Missing Stuff

One great frustration has always been losing stuff, or really misplacing it, or more frequently having my wife move my things to wherever it might fit at the moment to accommodate visitors or prepare for the cleaners.  Sometimes my fault too.  I bought a VLog kit with an Amazon honorarium, used it twice to make brief movies of my grandchildren and never saw it again.  While I own lots of shoes, a few are versatile to many situations, including gray suede chukka boots.  Very few places they could be, though not in the closet with the rest of my shoes.

Sometimes I stumble on a cache of moved stuff.  When purging my family room of clutter, I happened upon a cardboard box wedged under the edge of our oak coffee table.  I removed one item at a time.  Women's clothing.  Also a variety of my stuff.  Stationery supplies, swag taken off tables at expos, handyman stuff that I'm surprised I never had to go back to the hardware store to replace.  I found a pre-inked stamp given to me by my hospital, complete with name and degree, intended to clarify who provided a marginally legible signature.  I removed the protective plastic cover and pushed the rubber surface onto scrap paper.  Out of ink.  No surprise for an item probably not used for fifteen years.  But it's mine.

What struck me about that box was not so much its contents but how unsorted it was.  Having like things together.  There is a place where paper hole punchers go and a place where a tube of plaster filler goes.  Those homes are different.  My desk, among my most protected places, has stuff that I would use at a desk.  It does not have paintbrushes or torn wallets that I've not gotten around to discarding.  My closet has designated places for dress shirts, pullover shirts, sweaters, and long pants, the latter organized by jeans, casual pants, and dress pants.  While it does not eliminate decision fatigue the way only having khaki pants would, it saves me from a clothing hunt when I try to dress in a way appropriate to my activities.  When I need to wrap gifts, the supplies are only in two places.

I've taken to sorting rooms as recent Semi-Annual projects.  My son's bedroom last cycle, our family room this one.  These spaces are not mine.  I am not the principal user of either.  But orderliness for myself also helps the user, whether my son who has not occupied that room for 15 years or my wife who sits on the family room couch as her prime space.  Most of the stuff there is not mine to discard, but enough is to recapture what is mine.

I found the VLog Kit in a laundry basket.  Not found the suede shoes.  Handyman stuff will go to the basement.  Not sure about the best destination for Expo tchotchkes.  But none of this stuff will get assigned to a random box.

Under the Bed

Some semi-annual projects carry over.  Progress without completion in the first cycle but visions on an end point with just another six months.  Repurposing my son's bedroom to another use twenty years after he vacated it has gotten my attention.  It's a big project, though one that probably could go to completion with some professional input.  It would not be fair to call him a hoarder.  He accumulated stuff gradually over a long time.  I had tried to make his room function for him, providing him a desk, workable chair, adding shelving to his closet.  But organization never captured his attention.  My father transported my dresser, nightstand and bed when he moved south in 1988, his grandson reaching the transition from crib to bed at the time.  Now I find myself not only with the furniture but a cluttered floor.  Over six months I hacked away at surfaces.  Thrift agencies got generous donations of clothing, though I separated things my son might find sentimental.  Those went in a drawer.  Paper got recycled.  Awards and correspondence from people and agencies important to him went into a secure case with a zipper.  Some drawers got purged.  Nothing has yet been relocated to a different part of my house, nor has anything been transported to his rather spacious home some five hours away.

His bed served as a flat surface to put things as I worked.  Eventually, though, that would become the centerpiece of the room, even if nobody else ever sleeps on that bed again.  Its mattress was my mattress, now 70 years old.  The mattress and box spring probably would not be sold today as too shoddy for a good night's sleep.  As a teenager, my father had to place a sheet of plywood between the mattress and box spring for support.  The bed frame had moved from its wall, needing to be repositioned.  The plywood and box spring had also shifted from their best sleeping position.  And what might have come to rest beneath them challenged my imagination.

