Week 2 review / plan for week 3

[rmc28]

I'm going to be out all day tomorrow, so review time is now.

Goals for last week were:

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

Actually achieved:

• I EMAILED THE GARDENER! GO ME! 10 POINTS TO HUFFLEPUFF!
  We agreed a meeting for when they're next here working for my neighbour, in a couple of weeks. TICK.
• hours-of-power Sat x1 & Sun x1, plus four bonus extras on Sun and Mon.

Sat hour-of-power was all about putting things away from

• the floor
• three separate piles of Stuff On Chairs (temptingly flat surfaces, chair seats)
• the dining table

And now all of those places are clear of Stuff. Very roughly, I spent the first 15 minutes clearing things off the floor, the second 15 sorting piles of things on chairs into piles of things with different destinations on the floor (or directly putting things away in here), and the last 15 taking everything where it needed to go and finding a way to make it fit there. I had about five minutes left on the timer when that was done, and I used it to attack the much smaller pile on the dining table. Although I then went splat, it is very nice to look around this room and see clear surfaces :-)

Sun hour-of-power was spent clearing up:

• on and under the sofa (first 15 min)
• the Christmas tree (!!! yes I know it should have come down in early Jan, it is now down and put away; better late than never.)
• 4 storage boxes, 3 completely emptied / repacked, 1 part-emptied by end of session

Outcomes:

• Rubbish into bin
• Paper, magazines & card into recycling
• Several bits of important paperwork went into my to-do pile
• A lot of books and magazines and a few toys were relocated into children's rooms
• A few books were relocated to my room
• A few bits of Lego and several instruction books were added to my spouse's Lego project area
• A number of games, puzzle books, DVDs were added to the existing shelves in this room for those things
• A few books were added to the outbound pile by the door
• A giant toy in a box that hasn't been played with in forever went into the back room in hopes of becoming more acceptable to get rid of if it's out of sight for a few months

I'm putting in the minimum effort when relocating things to make sure I don't make an obviously-worse mess in the destination. I will get around everywhere eventually, but just getting all the things of the same type together is a big start.

Bonus extra one (Sun): while reshelving books in Younger Offspring's room, I pulled out a bunch of "beginner reader" books to make room and he declared them "too babyish" so I didn't have to find somewhere else to put them. With his agreement, I spent another five minutes or so pulling out more likely candidates for his approval & adding to bags for the charity shop.

Bonus extra two (Sun/Mon): I rearranged the living room in about four hours of thinking and 15 minutes of moving furniture. I'm gonna need to do a bunch of tidying/decluttering to get the new layout working fully and I couldn't have done it without having freecycled the armchair last week. There's nowhere for the armchair to go in the new layout, and it was probably inhibiting me coming up with this solution.

Bonus extra three (Mon): I actually took two carrier bags of stuff (mostly "babyish" books) to the charity shop.

Bonus extra four (Mon): five-minute bursts.

I had a pile of paper which I was really reluctant to tackle. It had come out of a small shelf unit which had been being an end-table for the sofa and is now being a TV stand, and I knew it had a number of emotional landmines in it (e.g. conference paperwork I've never followed up on). I was skittering away from using hour-of-power on it, so went even shorter, and came up with five-minute bursts.

1. set a timer for 5 minutes
2. while it counts down, sort through pile into the usual piles for rubbish/recycling/other destinations
3. when the timer stops, stop!
4. take the time to take things to their new homes, then take a break doing something else entirely for a bit

Small doses, lots of self-care in between. It took three rounds of this to clear out the pile-o-landmines: most of it went in recycling, some important documents were filed in the filing cabinet, and a much slimmer pile that needs me to read it to make final decisions, but I can be confident has no urgency, is elsewhere in the house for me to Deal With Later.

Finally, while migrating things to the back room I photographed and listed on freecycle an outgrown child's table+chair set, and that got collected yesterday.

Goal for the coming week is hours-of-power: Sun x1, Tue x1, Thu x1. Focus is finishing that last box of papers, and then shifting my attention to the shelving units. There are four of them in here, all of them overstuffed, and the contents need both thinning and reorganising.

Comments

[adafrog]

Go team!

[rmc28]

Thanks :-)

[tanaqui]

Go you! That's some impressive success for the week. :-)

And especial congratulations on figuring out how to deal with the pile-o-landmines.

Good luck with next week's plans.

[rmc28]

Thank you. I know there are more landmines, and deciding things is work, but it already feels like a nicer place to be in.

[hooloovoo_42]

Great progress. I am envious of your determination and follow through. I need to apply some to my own living room and move things around.

[rmc28]

Aww thanks. It does help that the feedback of "this small area was a mess and now it is clear" can be quite rapid. I'm a bit worried about the shelving units because they have So. Much. Stuff. But I guess I need to keep going one small section at a time.

Rah, Huffelpuffs!

[sisterofbloomerjunior]

You've inspired me to sort through my files. :)