Unfucked the pile of crap in front of my tv.
I thought I took a before picture of my desk, but apparently I did not. :( So here is are After pics that don’t have a before reference…..
I am going to put office supplies in plastic boxes I already have on the side of the computer screen. They are soaking right now.
All the crap from in front of my keyboard sorted out into 3 ice cube trays to be processed and assimilated into another part of the room.
Charlie car trunk update! Still unfucked and full of emergency supplies nicely organized. ;)
Oh my god the things. I cleaned all of them.
Last night I turned my bed 90° and swapped it with the tall bookshelves. This afternoon I switched my nightstand out for a medium bookshelf, and turned the nightstand into my shrine table, and stacked the wee bookshelf that used to be my shrine table with its twin. And I returned the five pairs of shoes that had been loitering in the sunroom to their proper places in my closet. Plus two loads of laundry. That little rocking chair was mine when I was in elementary school; I can still fit in it if I cant my hips diagonally a smidge.
In the sitting room I moved the TV into the corner at an angle, brought the rocking chair, the bowl chair, and the printer table forward towards it, consolidated the random boxes and bins into the back corner with the other things waiting to go into the attic, moved the exercise bike to the wall, and vacuumed and dusted everything. There’s a futon downstairs that will come up to complete the empty side of the TV area, but that was the only thing I couldn’t do by myself.
Our new vacuum is fucking amazing. I was only gonna move the TV today, but I had to vacuum the bit of carpet it would now be covering and the difference between the clean stripe and the rest of the dog hair-encrusted room was so dramatic I couldn’t just leave it like that, so I had to do the rest.
I did marathon it…an hour last night and four hours today. I have trouble keeping my momentum for these rearrangement projects otherwise. But the good news is I can maintain it going forward with 20/10s, now that it’s no longer in a horrifying state. And I feel awesome.
Over the past three weeks I’ve been buried under end-of-junior-year bs, and my habitat has seriously fallen to the wayside. I knew I had to fix it, but I’ve been putting it off in favor of sun and homework. So, I decided to have some fun with cleaning. At the end of every 20/10 I used my phone to take a panorama of my room to see how it progressed.
The last one turned out to be a bit more of a 35/10 because I couldn’t bring myself to leave my fish stranded and unfed for the sake of sticking to the 20/10. They needed a new filter.
So I had a messy apartment. Then I discovered Unfuck Your Habitat, and worked hard on it, and had a less messy apartment, and lo, it was good. Then I got pretty depressed (again) and had a messy apartment (again). I’m less depressed now, and have more free time to boot, so it’s back to unfucking. I’m trying to ease in slowly, because that way lies sustainable momentum, and also: it’s the weekend. Come on.
So I set my alarm for 20 minutes, and attacked the coffee table:
(with bonus supervisory cat!)
In less than 20 minutes, I had this:
(with a different supervising cat; apparently it was shift-change time.)
And I had enough time left on the clock to gather up something for a return to Radio Shack, put all my shoes and scarves away in the closet, throw away some junk mail, and get myself a glass of ice water as a reward for all that hard work. Yes!
I unfucked my desk. It actually only took like 5 minutes and I found $20
This is what happens when the primary cleaner in a household has spine surgery and is given doctor’s order not to do ANY lifting, bending, scrubbing, or housecleaning of any kind for 5 weeks afterward (they put a plate & screws into the bone of three of my neck vertabrae, ouch). I got the okay to start cleaning again two days ago, and have been slowly working the UfYH program since. This is my shower stall, which was scrubbed thoroughly (with a magic eraser!) just a few days before my surgery.
My husband was gone for 2 weeks during my surgery recovery because he had military orders. So this is 5 weeks of yuck on a shower stall that was only lightly used for about half of that time. Ugh, I had no idea it got that bad that fast. Thank heavens I can clean again!!!
Room Progress!
Also, I’m basically prepared for the most epic sleepover ever with all of my pillows and blankets. I’m not saying Tumblr-con in my bedroom but…
In the process of un-fucking my bedroom. I am requiring a lot of trash bags and Doctor Who to get through.
HOLY SHIT MURPHY’S OIL FUCK.
Magical.
When I saw the difference it made on the first step, I KNEW I had to take before and afters for the UFYH crew. Holy SHIT. Look at that ground-in disgustingness. these are the stairs I use to go out back and smoke. I’m usually carrying a cup of coffee when I go. Sometimes it spills.