Moving everything seemed a two-person job, though perhaps a younger, more muscular he-man could have managed it.  I made a date with my wife to do this.  Mattress moved into an adjacent hall. Slight slit in my left pinkie but no splinter moving the plywood.  Box spring had a plastic coating on its upper surface, a wise addition for the two year old who slept on it.  Its lower surface had a gauze covering stapled to the wood frame, now mostly separated making the inner coils of that box spring readily visible.  They seemed intact.  That ant the plywood also took their place in the adjacent hall.  Then I removed the three supporting slats, screwed their by my father after many episodes of my childhood where they dislodged. leaving one side of the mattress and box spring to slide off the frame.

With the floor exposed, likely for the first time in 38 years, I could see what accumulated.  My son had a feather comforter.  Earlier in the project I had harvested this.  Its duvet cover removed for washing, I could see considerable feather shedding from the blanket.  After washing the cover, I inserted the comforter back in with some difficulty, not noting any torn areas that might allow feathers to escape.  The floor beneath the mattress, though, looked something like a white bird mixed with a lot of other things.  I separated the objects into three basic categories:  paper, cloth, other.  The following day, I went through the paper, recycling most, tossing some, saving the photographs, letters from dear people, greeting cards.  Textiles mostly went into the trash with a few items harvested.  I found water and soda bottles suitable for recycling, writing instruments, an obsolete disposable film camera, coins, two light bulbs, a plastic cup from a casino, and a CD Walkman that probably still works.  Some to trash, others put in a plastic bin for later sorting.

Now the vacuum.  The upright Shark worked fine, though it sucked up its share of coins hidden within the feathers.  This machine does not do edges well.  I could not find the vacuuming toools but my wife did, so I can finish the job shortly.  The bed frame now sits flush against a far wall and a side wall.  Replacing the slats, box spring, plywood, and mattress remains a two-person job.  Then install the new mattress cover, make the bed with one of several twin sets that I came across.  The feather blanket should be tossed.  I have extra pillows.  Then buy a new bedspread.  Finally, declare that surface off limits for piling stuff upon it.  I probably have twin blankets somewhere, but if not, I can buy one of fiberfill.  Better to just discard the feathers.

Some projects need an inflection point.  My son's bed, inherited from me, provides that key element of his room's restoration.  It is unlikely anyone will sleep there, as my daughter's old room has remained tidy.  It contains a much more functional mattress, though no headboard.  My son's bed in position and declared off limits for clutter, the remaining contents of the floor's surface, less that feather-shedding comforter, should organize more easily.  

Recapturing a Room

My basement has been a default repository since we moved in more than forty years ago.  When we shopped for a home, we only looked at houses with full basements.  Ours has one, with about two thirds floor space and one third crawl space.  I inherited a workbench left for me by the previous owners.  Metal shelving I installed myself.  It did not take long fill them.  The owner also left for me a partitioned room.  It had a cheap red carpet remnant, attractive wood paneling, a wall outlet, and a switch.  Despite its potential, primarily as a home office, I never used it.  Instead, the shelving vertically, the floors horizontally, and the cinder block portion of our crawl space became flat surfaces to put things.  

Returning to the basement as one of this half-year's semi-annual initiatives has brought a new perspective.  My shelves have decent stuff.  Passover dishes, pieces for entertaining that we never did in a serious way, explorations into hobbies that never took off.  Many things worth having.  We also had two children.  They have a way of developing in stages to adulthood.  Along the way, they outgrow infant cribs, car seats, clothing, and gadgets that allow them to sit at our level at the kitchen table.  Safety standards grow in parallel with their growth, so many of these items, which largely line part of the basement walls, can no longer be accepted as charitable donations.

Children produce things.  At school, they create art, write compositions, and generate reports from teachers.  These have mostly found their way into paper grocery bags, which line the crawl space ledge and that very enticing room with the fire-engine red carpet remnant.

We upgraded our house periodically.  A lovely crystal chandelier gleams as we eat Shabbos dinner in the dining room.  Its predecessor found a place on shelves under the basement stairs.  I painted walls and trim in my younger life.  Those paint cans contain hazardous waste.  There are a lot of them.  We bought new carpeting and wallpaper.  Unused portions sit in the basement.  My wife and I upgraded our mattress.  The unused one takes up a huge amount of space in that paneled nook.

