So, it was the day after Fall Finals, and after ten or eleven long weeks of ignoring the beast of my room, I finally allowed myself to sort of face the collective mess and just reality in general:
My room wasn’t just a sty, my room was completely and totally fucked.
There’s a lot of pictures coming, so I’ve put the rest of the story and the fucked-room evidence under a fancy little cut.
Unfucked the Laundry/school room! My siblings and I were homeschooled and this room was our main learning area. It was recently consumed by the laundry beast. A lot of loads were washed recently but very little was folded and put away.
This was the result after three 20/10s, and a mini non-laundry related anxiety break.
Fuck yeah. Unfucked. Every item was either put away by me or given to its owner (parents clothes are stacked neatly on their dresser to be put away when they get home and brothers clothes are now invading his room)
There’s one last load of towels in the wash right now and they will be moved to the dryer right before bed.
Befores and afters of my bedroom. The rest of the house is awesome, too, but this room was so bad to begin with. It’s kind of the dumping ground for whenever I tidy the rest of the house. Laundry is my kryptonite. I wash it and hang it out and bring it in, but then it sits in the basket. sometimes i’ll get enthused and put my stuff away, chucking my kid’s clothes into the spare basket “to put away later”, but it never gets finished. The impetus for this massive clean is an upcoming inspection, and i decided to shampoo the carpets. so i needed everything off the floor. My boy has daycare only on monday, AND I woke up with some nasty gastro business. I spent the whole day sick as fuck and shampooing that damn floor. then we stayed at mum’s so the floor could dry (with a lot of furniture on our beds, lol.)
Wow, today was interesting. I came home to my mom’s house because the term is over and it had been a while since i was last home. I decided to tackle the laundry room, since it was pretty disgusting and I can guarantee that it was not a healthy environment for anyone: especially the cats who eat in there. I couldn’t bring myself to do a load of laundry last time I was home, so I just know it was time to make a move.
BOY was I surprised with what I found.
- 14 expired 2-liters of soda
- tons of near-empty laundry/cleaning supply containers
- 20+ boxes of lightbulbs on top of the shelf, and hardly any in the “light bulb box”
- and the creme de la creme: under the washer and dryer was a build-up of dust and lint and just…. shit that had been collecting for what I discovered to be at least 21 years. my mom said she can’t remember if she’d ever cleaned under there, and I’ve never seen her do it either.
So what I did was:
- get rid of all the bottles of soda: dumped down the drain, but the containers were saved for recycling
- combined laundry detergent containers and got rid of a few extra bottles and organized all the ones left over. I wish I could have pared down them some more, but I was worried about mixing chemicals.
- condensed the lightbulb collection, organized it, and put it in the box. also I organized all the shelving and cleaned it up.
- attacked the shit out of the lint build up. hot water with soap, rubber gloves, and a spatula to scrape it off the ground. I found at least a dollar in loose change, like 6 pens, a tube of chapstick, and other random stuff among the debris.
I think I was pretty successful, since I wasn’t even planning on tackling this today when I got home..
I think I may have finally figured out how to unfuck the laundry. We have six people in this house; that usually means that I have dirty laundry in piles throughout my house. I can never seem to get it under control.
This week I started trying to get a handle on the laundry, and it seems to be working. I try to wash and dry at least one load of laundry a day, two if I can. Each child has their own laundry basket. Clean clothes are sorted into the appropriate basket, and when it’s full (usually after one or two loads) everyone is responsible for putting away the clothes in their basket. (Little ones get help.)
This method seems to be working. I can actually see a point in the future where I will have the laundry under control enough that one or two loads a day keeps it done, without piling up.
onthewing Asks:
unfuckyourhabitat Said:
Do one load of necessary things. Set a timer so you know to go put stuff in the dryer. Once it’s done in the dryer, PUT IT AWAY.
Then get to work on your floordrobe. Use your timer to remind you not to neglect the laundry.
I get so many feels when I do a closet purge.
First, there’s accomplishment, since I’ve just streamlined my wardrobe and pruned those things I no longer use regularly, and I’m holding to the principle of responsible reuse by donating them to Goodwill (or the winter clothes drive running at my office this week).
Then, there’s embarrassment, because I have so many things that even when I give away a whole box of them (see above), I still have a full, functioning wardrobe.
There’s also that neat feeling when I rediscover something that had slipped my mind and it’s something I’ll be able to put to good use (why, hello there, scarves that got tucked away into forgotten corners! I’m so happy to see you!).
And finally, there’s a part of me that feels like I ought to pare my wardrobe down to a few pairs of pants that fit really well and a week’s worth of black t-shirts, and just be done with it. Get things tailored, keep the jackets, accessories, and shoes, and NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT WHAT I’LL WEAR IN THE MORNING.
One of these days I might even do that.
Mostly, I’m glad I’ll be able to relieve myself of things I don’t really wear. I think we all have the best intentions when purchasing a garment, but sometimes those intentions just don’t turn into action or use. I find frequent smallish purges to be helpful in keeping things organized and functional; tonight it was shirts, gloves/scarves, and socks/tights/undergarments. A few months ago I did a pretty serious shoe purge. One of these days I need to delve into sweaters and jackets. It’s helpful to me never to let any one section of my closet go unpurged for too long.
But, whatever: wardrobe = mostly unfucked. At least until it’s time to do the next purge.
