Last year when we had a ceiling drywall fracture over our upper hall, the painter insisted we clear the floor in its entirety before he did the repair and painted the entire ceiling. We complied. To this day our upper landing has a fully visible orange wall to wall carpet with no objects on it. I do not know where we moved the previous stuff to but I don't miss it.
Clearing the downstairs hall also comes as part of another initiative, this one more voluntary. I would like to resume having guests come for shabbos dinner once sundown arrives earlier. That means making the entire first floor suitable, as in decluttered. Clearing the Family Room is a separate initiative unrelated to entertaining anyone other than my wife and me but hall, kitchen, living room and dining room are within the guest territories. Of these, only the hall has been intractable so it gets attention.
I think it best to think of the project in zones:
- Left side
- Right Side
- Closet
- Living Room Entrance
- Corner
Other classifications are also useful, my stuff, wife's stuff, for shredding, for basement, storage containers, important papers, disposable papers. I also often classify things as paper, cloth, other. But for now zones works best. I'm not doing badly these first few weeks. The Right Side has been mostly purged. Two boxes of shredding went to the UPS store, one box to my own shredder in several aliquots. Wife's stuff isolated for transport elsewhere to remain until we or our heirs are forced to sell the house. If it hasn't been touched for years in a visible location it can remain untouched in a less trafficked location. Having purged the laundry room last year, I should be able to relocate two boxes of milchig containers that don't get used but will become suddenly essential as soon as they get moved to our recycling bin for disposal. Some things will probably stay. I have a plastic file crate that contains hanging files, some stacking rectangles for visibly attractive storage, a strong box for important papers. It won't be empty like the upper hall, but visibly attractive. Very doable and I'm committed to doing it.
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