unclutter | Entries tagged with project:better house 2020:living room

rmc28

Week 21

Freecycle: I successfully got rid of a futon, the old patio curtains, and the old TV, all safely no-contact collections. I find Freecycle exhausting and irritating to deal with, but all my recipients were in fact very nice, and now my house is emptier.
I moved the immediately obvious excess furniture out of the living room so it feels less cluttered.
I utterly failed to put the "charity" clothing collection outside on Monday, but on previous form, they will be round again in another week or two with another bag, and I have more than enough to fill that too.
I ordered three more curtain upgrades (the front windows in the living room, and two bedrooms) and they arrived.
I made a tentative list of gardening/weedkilling supplies (thanks for the recs last week!), but the first place I checked only had it on click+collect and we're still in self-isolation until Monday. And I ran out of time/motivation to get any further.

Plan for week 22

Upgrade the curtains, and list the old ones on Freecycle (with photos from the start, this time!)
Find somewhere to store the excess cushions that used to live on the Freecycled futon while I decide whether to Freecycle them too or not. But at least stop them taking over the sofa.
Get over my donwannas and Strim. The. Effing. Garden this weekend, while the weather is in the sweet spot of not-too-hot, not-too-wet.
Make a plan for getting weedkiller et al once I can leave the house again.

rmc28

Week 18 began Sat 13 June, and I listed out a bunch of tasks in my post of 14 June. Pleasingly, I got all but one of them done during week 18. (Yes, the one I didn't do was book courier collection.)

Week 19 (beginning Sat 20 June) I did a little garden maintenance, but the main event was the arrival of a new TV bench and (the next day) a new TV. This is not so much a declutter as an upgrade, but it really is a huge improvement.

Week 20 (beginning Sat 27 June)

I finally booked courier collection for the parcels of clothes I sorted out way back in week 9. This involved more printer-wrangling than is ideal (Zero. Zero printer-wrangling is ideal.) but the parcels are now GONE, and on their way to assorted niblings.
We got a carrier bag through the door this week for a "charity" clothing collection. These are notorious for giving only tiny fractions of profit to the charity they blazon on the collection bags; otoh none of my preferred charity shops are opening up again yet (and nor should they) and they'll be swamped with donations when they do. So I filled up the bag with a bunch of lower-value stuff from the charity-shop stashes, and set it ready to put out on Monday.
Like the TV this is not a declutter, but I have upgraded the curtains over our south-facing full-height patio doors with thermal blackout curtains. It's already more pleasant for TV watching in the daytime, and should be warmer in winter and cooler in summer.

Plan for Week 21

I had the unsettling realisation that I am nearly done with the living room. I need to move the old TV and some excess chairs out of it, and there is half a shelving unit left to sort through.

Freecycle is open again with stern warnings about socially-distancing on collection, and I have some things to list which will make space elsewhere in the house for me to move things out of the living room.

I also need to strim a lot of the garden again: the weeds have been growing enthusiastically in the last month and my little bits of maintenance haven't kept up. I need to research weedkiller options.

rmc28

I continued to do small garden tasks during weeks 15 & 16. I failed to send off the boxes of clothes from the back room, or tackle anything in the living room.

Week 17, this bit me. With 16 hours notice, I had to empty and dismantle two of the four shelving units in the room, to make space for a large heirloom bookcase (made for spouse's grandparents) which my mother-in-law discovered on moving house did not fit through any of the doors of her new home, and shipped to us instead.

