cleaning

Summer De-Cluttering

I wrote this last Saturday. I’m slowly but surely growing out of my former hoarder-self and learning to love de-cluttering.

Yesterday, despite my exhaustion from the hackathon, I came home from a grueling vinyasa class on Saturday morning and started getting rid of things that were needlessly taking up space.

Technically, I’d started on Friday night. I had a couple of boxes filled with papers and news clippings tchotchke crap. I pared it down to one box after throwing out 10 years worth of pay stubs (are you sure I won’t need these again??) and class registration forms, among other things.

Saturday morning was for going through the two baskets filled with tote bags and the two baskets filled with purses that I had and got ride of one basket worth of each. I had, literally, 60 tote bags. Who needs that many? I also got rid of about 40 hangers.

There’s also the scanner/printer combo thing that’s been sitting on the floor in my bedroom unused since I moved in and I think I’m finally ready to let it go. Who prints anything at home anymore? That’s what office printers are for, right? That will free up some floor space to buy a bigger desk with more storage, so I don’t need to have any baskets filled with old paperwork. #storagespace

I should probably go through the things that are high up on shelves in my closet because I sure as hell haven’t touched those since I moved in. Piece by piece, I am whittling down the items de-cluttering my apartment. It is nice.

Brain dump ahead.

I really hate cleaning my apartment. My apartment is all of 475 square feet, and it doesn’t take very long to clean at all (half-hour?). But I hate doing it.

But the time has come where I feel like I must be regular about this whole cleaning thing. For myself, and for Playbill. I am insanely paranoid that she’s going to get worms again, or something worse, because I’m not a diligent enough cleaning lady. I changed that today.

Yesterday, after J and I had dinner and he left to watch the final NBA game, I hunkered down and spent some time cleaning my apartment. I swept, I Swiffered, I used 100 little antibacterial wipes. I dusted every shelf and surface. My TV. Under things. The bathroom. The stovetop. Cleaned the kitchen counter tops. Desktops. Dresser tops.

I cleaned it all and I hope it’s good enough. I’m going to start putting reminders on my calendar to clean once a weekend. Wish me luck.

So, I’m reading Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” and all of the hype is true. I’m even up to the part about discarding books, and I don’t want to discard them yet – yay.

Although I’m not ready to pile every single article of clothing on my bed and pick each one up and ask “does this bring me joy?”, I did decide to finally do that thing where you turn around the hangers in your closet and after 6 months you can get rid of what you haven’t worn yet (which would be obvious by the wrong-hanging hanger).

So, last night I changed all of my hangers and set a 6-month alert on my Google calendar.

In the meantime, I might go through my things and see if there’s anything I could discard. I’m sick of having a ton of clothes. I rarely go shopping nowadays and if I do, it’s to buy a pair of leggings or a sweater in a specific color.

If you’re a pack rat or a hoarder, or you sometimes have trouble finding room in your closets or on your bookshelves, buy this book now. I can’t wait to see what I haven’t worn in 6 months.