So the Invisible Corner in our house is actually an Invisible Room — the laundry. It’s such an invisible room that I took a before photo of the bit I thought I was tackling:
and it was only after I started that I found two whole other areas (under the laundry trough to the right, and on top of the freezer to the left) that needed unfucking too.
And, okay, it doesn’t look like much in the photo, but all that crap had been there for most of the nine months we’ve lived here. I had no idea what was in the green bag (ancient, dead cleaning supplies and a random box, all BINNED). And there was an amazing amount of soap scum under it all. *cough*
Invisible
RoomCorner Unfucked! \o/
departingrochester Asks:
unfuckyourhabitat Said:
You want to avoid getting hotspots. I use the timed dry function, set it for 20 minutes, take the comforter out, shake and fluff it up, put back in, and repeat until dry. Cue 20 people telling you to throw clean tennis balls in there too, but if you’re taking it out at short intervals, that’s unnecessary. Also, who has clean tennis balls hanging around?
ETA: The whole point about the tennis balls was that if you’re taking the comforter out and fluffing and rearranging it, they’re unnecessary. As in, you don’t need them. And continuous heat, even with magic dryer balls, can still cause hotspots and scorch your comforter.
sir-yessir Asks:
unfuckyourhabitat Said:
Not really. Your best bet is to catch it before the dryer, and run it through a rinse/spin cycle with a cup of vinegar where you’d normally use liquid fabric softener. If it’s been through the dryer, you can air it out, in direct sunlight if you can, but it’ll still probably be a little musty. And most other methods will likely just mask the funk.
unfuckyourhabitat Said:
I roll ‘em. Takes up less room.
adanakina Asks:
unfuckyourhabitat Said:
For clean laundry by hand you need the following: water, agitation, soap, a rinse, and drying.
I’m not going to sugarcoat things here: without handwashing “tools” (an agitator, a washboard, a wringer), doing laundry by hand sucks. Even with those things, it’s kind of a pain in the ass at best. If you have a laundromat near you, it may be more cost- and time-effective to machine wash things there and hang them to dry at home.
BUT, if you want to hand wash your stuff, here’s how I’d do it.Fill your bathtub with hot or warm water. Add laundry detergent. Add your laundry. Let soak for 15 minutes or so. If any items have stains or very dirty spots, use a scrub brush to clean. Agitate the laundry (use a mop handle or something similar) for about 5 minutes. Drain the water and refill the tub with fresh water. Let soak another 15 minutes or so. Drain the tub again. One item at a time, wring out as much water as possible (wring for longer than you think you should) and hang dry or bring to the dryer, if those work.
Reblogging for people who missed it the first time around.
I’ve had a few people ask how to vertically fold their T-shirts so that more fit in the drawer and you don’t have to pull out a whole stack to find one shirt. I’ve put together a truly crappy picture tutorial to try to demonstrate. (Please keep in mind that photography is not my strong suit. Obviously.)
First, lay the T-shirt with the printed side down:
Then, fold one side in toward the middle:
Repeat on the other side:
Fold the bottom third of the shirt up, usually to right below where the arms are:
Fold the bottom up again:
This is what it looks like when flipped over (from the front):
And this is what a stack of them in a drawer (or an Ikea storage box) looks like:
Achievement unlocked: Vertical Stacking!
I saw this on UfyH and totally had to try. It’s one of those things that, once I start on it, I wonder why I ever did it differently (stacking horizontal layers one then must dig through and mess up the drawer). Why is that even considered the default?
These are just my sports drawer and my shirt drawer I quickly vertically-stacked just now.
In any case, there’s always room for improvement. Will continue to vertically-stack all the clothes drawers the next laundry day and when I bring out the clothes for autumn…
delores-mulva asked you:
I’ve conquered Clothes Mountain and put everything away. My hamper is filling up but I’m holding back on doing laundry because I have no room in my closet or dresser to put the clean clothes away. That sounds like a terrible excuse, but that’s my situation. I need to get rid of old things but I have a really, really hard time deciding what to get rid of. It would be nice if I could reduce shit by 30%. I’m almost ready to just toss every third thing I pick up. Any tips?
calvercraft asked you:
Dear UFYH, what’s the best way to cut down the size of your wardrobe? I have literally over 30 dresses, I’m too scared to count my other clothes but I’m lucky if I wear a dress more than once a week. My clothes overflow a 4-drawer dresser AND a bookshelf, and let’s not even get into the ones hanging up. My shoes pile up on the shelf in the top of my closet, and fall down on my head when I try to get them down. The biggest problem? I LOVE EVERY PIECE! HELP
You guys either need to get more storage, or get merciless. Lots of people will tell you to try that “turn the hanger backwards” trick and get rid of everything you haven’t worn, but that requires a lot of time. You know what you wear and what you don’t. My cut-off is generally two seasons. If I haven’t worn a summer dress in two summers, it’s not really in the rotation and it’s just taking up space and needs to be culled. Anything that doesn’t fit right, gone.
Neither of you mentioned it, but I’ll address one thing: lots of people don’t like doing this because it reminds them of how much money they spent on those things they’re getting rid of. Here’s the thing: the money’s already spent. You’re not getting it back (unless you can consign stuff, but even that’s just a fraction). By sitting in your closet taking up space, these items aren’t giving you their money’s worth anyway. Start fresh and be more conscious of what you’re buying and why.