My wife, children, and I all attended universities for college and advanced degrees.  We bought books.  We took notes.  We lived in apartments.  All leftovers fill our basement.  

My wife retired after a 32-year corporate career.  Boxes of her work fill the basement.

A month into the semi-annual period, I have begun sorting.  I think the best bang for effort would be to take that pre-existing room and create a pleasant nook for my wife, or at least her things and her memories.  To do this, I would need to stand the mattress upright, having already succeeded with the box spring.  Then I need a large plastic bag and a carton of significant size, maybe one used to hold k-cups.  I need a lamp to plug into the outlet, my cell phone camera, and a marker.  Children's work photographed randomly, papers recycled in the box, discards in the black plastic garbage bag.  Stuff that does not stay there, like any exercycle or my daughter's starter bicycle, get relocated to the larger basement floor for ultimate donation or landfill, perhaps even a yard sale.  Clothing washed and donated if still wearable.  Mattresses hauled away by a clean out company.  Wash it all down.  Replace the carpeting, either broadloom, tile, or area rug with underbase.  Then move the boxes with my wife's stuff around the perimeter, or buy additional shelving for the perimeter.  Add a desk and a chair.  Add lighting.   

My effort.  Her space.  Would make a Mother's Day surprise, hopefully a welcome one.  It is within my capacity.

Disposing

Some projects are just big.  Eventually my house will require selling, likely forced, likely a burden to whichever of my survivors inherits this task.  I started.  My basement has the most unselected collection, stuff that I put there, my wife put there, the kids dropped off when they moved far enough to require air travel to their homes.  I have a lot of stuff stored there, most not needed, or even desired.  To make headway, I committed one of my semi-annual projects to its clearance.  Twenty minutes, twice weekly.  I've kept to that.  One recycling bin fully loaded, though pickup occurs only biweekly.  One big box taken to the state's twice monthly free shredding service.  

Amid the clutter, mice have found cozy nooks.   For the past twenty minutes I have tackled crawl space.  The state's program collects hazardous waste twice weekly, though in different locations.  I have a lot of paint.  Oil paints collected each week, latex only twice a month, on different days than the shredding.  So now I need to sort my paint cans.  I think most are latex.  At the edge of the crawl space, I found my medical books. Some thin monographs might still be of interest despite publication fifty years ago.  The textbooks do not yet qualify as antiques.  Those go to landfill.  My class notes fill a box.  I could empty the loose leafs to recycling, and either harvest or discard the binders.  One box, infested by mice, has my wife's unopened mail from nearly a quarter century ago. I extracted every paper, saved two of personal interest, emptied the box of its rodent calling cards, and then tote the paper and its box to recycling.

At some stage I will require professional help.  Our baby stuff predates modern safety standards.  We have mattresses, deteriorating carpet remnants, old patio furniture, obsolete or otherwise unusable furnishings that the kids dropped by.  I found a tambourine, usable.  I found part of a globe, not usable.  Along the crawl space we kept the children's school collections.  Photograph a few samples, recycle the rest.

There are services that could do some, along the lines of 1-800 Got Junk.  I think I can still make progress on my own, not counting items too heavy to lift or too bulky to fit in a garbage or recycling collection bin.  One or two boxes at a time.  Eye on the calendar for the state's collection dates.  Forty minutes a week, enforced with a timer, will enable the basement to function better.

Some things really have no home.  VHS tapes fill three boxes.  I discarded the pre-recorded movies.  I do not know which tapes just have convenient TV show recordings and which are videos of my children growing up.  

My first library loan of the calendar year was a ebook, The Swedish Art of Death Cleaning.  It expressed the same premise that I figured out on my own.  Either I dispose of my stuff or my survivors will.  While clearing a basement has its roadblocks, the bulky, the sentimental, things that are not mine, the book also had sections of my cyberspace imprint.  I'd like to keep some of that, my blog, YouTubes, other imprints of me that can survive me.  It may be cyberspace clutter, but cyberspace is big.  My basement is more finite.  I simply need to be persistent and decisive, convinced of the worthiness of my effort.