( gory details of glorious success )

We are now a day into week 18, and I have just got Elder Offspring to start cleaning the heirloom bookcase, which had got quite dusty in storage and transit

Plan for the rest of week 18:

move the assorted DVDs and CDs from storage crates onto the freshly-cleaned bookcase
(and improve the organisation thereof while doing so)
move the booze back onto the higher shelves
move the jigsaws for consideration into any remaining shelves, so they can be gone through less urgently, and we can use the dining table again
fix the shelf issue with Unit 3 I spotted during my frantic delivery preparation but didn't have time to fix then
with the booze moved, I can access the shipping boxes in the back room, so actually book courier collection for them

I probably should get back into the garden, which is still not in a usable state, and the strimmed weeds are showing signs of regrowing, but I can't see that I will have time this week. Next week maybe.

rmc28

Plan for week 13 was:

continue clearing the garden
- replacement strimmer arrived Sunday of week 13, it rained all day
- some small clearance work during rest of week 13
- Sunday of week 14, actually used new strimmer in earnest, we now have about 3-inch high weeds instead of waist-high weeds
- more small clearance work a couple of times during week 14
agree with spouse what to do next
- spouse is happy for me to do what I want (subtext: he will be delighted if I can reach SUCCESS of a non-perilous outdoor space, but he has no capacity to engage with the project of getting there)
order mulch when confident of the ground being clear
- not there yet

Indoors: still no progress in the living room, but we have ordered a new TV bench which will arrive next month and agreed on a new TV to sit on it once it's here. This gives me a deadline to sort out the corner unit shelves where the TV used to sit.

Plan for week 15:

spend some time each day on the remaining clearance tasks in the garden (I still doubt I will reach the point of being Ready For Mulch this week, but I certainly won't if I do nothing)
ship the boxes of clothes to family that I sorted out last month: regrettably, it doesn't seem much safer for couriers in my country than it did a month ago, nor does it seem likely to become much safer in the next couple of months, so I think there's no point delaying them any longer
if feeling avoidant of the garden, tackle the corner unit or the Misc. Stuff above the coffee-table books

rmc28

Week 9

After managing the hour of toy sorting I detailed last week on Saturday, on Sunday I started the epic outgrown-clothes sorting project, and by plugging away a bit at a time, I finished it yesterday. I am kind of ridiculously proud of this one, and I wrote it up in detail at my own journal just to have a record. I guess the key points are:

it turned out to be bigger than I expected
I managed to organise myself so I could take breaks fairly often without losing progress
it spawned a couple of side-quests (the part where I was stacking toilet rolls in my bathroom in order to free up a packaging box was probably the silliest)
the back room is visibly tidier and more organised as a result

Week 10

I'm feeling extra-avoidant at the moment, so giving myself choices rather than hard goals. Any of the following will be progress:

work on the corner unit as detailed last week
tackle the shelves of Misc. Stuff above the coffee table books
put on gloves and long sleeves and start pulling up weeds in the garden, because the gardener isn't coming any time soon

rmc28

What week number is this anyway? Let's see:

Week 6 began Sat 21 Mar: I didn't manage to do any more than the sorting out of our medicine cabinet, already reported on.
Week 7 began Sat 28 Mar: complete write-off
Week 8 began Sat 4 Apr and finished yesterday
Week 9 began today, Sat 11 Apr

I didn't make a plan for week 8, but I did a couple of rounds of spontaneous clothing decluttering during it. ( Read more... )

Week 9: About an hour today on filtering some of the storage boxes of toys we keep in/next to one of the shelving units in the living room. ( Read more... )

Plan for the rest of week 9:

Whatever time I can manage, I am not setting any specific goals right now. The next few priorities are:

Clearing the rest of the corner unit shelves. (Partly more toys, partly devices & cables that used to be attached to the TV before I moved it back in week 2.)
Figure out what things make sense to be in that unit in the new layout, and move them there.
Tackle the outgrown-clothes piles in the back room before it gets any more chaotic: currently there are multiple piles in multiple different sizes from both children, some of which I want to go in long-term storage and most of which I want to discard, either by parcel to my niblings or to a donations bag. I can definitely stack a pile of donations bags more efficiently than the current mess.

rmc28

Plan for week 5: Hours-of-power: Sun x2 (if possible), Tue & Thu.