HOLY FUCK.
Holy. Fuck.
This was ONE 20/10 btw, with a bucket of Murphy’s Oil diluted in water (they’re painted wooden steps), and like, a scrubbing brush. I felt a little like a Victorian scullery maid while I was doing it, but HOLY FUCK LOOK. LOOK AT IT.
ETA: i wasn’t going to say it, because I wasn’t sure…but starlightstorm agrees with me… I don’t think those stairs were this clean when WE MOVED IN. \o/!!!!!!!
unfucked my nightstand (again) I really need to put.things.away.every.day :/
BOOM! UfYH strikes again ~ Master closet edition.
I love my closet. It is awesome. It is a freaking room with a window and shelves and dressers and just lovely.
And I have abused and neglected it. I had not done a serious seasonal rotation/purge-out in about 5 years. So this is 1 day and one evening of 20/10s of major purgings that resulted in:
- 4 bags of clothes to donate
- 3 bags of handbags to donate
- 1 bag of hangers to donate
- 1 bag of trash
- 4 handbags to list on eBay
- 6 gazillion BPAL imps & vials to list on eBay
I feel like a rockstar.
Check out that scarf storage in the 2nd after pic — I AM A CLEVER MONKEY. 24” towel bar + 24 shower hooks = perfect scarf storage. TA DA!
Best of all is coming home, and jumping into my pjs and knowing it is super easy now to keep everything this clean and organized.
I meant to post these ages ago, but my old computer kept crashing every time I tried. Now that I have a new computer, I thought I’d go ahead and finally post them.
About a month ago or so, a couple that I know were moving and in desperate need of boxes. Offhandedly, I mentioned that we had a bunch of boxes leftover from our own move from about 3 years ago. They were very excited about the prospect of getting said boxes from us, plus I was excited about getting rid of all the ones we could. See, until then many of the boxes were just stacked in the guestroom in piles nearly 6 feet in height. It’s a room we never use, so they’d accumulated there over time as we unpacked. And it became a room that had a mess I wished to ignore.
Anyway, my friends were coming by the next evening, so I decided to just bite the bullet and dig in and break down as many of the boxes as I could. I can’t remember about many 20/10s total I did that day, but after about 5 hours of working with a few breaks here and there, I cleared out most of the room (and they got a ton of boxes off us)!
As you can see in Before Pic #1, the view walking in was almost nothing but boxes. The entire open area to the left was packed with boxes and even the bed (yes, there’s a bed buried in there!) was covered with them. In the end, it is still not finished. There is stuff still on the shelves I need to sort, some small boxes on the bed (I only gave them mostly medium to big-sized boxes, but I did sort the smaller ones left by size and organized them neatly on the bed for now) that I need to get to the curb to throw out, and the table (see After Pic #3) which has the GIANT pillow and crate on top as well as the bags of clothes for Goodwill (that has previous been underneath in front of the bed — see Before Pic #4) underneath. It’s not perfect, but it is a big improvement.
Depression for months has made tasks like this quite challenging, but I thank #unfuckyourhabitat for the daily inspiration to at least try to do things a little bit at a time.
It took quite a while, and lots of Doctor Who while I worked, but I cleaned up one of the worst parts of our (very bad) room! AND I made the bed!!!
So, January 14, 2013, my husband and I woke up in our bed to 2 inches of water everywhere in our 1000 square foot condo. One hundred and one days later, we moved back in. Our shit is still everywhere, nothing is organized anymore, and while we have floor space, we’re generally really upset and unsettled by our surroundings. For some reason, I decided yesterday was the day to take the laundry room back. (I am personally of the school of thought that the laundry room should be a nice place so that you like to spend time there. Husband, not so much. But he helped. :D)
Pictures in the galleries are before.
One 20/10 with me in the laundry room, and husband taking boxes that belong else where and unpacking them there (aka, the linen closet and the kitchen linens into the kitchen).
Second 20/10 with my husband hanging our new hanging thingie, and me cleaning off the kitchen table (not pictured).
The pink hook that currently has the pink hand broom is for my daughter’s little broom. As soon as we find it. I’m going to get a 3m sticky hook for her hand broom and dust pan.