Cleaning the Basement

 

Our electronic library permits four checkouts a month.  Use it or lose it for that month.  As the New Year transitioned, along with my twelve semiannual projects, I opted to merge book with project.  Ebook on decluttering.  Lots of options from the library search.  I settled on a popular one from Europe, as the incentive to include a purge of my basement lay on minimizing the need for my survivors to rent dumpsters, as the family across the street did.

A few days into reading the book, maybe a third of the way through, I am still reading pages of rationalizations for doing this.  Most I could have figured out.  How to do it comes in small quanta, but I am hoping the chapters I read in the coming week will be more explicit.

My projects are always based on SMART criteria, as is this book.

1. Specific:  A workable basement suitable as a storage area
2. Measurable:  Decided to work by the clock, forty minutes a week in one or two sessions
3. Attainable:  I don't know how many minutes are really needed or what external resources will need purchasing or hiring.  40 minutes/ wk * 25 weeks = 1000 min = 17 hours.  I guess if I hired a pro it would take about two full work days.
4. Relevant:  What I don't do will default to my survivors
5. Time-bound:  My initiatives are in six month segments

With the New Year underway, I've done my first weekly allotment.  Depending on where I start, either papers dominate or stuff dominates.  I found my first need for external help.  Old carpeting in rolls has attracted vermin.  With another person, I can lift them.  Maybe my usual trash carter will take them for an added fee.  I found bags of unsorted papers and others of semi-sorted papers.  Random sample dates.  All more than 14 years old.  I found a few keepers like my daughter's college graduation program.  Some minor harvesting, others to recycle bin.  

Financial statements in bags and boxes are long past their keep dates. Those get shredded. My county offers two days a month when they will accept two boxes per visit of papers for shredding. I need to box as I go and keep my eye on the calendar. Commercial outfits like Staples shred by the pound. What I've captured weighs a lot of pounds.

There is stuff.  I bought things for my kitchen that never left the purchase boxes.  I found a bread maker that I last used decades ago.  There is a printer not quite ancient enough for a museum but too old to function for usual home printing.  The state offers self-drop-off electronics recycling.  I expect a few trips there.  Some old floor lamps too dangerous to revive.  Old paint from the pre-Y2K era.  There is a collection system for these.  I do not know if they have a volume limit, but they collect twice a month.

There are sentimentals.  I do not think I need to retain my children's school work.  They can have their own kids and start mementos from precious young talent in their own houses.

My children each had apartments in driving range before seeking education and careers at airplane distances.  They make enough money to buy themselves better stuff than they dropped off here.  New homes for the stuff they dropped off, if possible.  Or landfill if that's the better option. Or yard sale.  Estate sale as last resort.

In the opposite corner, I have baby furniture.  Safety standards have changed considerably since their 1980s acquisition.  Landfill for those.

I don't yet have a good sense of how much clearance 17 hours of effort will produce.  Nor have I yet established a willingness to dispose of items linked to memories or what I've accomplished over a lifetime.  Swedish Method tries to reconcile these.   Still have the majority of the book left to read.

Cluttered Garage

A few years back, my wife decided she would like to keep her car in our two-car garage over the winters.  She cleared enough room on the left half to store her car.  It remains drivable with only a small need to move a few things to the opposite side each fall.  The perimeter and right half of the garage have Stuff.  Lotsa Stuff.  Some of it is very useful.  There is a ladder that will get me to the upper roof of our house, though I think I'm past the age where that can be done safely.  I used the wooden step ladder to change a bulb in the garage.  Over the years I stored my briefcases and attaché cases there.  I harvested them this spring and relocated them upstairs, finding in the process one of my fondest purchases, a leather attorney's briefcase rarely used but still with two pens in its pen holder.  It now sits next to my desk, likely to remain unused, mostly obsolete but probably with enough interior space to hold a laptop and charger.  