Actual outcome: 4+ hours on Sunday

I tackled the four shelves where sticker books, puzzle books, colouring books, pens and paper for the children are currently living, alongside (and tangled up with each other and) a number of magazine files and "coffee table books". I thought it would take me about two hours. It took over four. (With breaks every 15 minutes, and longer breaks after each hour). It was a long slog, and one that didn't have a good stopping point until the end, so definitely one to save for the weekend. I could have just put back what I'd done so far after the first hour, but it felt quite demoralising to stop the job part way.

Process and finishing point

( Read more... )

The plan now is to gently encourage offspring to work through the partly-done activity books, either to finish them or to decide they can be thrown out. Hopefully the reduced number and new layout will make it easier to pick a thing and go with it; if/when we start running low on already-started books we can go "shopping" in the box of pristine ones.

I decided to not even try to take the donation bags to the charity shop this week, given the current situation, so they are currently tucked away in the back room until further notice.

Plan for week 6:

My household is now 100% working from home and homeschooling so my free time just drastically reduced, and I definitely will only be able to work on the decluttering at weekends, probably max 2 hours.

I've already spent an hour today going through the medicine cabinet and consolidating stashes of medications from elsewhere in the house there too. I've boxed up all the out-of-date medication and put a big note on the top, and at Some Future Point they will have to go to a pharmacy for safe disposal. Oldest find was use-by sometime in 2010 (!). All the in-date medications are now boxed up separately in clear plastic boxes, in expiry date order, and I am now confident we don't need to buy anything urgently.

I will try to do another hour tomorrow, preferably in the living room.

rmc28

Plan for week 4:

* meet with the gardener
* back to the hours-of-power in the living room: if possible Tue, Wed & Thu

Actual outcome:

Gardener: we met, we've agreed a plan, he'll start work in a few weeks. Yay.

I managed one hour-of-power, on Thursday.

* I emptied the last box of mystery papers, hurrah. It went to: the filing cabinet, my to-read pile, the paper recyling, and a small pile of books set aside to review.
* I then consolidated various piles of DVDs from all the shelving units, added ones that have been watched that we definitely want to keep into our folder system (resulting in packaging going into the to bin / recycling), discovered some duplicates (oops) and added them to the charity bag, and set aside some for review.

The books/DVDs I'd set aside all belonged to the children, so I got them to make the final decision whether to keep or give away each one. (Some decisions were instant, some required attempting to read / watch as appropriate and then decide).

Result: one small bag of things for the charity shop, which I haven't yet taken, and one emptied box into which I have stashed a couple of surplus cushions.

The issue with this room remains the same: I need to go through every shelf on four units and filter out only the stuff we actually want to keep, and then hopefully we will have enough space to see how to rearrange it more sensibly. I just ... don't really want to do it, but slogging away has worked so far, I should keep it up.

Plan for week 5:

Hour-of-powers: Sun x2 (if possible), Tue & Thu.

rmc28

I was travelling to visit family Friday evening-Sunday evening so failed to check in then.

The plan for week 3 was three hours-of-power, with the focus on finishing the last box of papers, and then shifting my attention to the shelving units.

Outcome: I didn't do any of those things, but I spent the time/capacity on:

auditing our food cupboards / fridge / freezer
cooking up food near its use-by date, or to make space for more efficiently-packed food
setting up a bigger-than-usual groceries delivery and putting it all away sensibly once it arrived (with oldest stuff at the front, etc)
setting up this week's order to fill in some of the additional gaps I spotted during the previous task

I set myself a couple of rules: only get food we would buy normally, and only buy extra of things that are on special offer, as they are presumably in surplus. But now my cupboards are both tidier and fuller.

Plan for week 4:

meet with the gardener (tomorrow!)
back to the hours-of-power in the living room: if possible Tue, Wed & Thu (Friday I have a funeral to go to, so not even going to try that day)

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.

( Read more... )

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.

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.

( Read more... )

Goals for week 2: