Earlier today, this was the kids’ room at my daughter Des’ house. Right now the 7yob and 4yog share a room because Des’ family took in a friend who became homeless.
Not only do her kids have a LOT of toys, but the toys themselves have a LOT of pieces. And last night we grownups were doing stuff like talking and drinking and making food and painting kitchen cabinets while 5 kids (hers and mine, ages 4-14) played, largely unsupervised, in this room.
When we were packing up stuff to go home I said, do you want me to stay a while and help you clean the kids’ room? She said, “I don’t even know where to start.” I said, “Let’s just START.”
They need to put in a new, taller bookshelf unit, so some of that couldn’t be organized. We filled 2 large trash bags and hauled several toys out to my trunk to be dropped off at the thrift store by where I work.
But in ONE, 45-minute session, the two of us working together accomplished THIS.
(Panorama photos done using Photosynth app for iPhone)
(Day 1.1 of 2013 FMS Photo a Day challenge - “Today”)
At some point in the next few days, I will be changing the site layout. If you usually see posts from the dashboard, you won’t even notice. The current theme worked well when we were a much smaller blog, but the page is getting a little overwhelming with all of the links (that people asked for) and the pages (that people asked for) and the announcements (that people asked for). So, I’m going to try a few things and look for a theme that can hold all of that and still look clean and be easy to navigate.
Be patient during this process, if you can. Some things may not work or may look funny for a bit. And new visitors, sorry if the page looks a little messy. I’m trying to unfuck it. :)
I’ve been following Unfuck Your Habitat for a while, but hadn’t used it as an active tool so much as passive inspiration. Which is not bad as far as it goes, but there’s a leap there from “being inspired” to “actually cleaning” that I wasn’t so much making. I’d do a little bit here and a little bit there and call it “unfucking” in the privacy of my own mind, but… Well, I don’t mean to play down what effort I did make, because some is always better than none, but it wasn’t exactly a full-on unfucking initiative. I always thought the whole 20/10 thing sounded like a great approach, but couldn’t seem to ever muster the motivation for it. I’d do it another time, you know, because right now I had to go read to the kiddo/make dinner/do my nails/take a shower/knit/etc.
It’s one thing to have a genuine reason for not cleaning up things that need it. And I’ve had some of those days. Maybe I’m having a really bad depressive day and not falling asleep on the couch seems like a lot of effort all by itself. Maybe my day’s just genuinely that packed, and no, I really honestly do not have 20 minutes to spare. (Or I do, but those being my only 20 free minutes, I am sure as heck not spending them trying to pack even more into my schedule.) Maybe my knee’s having a bad flare-up and requires extra attention to how, and how much, it’s being worked. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons.
It’s another thing entirely to just avoid cleaning.
I hadn’t realized how much time I actually did have in my schedule until I started physical therapy for my knee and had to start figuring out how the hell to fit the required exercises in. After the first session, I had to carve out about ten minutes twice a day to do one set of exercises. Eventually I was to work up to three sets once a day. I had that figured out, and then at the next session the number of exercises doubled (and then some). As I was considering how to make this work, I realized that, especially on weekends, I’ve got more time than I think I do. I just have to figure out what my priorities are, and motivate myself to stick to that.
My strategy was to make myself a very detailed list of Things That Could Use Unfucking. This has the advantage of clearly defining the task as well as making it seem more manageable and less intimidating by breaking it down into bite-sized pieces. It also gives me a sort of menu—when I find myself at loose ends for a bit, I can whip out my list and pick something that I think I can do in the amount of time I’ve got.
Today’s word of the day is: “Synchronicity”.
I got out my trusty Moleskine, marked one page for each room (or area) in the house (except Housemate’s room, obviously, and the bathroom she shares with the kiddo, which she usually takes care of and isn’t really in need of any unfucking anyway because she takes much better care of it than I do the master bath), and started methodically listing every bite-sized task I could think of. The next day, the very next day, UfYH announced that she was releasing an iWhatever app. Which included such handy features as a To-Unfuck List and a 20/10 timer that, as it turns out, will auto-run when you select a To-Unfuck task and then maintain its value when you move to another task or back to the generic 20/10 timer. Also you earn stars for doing stuff. I am, as a friend once said of herself, ridiculously highly motivated by essentially meaningless rewards. THERE ARE STARS I MUST EARN THEM.
So, after a little futzing around just trying stuff out, I decided to go one room at a time. I’m starting with our walk-in closet (which really needs it) and entering all the tasks for that room into my To-Unfuck List. When all the tasks are done, the room will be unfucked, I’ll earn my pretty shiny star, and I can move on to entering all the tasks for a new room. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’ll take a while, but eventually I’ll get through the whole house (with exceptions noted above).
I did a couple of 20/10s yesterday, and discovered that it’s true. You can do way more in 20 minutes than you think you can. I had to rein myself in, because a) I knew I’d way, way overdo it if I didn’t, and b) I could feel my knee starting to complain. So motivation accomplished.
I am also easily captivated by pretty shiny electronical digital things, like new apps. I really think this one might help me stick with this longer than keeping a record with pen and paper would have. One way to find out…
- Asks have really exploded in the last few days, so it’s going to take me a little (lot) longer to reply than usual, and I’ll be replying privately more so as not to clog up people’s dashboards. Also, please consider using the shiny new Google search feature before asking a question. There’s a good chance it’s already been answered.
- I had every intention of having a Big! Exciting! Giveaway! for the app, but Tumblr is apparently cracking down on those in a pretty big way, and I can’t really chance them deleting the blog; I’m sure you understand. I’m trying to come up with an alternate, rules-friendly plan. Hang tight.
- Just as a friendly reminder: the Droid version of the app is in the works. Asking more frequently will not make it happen faster.
- Because I’m not above begging: if you have purchased the app and you like it, please consider leaving a review/rating. If you don’t think it deserves a good rating, or if you’ve found a bug, please let me know directly so I can have the chance to fix it. We are releasing an update as soon as Apple approves it with a few bug fixes, hopefully today.
- One of the things is that we’ll try to make clearer on the tutorial screen for the to-unfuck list is that the buttons at the bottom of the to-do list page are for sorting. They won’t do anything if you haven’t added any items (click the + sign where it says “click + to add more tasks to your list).
Prompted by recent criticisms, I would like to re-write some of the older posts from the archives that have been recently resurrected (including, but not limited to, the Fundamentals post) to be more inclusive and more representative of this blog as a whole and of Team UfYH as a community. That’s where you come in.
I’d like your suggestions as to how you could feel better represented, more motivated, and less disappointed by this blog. I do ask that you remain respectful, not necessarily of me, but of fellow Team UfYH members and of those who raised the criticisms in the first place. I regret that my first response was out of defensiveness and was hostile, and I want to do better.
As always, you guys are the best.
ETA: There’s a good chance I’ll get contradictory advice, so it may not be possible to incorporate everyone’s ideas. I’ll do the best I can, though.
What are your suggestions?
I’m not a stain guru. I have about ten cleaners that I use for everything, and I didn’t go to special stain college or anything. I operate more on the motivational end of things rather than the technical. Google is probably the best resource for specific stain-related questions. Someone, somewhere, has the right answer, and it’s probably on the first page of Google results. Howtocleanstuff.net is one of my favorite resources.
Also, I don’t reply to rude asks. Didn’t your mother ever teach you manners? Knock it off with the rude asks, OK?
so that I can bring you the new Frequently Used Tags page! I’m only about halfway through the archives, so there will be way more coming up as I make my way through.
I’m turning off asks for a little while (maybe just tonight) because there’s a huge backlog and I feel bad when they keep piling up and I can’t get to them right away. I’ll open them back up when I’m caught up on everything else.
Unfuck Your Habitat (unfuckyourhabitat.tumblr.com), and its associated twitter and Facebook pages are the entirety of the UfYH/Unfuck Your Habitat family. Any site or blog using the Unfuck name or claiming any type of affiliation is full of shit, and is doing so without my knowledge, consent, or permission, etc.
(Please note that I am in NO WAY referring to those of you who started tumblrs to document your own personal unfucking process, and who may use the terminology of this blog. I’m talk about blogs that are misrepresenting themselves as being under the UfYH umbrella, and who are using my content to do so.)
Some of them have very common themes, so in order to unfuck my inbox, I’ll address some of them in one mega-answer post. Here goes:
- To the nine (nine!) people who asked me to change the name of the blog to something without the word “fuck” in it: sorry. As the very first bullet point in the welcome packet explains, this is a cussing-friendly Tumblr. If this makes you uncomfortable, I’m really very sorry, but the name stays, as does the frequent cursing.
- I do not get free Magic Erasers. I do not get free anything, except the occasional migraine. I am not paid, reimbursed, or bribed for anything I say here. I’m not saying I wouldn’t TAKE free Magic Erasers, but I’d certainly disclose it if I did.
- Fans of girlunlocked: welcome! She and I have had some lovely conversations since she’s joined, and I’m happy to have her and her numerous fans and followers on board! To the two people who sent me sort of unpleasant cease-and-desist asks, though, I didn’t steal the UfYH idea from her. A quick check of my archives should show you how long this blog’s been active. ([Name, because I’m not sure if it’s a secret or not], your fans are truly loyal, and if someone ever does steal your intellectual property, it seems you can count on them to have your back!)
- “Can you do a ______ challenge?” I would love to personalize challenges for everyone, and I do have a list of things to add into the rotation, but keep in mind, you can always apply a freestyle challenge or a few 20/10s to whatever needs unfucking. Don’t use the fact that there’s not a specific Unfucking Your Alien Spaceship Classification System as an excuse not to sort your Raptors and Daedalus-classes and Birds of Prey.
- “You don’t post enough challenges/post often enough/you take too long to respond to asks.” As I mentioned above, I don’t get paid for this. So I have a full-time job, with full-time responsibilities, which is sort of how UfYH came about in the first place, because no one seemed to address how to keep your house livable if you were out of it for 10-12 hours a day. I use the queue as much as possible, and I’m going to try to make weekends a little more active, too.
- “You should…” Thank you. I’ll take it under consideration.
- If you’re struggling with depression, anxiety, or other mental illness, please take care of yourself. We have a depression tag with some relevant posts, but if you can, please enlist the help of a doctor or therapist or in-person support system, because I am none of those things, and you deserve to be healthy as best you can.
I think that’s about it. Happy unfucking, everyone!
So, today someone brought to my attention a comment on a site that I enjoy and respect very much. The comment recommended UfYH, but noted that I sometime use sexist language, and a similar comment noted that I’ve used ableist language in the past.
I try very hard to choose my words carefully, even the naughty ones, and I’m embarrassed and a little appalled that I may have used terms that offend or alienate people. If someone has noticed this and would be comfortable dropping me an ask letting me know what/where/when (I promise I won’t publish it), I’ll do whatever I can to fix it, including editing the original post. And I will refocus my efforts on making UfYH as inclusive and comfortable for everyone who chooses to read/follow me.
I sincerely apologize for not choosing my words more carefully, and for making anyone feel unwelcome or uncomfortable.
We now return to your regularly scheduled unfucking.
-PoM
Did a little bit of unfucking the kitchen. Pretty much just washed up all the dishes and cleaned up the counters and floor.
Looks awesome!
Alright, so I finally got my shit together and took pictures of my closet. It’s a walk in closet that previously I was not able to get all the way into. Piles of junk everywhere. Huge mess. Nothing that is in these photos was in the closet when I started cleaning, it was all in my room and in the way.
I packed up 4 garbage bags full of stuff and took it to the DAV and threw away a bunch of stuff and took some of it to school so other artists could use stuff that I don’t need anymore.
Then I vacuumed it!
Then I moved all my art supplies and my portfolio into it as well as all the framed pieces (a previous unfucking project that I never posted) into it! Now I’m leaving it open all the time so I never let it get as bad as it was again.
Beautiful!