Over decades I bought stuff that I thought I would use.  A large whiteboard for my office, never installed, but not taking up that much space when stored vertically.  My barbecues are mostly unrestorable.  Lawnmowers are all broken except the push reel mower that takes little room on a rack.  My many bicycles have sentimental value, particularly the blue 24" Schwinn 3-speed that my grandfather bought me for my 11th birthday.  I had it restored a number of years ago.  It still rides.  The kid's bikes and my 26" 10-speed racer with the curved handlebars are better donated, though they take up little room at the perimeter of the garage.  I once bought a bicycle carrier that installs in the trunk, on the remote chance that I might like to ride in a park.  It's still in its original box.  My Schwinn will fit in the car's back seat where it seems more secure than hooked to an external car rack.

So start with the easy decluttering, maybe.  Cardboard boxes far in excess of what I can use.  Break them down, put them outside for the next recycling collection. Not as easy as it looked.  Have to get to them by moving or stepping over other things.  Many have stuff in them, from foam packing peanuts, to foam inserts that held the original contents stationary.  And big boxes have little boxes inside with no floor space added until the big box gets recycled.

I have paint cans that go with hazardous waste.  Have no idea where the many tires would find their final home.  Children's furniture. Children's books.  Athletic equipment that will never be used again.  Residual curtain rods, external shutters, trash bins from companies that no longer pick up our trash.  Nothing is really that easy to clear.

Across the street sits a king-size dumpster, the final one after two previous ones have been filled, then carted away.  Our neighbor, who I really never got to know, expired at age 95, having been widowed for ten years.  His worldly goods filled dumpsters, with the onus of clearing all that stuff falling to his surviving children.  My garage project is much less than that.  I really don't want it to default that way.

Finding Stuff

Tackling some big stuff.  Making My Space into my Man Cave.  Clearing my closets.  Making my kitchen the place that gives me joy.  Progress with all three.  It's unfathomable that when I moved into my house it had no stuff other than the stove required by law.  And when I eventually have to vacate it at end of life, somebody will have to divest of what has accumulated.  They need a head start.  

My mind is one that automatically sorts things.  Professionally, I would look at all the X-Rays, then create a block of time for consults, then another block of time to dictate reports.  Conceptual boxes.  In my physical spaces, I have real boxes.  As I took stuff off the floor to make My Space functional, I took mostly medium-sized cartons and sorted.  Not always in the wisest way.  Stuff suitable for desk work, irrespective of whether I might ever use these things, tools, bolts, stuff belonging to my wife, stuff belonging to my son.  I did similar in the bedroom.  A box for things that are mine, another for my wife, another for grooming things, another for health.  Then subcategories, which I did in My Space this week, mostly in sandwich or snack bags with resealable tops.  I had forgotten having once done this in the bedroom until I entered a box and found a plastic bag with pocket knives, another with combs.  As I go through My Space, I find similar treasures.  Things for sewing belong in the very functional three tiered sewing box I keep in the bedroom.  I found lint brushes.  More combs.  Stuff suitable for storage in one of my three travel kits.  I dedicated a box for stamps and post cards.  Another for rocks harvested at a variety of vacation sites.  More unused loose leafs than will fit into boxes.  And I have ample clear plastic bags, some large that once contained comforters or curtains, others smaller but still with snaps or zippers.  And cloth bags of all types, some of felt that housed jewelry, some canvas totes in a variety of sizes.  Harvested three more unused marble notebooks, probably costing 50 cents each at back to school sales, and packets of loose-leaf paper still in their plastic wrappers.

I had the wisdom to start with the closets, a few years ago for My Space, this past month for the bedroom.  So as I place things in boxes or clear plastic bags, all labelled, they can be assigned a rational place.  Some stuff belongs in a different room.  I think the basement is the best repository, at least for tools and hardware.

As I do this sorting, I set a timer, typically an hour, but rarely last more than half that at a single session. My ability to sort seems saturable.  And floor space is at a premium, despite the intent of maximizing it.  But slow and steady eventually transforms from progress to completion.

