"Before" Project 1 -- the bedroom

My approach to this project is going to be to post a set of "before" photos along with a plan of attack for the particular area I'm cleaning. In a separate post I intend to post "after" photos along with a discussion of how the cleaning went, and any problems or observations.

To be a bit fair to myself there are extenuating circumstances for why the bedroom is in this much disarray in the photos. When my offspring were about to arrive for their recent visit, I used the bedroom as a "sweep things under the rug" area. I also stripped the beds to wash the sheets. and piled some clothing from the dryer which I unwisely decided to wash a few hours before they arrived (which didn't give me time to put them away, causing it's own set of problems). But this is where I am at the moment.

My plan of attack is to.

1. Put all the clothing away, including ironing as needed.
2. Put away all the objects which don't belong in the bedroom
3. Put away all objects which belong in the bedroom, but are out of place
4. Clean out and neaten the closets
5. Clean out and neaten the drawers
   
6. Fill bags with stuff to donate to the American Kidney Fund, and other stuff to recycle or discard.
7. Clean and vacuum (including the ceiling fan, blinds, windows, floors, and underneath the furniture).
8. Hang three framed posters my fiance and I bought years ago and which I still haven't hung (I'm going to involve her in that part of it in celebration of getting the other stuff done).

My estimated time for finishing this is one week, so my plan is to hang the posters next Sunday afternoon.

Here are the photos.

Plan of Attack

There are two problems I'm faced with at the moment:

One is that I've never really had the house thoroughly neat and clean, even when my late wife and I moved in. Soon after we moved in her health began to decline significantly, and house maintenance was not my top priority.

The second is that I have bad habits with respect to the cyclical housecleaning chores. If I do get one area under control it rapidly fills with clutter, and I don't take care of the dusting, cleanup of spills, and other constant attacks on the orderliness of the house.

Also, I can divide the solutions into a number of categories, all of which need attention, but different kinds of attention:

1. Enormous tasks. Those include cleaning out the back room and basement, which contain twenty years of accumulated junk (from my previous house and this one)
2. Big one day tasks. Mopping the floor, cleaning the carpets and other things which require rearrangement.
3. Daunting but relatively small tasks. Cleaning the refrigerator and stove, sorting through and providing some method to my clothes.
4. Short term cyclical tasks. Sweeping, counter wipe down, policing for clutter, dusting.
5. Correction of bad habits. This includes stopping myself from throwing mail on the futon, washing dishes immediately after use, cleaning and or removing my shoes when I enter the house ... and others too numerous to mention.

I'll be working out a schedule to manage the categories above, and will post it here when I've completed it.

Back on Track

This blog was a very good idea, but I never really followed through. I'm going to give it another shot.

My current motivation is that I got the living room, dining room, kitchen and bathroom at least acceptable for a visit by my son, daughter, and daughter's boyfriend. Now those three rooms are maintainable, and I want to motivate myself to avoid letting the work I've already done slide, and I want (and need) to push ahead on the project of really getting the house organized and neat.

Here are a few photos of the state of the first few rooms. As you can see I've presented a mix of areas which are in control, and areas which need further work. Most of my blog posts will be before photos, after photos, and a discussion of my mode of attack on the area I'm cleaning. I hope to make these posts fun for readers in addition to motivational for me.

Introduction to Getting My House in Order

My problem is obvious, but the solution has been elusive.

I'm 57 years old, and I've been an inveterate slob for my entire adult life.

I'm not a lazy person, and in fact one of my problems is that my schedule for any given week is almost certain to be completely out of control. I'm also not self-delusional. While I can give the reason for any enormous pile of disarray I've generated (and there have been a few situations out of my control which have contributed to the general hole I'm in) the real reason for the fact that I'm buried in clutter and debris can be summed up in one phrase:

The cumulative effects of bad habits over time.

I've made many starts at getting things in order. The most successful tactic for me has been to invite someone over with about four weeks lead time. The day of the event the house will typically be in it's best shape of the year. The problem, of course, is that my bad maintenance habits cause the general slide into disarray to begin as soon as my visitors leave the house. Instead of being a foundation upon which to build the next phase of getting things in order, the house merely became a Potemkin village, destined to slide back into chaos due some some sort of swirling field of entropy surrounding my domestic life.

So, what do I do at this point? Is the cliche "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" really true?

I don't think so, and I'm setting up this blog as a progress report on my plan for getting my house in order.

I drew inspiration from two of the posts on the excellent blog Zen Habits.

The two posts are:

7 Little Habits that can Change Your Life and How to Form Them

and

13 Things to Avoid When Changing Habits

There are significant differences in my requirements and the recommendations of those two articles. The scale of work I have to do makes this more of a large scale project than a set of incremental habit corrections. But if I'm going to actually maintain the state of my house as I get each stage of the project finished, I'm going to have to build good habits one at a time.

I'll go into much more detail as the project progresses.