A Sorted Mess, Sort Of

Know who still hasn't fully/officially unpacked (i.e. put stuff away properly) yet since she got back to the states at the start of February? Yours truly. Know why? I'm not gonna lie, I am HORRIBLE at unpacking. Know why? I hate cleaning. I have done it for a living in the past, and that's fine just fine, 'cause at like $25 an hour I'll wash your bathroom floor with a roll of Bounty, and a spray bottle of whatever you like. Hell, I'll even fold your toilet paper into a lil' triangle so you can feel all fancy next time you pee. But doing it at my own house? For free? Ugh.

I realize I should find satisfaction in a job well done, but... no. Just no. It sucks.

I have a housemate that is USELESS when it comes to cleaning. Love him I do, I really do, he's a GREAT guy and I couldn't ask for a better housemate. Wait, that's a lie. I could ask for an identical person to him, only with the ability to clean....or at least use the vacuum more than once every lunar eclipse. The 130 lb beast is HIS dog after all... how come I clean up the dog fur? Answer: he just doesn't notice it or care. I, on the other hand, am so beyond embarrassed when someone comes over and sees my house a total mess. Which is like pretty much almost always. I do go through stages where I am totally on top of things and keep the place spotless, but... that stage hasn't been here for a while.

You see, this is a tiny little house, and there is A LOT of crap in here. I am totally guilty of not throwing things away that just need to go. It's not like I grew up in abject poverty and am now hoarding all sorts of things just in case. No, I hold onto things for really retarded reasons:

• It might come back into style/fashion (it has happened, but that's because I hang onto things for THAT long.)
• My house will magically grow another story or wing
• Monty Hall might show up for an on location filming of Let's Make A Deal and I need to be prepared.
• War could start and I'll totally need these 8 different 1/2 used bottles of shampoo.
• I feel guilty bringing a small bag of stuff to the thrift shop, so I'm holding out till I have enough to make that .25 mile trip waaay worth it
• I don't want to be wasteful, so I shouldn't throw it out
• Someone gave it to me and I feel bad about getting rid of it
• Fear that as soon as it's gone I'll regret it

Yeah, I can justify, or try to, but the bottom line is... this shit needs to go. For the past week I have been staring at my closet/clothes and knowing I need to go through them all and start gettin' ruthless. Problem? I actually wear like 99% of my clothes. I really do. Sure there are some things that haven't seen the light of day in years, but you know what? When I find them I usually get really excited and feel like I just went on a shopping spree.

"wife beater"

Today I started in on my clothes... and after realizing that I have more clothes than a rock star (none of them rock star worthy mind you, 'cept for one or two awesome pairs of boots), I realized I needed to play the "have I worn this in the last 12 months?" game. Obviously seasonal stuff gets taken into consideration... but after folding, and putting away, no less than 36 "wife beaters" in every damn color you could think of... plus a zillion in white and black, I knew I had a long day ahead of me....

this would be the armoire that holds my t shirts... and those first three rows are just "wife beaters"... and I took this picture 1/4 of the way through the folding/putting away process...

Eventually I got sick of folding clothes. People that work at the freakin' Gap fold less clothes than I was plowing through today... and I still have a long way to go. So you know what I did? I switched to organizing jewelry. I don't know if you ever saw that post I put up ages ago when I thought I had found the perfect way to store it before, but it turns out that other than the egg carton (which was totally a fantastic idea!) the other stuff was a pain in the ass to go through when looking for jewelry.

I had moved a table into my room a while back that I decided today needed to be multipurpose... and now it would hold massive amounts of makeup (I'm bananas for makeup, even though I wear the same 4 or 5 things daily) AND jewelry...

I realize it's not all awesome and organized yet, but I'm getting there!

Yeah, so... the majority of necklaces are hanging, untangled... and I am now wondering if I might be crazy since I know for a fact I purchased at least 2 necklaces this past winter. Seriously? I really don't need more.

So there I stood, all proud of myself for gettin' one half of my room fairly organized... I was pleased as punch... till I spun around to see the rest of the disaster that needed to be attended to....

I know... I know.....

Don't even get me started on the state of my closet....

scary, ain't it? (that's a tube top BTW, not a massive pr of granny panties hangin' there on the left, promise.)

Hey, at least I folded the sweaters on the top shelf.

Maybe I should just take down the crap hanging on my wall? I don't really need to see "Dolly The Inflatable Sheep" each time I wake up, do I? (YES! I TOTALLY DO! That shit is hysterical!)... or the random pieces of paper that are left over from that time I was on Jury Duty and doodled to my hearts content? Yeah, I should probably take that down, but those are some quality doodles!... What about the random sketches from my friend David that afternoon at a cafe when we sat there laughing and talking about the kinds of things that close friends talk about? Naaa... that's staying up too. It's a happy memory. The drawing of "Stewie" that my friend Brian gave me one year as a Christmas gift because he said he couldn't afford to buy anything, so he was drawing stuff for people? Keepin' it! The random dishtowel from Scotland that cracks me up? Staying. In fact all those lil' odds and ends can stay right where they are till the day finally comes that I get around to painting my bedroom. Anything other than that green will do. That color always makes me look like I'm about to vomit. I'm thinking a light ecru so I can frame & hang this bad ass 6' tall Steve McQueen movie poster I have. THOUGH, as much as I enjoy referring to them as "organic Halloween decorations grown in advance"... all the spiderwebs on the popcorn ceiling have got.to.go. (BTW, who's the asshat that invented popcorn ceilings? That dick needs to be punched in the throat, for real.)

 Anyway.. yeah... so the room is like HALF clean. I even started picking up the little random bits of flotsam and jetsam. You know, tiny bits of paper etc. I found the cap to lint brush long since used up and decided it would make the perfect catchall for the wee bits of whateverness...

 

.... and as I was moving around the rug, and feeling like I was getting nowhere, I noticed that some things I had just thrown in that cap were back on the floor.... then I noticed why I wasn't gettin' anywhere....

Yup. Big hole in the bottom. Sometimes I'm so smart it hurts. I'm a big ol' bucket of win.

I'm not the only one that finds cleaning house, or even just a bedroom, to be literally mind numbing (to the point that mine clearly doesn't function right) am I?

It's Not Trash If It Holds Your Treasures

I'm still on an organizational spree, and today I started in on random drawers. I kept coming across multiple drawers and boxes of jewelry and realized I needed to organize things. Random unmatched earrings, twisted necklaces, and bracelets all jumbled together was just not workin' for me.

So.. I grabbed handfuls of the stuff, lay out a white tablecloth on the floor in the living room where there was some good lighting, and began to untangle, pair up, & polish. The trick in the end was HOW was I going to keep this stuff organized?!

The first group to be sorted were the rings...

Next came the bracelets...

then ... oh  man, this took FOREVER!! ... the earrings...

Eventually I made it through a ton of necklaces. I don't think I have seen that many knots... EVER...

Then....I cleared off the cloth and did it again...

In the end, everything was put in a proper place... and all it took was one clear plastic egg carton (obviously quite a few pairs of earrings are rooming with others... an empty paper towel holder, and a shoe box with each necklace individually packaged in a ziplock bag. NO MORE TANGLES!

It was a nice waste of two or so hours... and in the end, a large chunk of my jewelry got polished and put away... PLUS... the next time I see a piece of jewelry I want, I WILL just say NO! 

How the hell did I amass so much anyway?! Sadly, this wasn't even half of it....I'm gonna have to eat more eggs.