Sorting Paper

Paper reminds me of what I ought to be doing but too often distracts me from doing it.  I have a lot of paper.  At my desk it is manageable, a single pile to the left of my laptop, easily sorted.  In the kitchen it is more onerous.  Unsorted papers dominate the table, spill over onto the chairs and floor, come crashing down from a magnetized refrigerator clip whenever I go to use something stored atop the fridge.  It's everywhere.  It impedes anything else I might like to do there.  And unlike My Space, it is not all mine to decide unilaterally what its better location ought to be.  Yet until I tackle this, or at least make it manageable if not really completed, I will have difficulty doing other things that can only be done in the kitchen.  I will just have to allot time to do this, distracted by nothing else, setting aside everything else.

Yellow Cart

It sits behind the kitchen table.  A multitasker, a catch-all, an anchor occupying its space for decades.  Periodically it gets tidied, the next revision long overdue.  If I need first aid for kitchen mishaps, envelopes and name stickers to mail things, a few basic tools useful for kitchen repair that is where it can be found, if these can be found.  Kitchen ties, rubber bands, paper clips, pens, scotch tape, packing tape.  Pens, sticky notes, small pads to jot notes.  All there.  

There's a certain challenge to removing what should not be there to better enable access to what should.  More than two spools of tape, loose-leaf reinforcements when we don't have binders there, magazines that check in but don't check out.

I started sorting yesterday, making good progress.  Tackle the two monsters today, two organizers that don't organize.  Then decide on better homes for what should not be there.

Back Corner

From my swivel chair at my desk, I can get a 360 of My Space.  It's the one area in my house that I want for me.  It can get done to my satisfaction, though I may need some help.  I also may need to be ruthless about moving stuff that I don't really want here to another place in the house or discarding it.  I've decluttered parts before.  The file containers, though when done they are empty but from the exterior appear the same.  However, once empty, they can be refilled and the exterior will still look the same.

As I swivel in the chair, the back corner seems the zone that gives me the most accomplishment for effort.  Address this next.  Address it this week.

Sorting

My possessions have gotten the best of me.  Took a chunk of the day to make my stuff more manageable with the intent to be able to find that elusive what I need when I need it.  First, some zones.  My downstairs desk, a simple secretary style fold-up forced to fold-down.  All papers off.  Then file labels and folders.  Still some categories to go but I can use the desk.

Then the shelf behind my bed, my half of the bed.  Got a Sam Adams empty beer box, put everything in it to overflowing.  Toted it to my desk.  Separated pens, coins, medicines, things that already had a defined home someplace else.  Once done, I got a second empty k-cup box.  My stuff not yet assigned a home into Sam Adams, wife's stuff into K-cup.  Far more is mine.

Winter clothing now in vacuum bag.  Found mini-vacuum.  Unfortunately, unable to seal that bag, so it may need replacement before vacuuming.  

Harvested shoes that I will not be wearing again for a while.  Put trees in two pair.  Put the others in a laundry basket, then transfer to closet in a clear bag.

Not yet where I can really find what I need when I need it.  But a whole lot better than it was.

Too Hot

Mini heat wave.  One with humidity.  Keeps me indoors.  Checked the tomatoes in the garden yesterday.  Additional harvest can wait a few more days.  Too hot to week but I will need to do that.  Retrieved newspaper.  Will treat myself to coffee at Brew HaHa later in the morning, venturing from front door to air-conditioned car and then from cooled car to shop and back.  But mostly I'm an indoor person today.  

My Daily Task List fills nearly two columns, but only a few sub categories:  advancement of my mind and making my house more presentable or perhaps functional with a tad of personal recreation squeezed in.  Should do a little of all three, but with foggy mind, I think by the end of the day it would be more productive, and therefore more fulfilling, if I did what I could around the house.

No big irritants today, the biggest resolved yesterday.  It had been my intent to make my second beach respite, but my wife wanted to go this time but is in the middle of an acute illness.  There will be other days for the second trip.  For today, see what I can do around my house, one room per session, guided by a timer.  And some time for my mind, maybe a brush of recreation too.

