and... NOPE. I don't even want to look at it right now. *sigh*

Hopefully some sleep will help and I'll be able to take care of the rest tomorrow.

(I think a lot of it is also "Ugh why did I keep this around?" and not wanting to think about my behavior?)

[tyger]

That's still a pretty great result for an hour and change! :D

Gonna try and use your hour-of-power thing tomorrow, see what kind of dent I can make in my disaster area! (It's currently past my ideal bedtime, so uh while I would do it right now that would be terrible for my sleep schedule regulating attempts, heh.) And you've motivated me to do a five things before bed, too, so thank you for posting! :D

[rmc28]

Yay, I'm glad to have helped! Good luck tomorrow.

[tanaqui]

Oh, that's still some impressive progress, especially how much you've been able to get done in your hour of power. (And well done on spending time catching up with the language course, too.)

With decision fatigue, I find it helps to switch frequently between different kinds of things, as well as to switch between difficult items such as books and easier items such as papers, where it's more straightforward to set a criterion like "older than X date".

[ai]

It's difficult to determine how much energy or motivation you can set aside for a day in advance. Good on you for proceeding when you could. It's impressive how much you got through in that time as well.

Armchairs can take up a lot of space, it's great that you're able to enjoy the absence of it.