Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Cleaning out update



I planned to organize the garage yesterday so that I could spend the rest of the week going through each room and have a place in the garage to put everything I plan to sell. I didn't go out there because it was cool and I didn't want to get cold. I shopped and cooked so just didn't ever get to it.

Today, I have gone through my closet, which is the dump place for everything that I want to hide when we have company. Well, I am going to try to sell two evening gowns that don't fit and I have held onto so that when I lose weight I can plan parties with other friends that have evening gowns and want to play dress up. I know, my husband is a Marine and gives me those looks, too. I have also gone through under my bed, my desks, and the entertainment center in my bedroom. I had planned on going through those areas today but then I kept going. I went through the coat closet and found a few that will be too small next year. It is the closet that I store extra food in on the top shelf so Iwent through all the food and checked expiration dates and organized it. I then went through all the medicine above the refrigerator. I have a bunch of Robitussin and Dimetapp that I got paid to buy and some of it expires in July or September so I only kept ones that expire later and am selling the others. I then went through the laundry room. I have extra toiletry items like toothpaste and I had too many cleaning products and am selling some of them. All the cleaning products were free after coupon/ rebates. I am selling any toothpaste that expires before December. I only have about 10 tubes now, and they all expire in December or later.

In a moment I am going to go through magazines. I recieved some trial issues of some that don't really interest me. I am going to look through the others and only keep ones that have a lot of inspiration photos that later I can pull and file. I will have to keep myself from trying to tackle that today or I will find myself spending hours pulling and sorting. Do you find yourself becoming distracted during a project? I have had to train myself to stay focused on one thing. For example, I decide to pick up all the trash, then I will put everything that goes into another room in a basket or box, then I will start organizing and cleaning shelf by shelf. By breaking down the tasks if something comes up I have not created a total mess and can easily have a stopping point. I used to go into a room and make much more of a mess cleaning and then tire about halfway through and be left with a big mess. It made me not want to start a project because I knew I wouldn't have time to finish it. I was all or nothing. It has really helped me to learn to break down the projects.

2 comments:

momstheword said...

I totally get it. I used to drag everything out of a room and like you said, it just made a big mess. Now I do a little at a time.

Except when I'm cleaning a hall closet. I will drag everything out of the closet to organize and sweep and then put it back in again.

Unknown said...

Oh well done you.

I try to organise, clean, tidy and sort out....but I end up with more mess than I started with and then get bored.

And momstheword, I do the same with our hall closet too...it needs sorting deperately....I empty, move, rearrange and then put it all back! Ooops.