Sorting My Space

This time I'm going to do it.  Pick a region.  Sort like with like.  Not nearly as easy as it sounds.  I have pens everywhere, pencils everywhere, markers in multiple locations, a bag of crayons.  And that's just stuff to mark paper.  Then there's the paper that can be marked.  Plenty of containers, some quite useful when I get around to finding homes for like with like.  Three-ring binders galore.  3x5 cards.  4x6 cards.  Some rulers that already have a home.  Some tools that are better put with other tools in the basement.  Go region by region.  Time each session.  I can do a lot in about eighteen minutes as long as I only have to do it once.  My assistants:  the Delaware Solid Waste Authority, Waste Management Inc.  Maybe later 1800-Junk too.  Like with like.  Minimize sentimentality.  When done, b'ezrat haShem, at the end of the calendar year, a significant self-reward.

Filing

It took a while.  Weeks.  Maybe even months. A few sustained sessions.  But I come to the next stage.  All my papers that got scattered in the living room or stuffed in boxes now have homes in labelled files.  Some are duplicates but that can be fixed later. Next step, ready to begin today or in the coming week, will be to take the manila folders and sort them into categories of hanging folders.  Then find file drawers for them all, keeping those needed at hand, putting the dormants into never-never land.  And all before the carpet cleaners appear to get us prepared for Pesach. 

Rejected by the Organizers

Eventually health realities will remove me from my home, leaving the house with all the inanimate objects for an heir or his designate to move out of here.  I was hoping to spare my children that onerous task by straightening up while I still can but after some effort, my heart really wasn't in it, even though I probably still have the strength.  I could work about 45 minutes on it, seeing some evidence of before and after.  I really needed to pay somebody who, for a set hourly fee, could do a more sustained effort.

With Angi's List and the like, I tried to hire cleaners.  They vacuumed, mopped, did the fridge.  They did not move stuff.  Next an organizer.  One did not call me back.  Three came to take a look.  Their orientation is mostly filling dumpsters.  Mine is creating paths so I don't get injured.  No interest on their part in doing something hard, or maybe even less familiar than their usual recommendations for discarding.

Looks like either I will have to do as much as I can myself.  My descendants and their hired agents can do the rest in my absence.

Could Use Some Assistance

 

Even the housecleaners don't want to clean my house.  Since cleaning ladies of my mother's era have given way to cleaning teams, they have workers comp but don't want to take a chance using it.  Fortunately, where there's a market, somebody will fill it at the right price.  People want to or have to move, downsize, get ship off to Skilled Nursing Facilities, and depart this world without their stuff that somebody else has to cart off so the survivors can inherit a house of larger financial value.  And then there are that minority like me who have no intention of maximizing sale price but just want to live in the same house in a better way.

Cleaners abound on Angi's List and other sites that match contractors to home needs.  Organizers don't, but I seem to have latched onto somebody willing and at a price that I expected.  We begin next month.

Clearing the Hall

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:

1. Left side
2. Right Side
3. Closet
4. Living Room Entrance
5. 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.

Kitchen Surfaces

With Ezrat HaShem and some personal commitment, this will be the week that I create fully functional surfaces in my kitchen to make the rest of my kitchen functional.  I have an orderly plan, already started, with multiple zones to be done in sequence.  It makes sense this time to follow classic decluttering principles, handling each object not more than once if possible.  Boxes for Put Away, Throw Away, Recycle, Give Away, It Goes Someplace Else should make this more straightforward.  Interestingly, as I create zones, only four require a lot of decisions on placement of excess objects.  All will be cleaned.  It's important not to rearrange clutter though, something that has undermined other similar initiatives.  This time do it and do it properly and try to only do it once.

Recapturing Bedroom Space

One of the tenets of favorable sleep hygiene is to restrict what you do in the bedroom and when you do it.  I have been working on this for a few months with gratifying outcome, though incomplete outcome.  There are now set get up times, which I follow and lights out times which I follow too.  Sleep cycles come in predictable periodicity, though mine conclude with a period of wakefulness before transitioning to the next cycle.  The experts say that when that happens, I should set a deadline for falling back asleep into the next cycle but go to a different place if still awake by that deadline.  I've not been doing that, but eventually the next cycle takes over.  And I feel better.

Master suites that realtors show customers or appear in those dream house photos offer a lot more to a bedroom than a place to sleep.  For many it emerges as their sanctuary, with electronics, sitting areas, usually with a bathroom alcove offering sensory luxury, storage space which offers access to the things you want and hiding to the things you don't.  My own bedroom has never developed its potential, and the sleep hygiene experts seem to be hinting that maybe it shouldn't.  Yet I set myself a mission of at least making that space more visually attractive and conducive to other activities.  Clutter has to go.  I've worked on it with some success.  Several years ago I bought a leather recliner, inexpensive but comfortable that too often becomes one more flat surface to put things.  Yesterday, I set a very tangible goal of removing those things, putting myself in the chair, allowing it to swivel, and ultimately reclining.  It felt good.  I could have read but didn't, though the intent was to not read in bed, which I did, but at least the book was worth reading.  I recaptured some floor.  Not all of it but some.  Vacuuming by end of week.

The daunting project may be the windows.  One has been stuck for years, should be repaired but maybe not worth the effort.  Temperature control has been solved with a window air conditioner that not only offers a refreshing breeze in cool months but white noise suitable for sleep, which is the purpose of that room.  For some reason, the duct work of the house does not bring central climate control to the master suite very well, so I purchased an attractive space heater which needs to be moved from its storage corner to its prominent and functional fall and winter location.  That corner can be occupied by an attractive storage bin, currently used for extra hangers, suitable for now but not the best option.  I am also committed to replacing the curtains.  Joann Fabrics not very helpful as what I need is the tailoring more than the choice of materials.  Lined curtains, hemmed all around, matching valance, suitable for the adequate rods already present.  Choice of fabric is almost an afterthought.  I could see what might be available online if I don't make reasonable progress locally.

And there is the closet.  Any realtor showing our house would point to the master bedroom walk-in closet.  Unfortunately walk-in implies open floor space which has been co-opted by a where it fits at the moment ethos.  To be recaptured.  I started decluttering the closet in the Marie Kondo mode, doing great on suits and sportscoats.  A lot of dress shirts don't really fit if I have to button the collar for a tie, will get me by sans tie.  They now cost a lot of money to launder, so I should dispose of some.  The Kondo Method requires all to come out at once, select for discard at once, before moving on.  Not worth it for what I need to do with the closet to bring my bedroom to fully functional and mostly restful.  

While it is my bedroom, it is really only half my bedroom.  Not being disruptive remains a priority, though one often in conflict with acting with the end in mind.  But there's still plenty I can do without generating anyone else's wrath.  Those are the things to pursue.

My Kitchen Table

My kitchen depends on flat surfaces.  Around the perimeter:  a microwave which the instructions say not to pile things upon but shelves beneath, a plastic file cabinet, a wire cabinet, a rolling wooden island, counters in an L-formation, our refrigerator's top, a wooden cabinet in a nook, and a yellow metal rolling cart.  Moving inward, we have a kitchen table, four dining chairs and one other chair.  And that's only the visible flat surfaces, not counting the floor.  Cabinet and pantry space further expand where we can put things.  And we have a lot of things to put.  These past few months I've exerted some effort to claiming the island and the counters with some success.  Inroads to controlling the table have proven more intractable.

On many occasions I have tried to recapture control of the kitchen table.  Contents of the flat surface can easily be separated:  my things, wife's things, paper, not paper.  Paper tends to be overwhelming and the project fails.  It fails repetitively.  For now, though, I have my paper in two semi-neat piles and my not paper isolated to two other segments so by setting this as a priority, with the added incentive of being able to use the table for its intended eating purpose, I may get done, but it really has to be a priority.  I tend to do my priorities.