Baseline Photos

To help simplify later review, I combined all of the small initial posts of the house into one long post. There's no new pictures or commentary here. You can also see these at: http://picasaweb.google.com/clutterwiley. These are the same pictures as showing in the "before" slideshow in the sidebar.
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As promised, I went throughout the house and took pictures. Also as promised, I made no improvements or alterations at all even leaving some simple piles from laundry and unpacking a suitcase.

The rest of the house will follow in simultaneous posts to follow. I anticipate this being the only time that I cover the whole place, but I thought it was important to go ahead and show the whole place even though it's a fair number of pictures so that I have a baseline to show for each project.

These four shots are:

The "pantry". We actually don't have a normal pantry. This set of deep cabinets is used as such. (I didn't bother to take pictures of ALL the cabinets, but I'll try to take pictures of them before starting any pertinent project).


The refrigerator. Main reason for showing is the clutter on top. I abstained from opening it, but lets just presume it's not so great.
The island. Not too bad on top at the moment. A bit crazy inside. THere are doors on both sides, so tends to get a bit insane.






The sink, dishwasher area is crazy with T-man's things as you can see.





That more or less does the kitchen. Just note that every cabinet is loaded and that fridge and pantry haven't been overhauled since we got the fridge more than a year ago.

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Eek. As you can see, T-man's freedom to play is currently severely hampered by the fact that there's so much stuff everywhere. We just can't let him play because there's too much stuff and possible dangers. He votes for losing some clutter.

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So, these pictures represent an area I'm calling midspace (that's mid between the kitchen, the living room, the stairs and the garage.Breakfast room is generally just a flat space for dropping. The bar is even more so. That organizational alcove thing is fantastic, but is currently so cluttered that it's not very useful.

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As you can see, the laundry room is currently sadly lacking in utility.
The dining room isn't in too bad a shape, but has a tendency to be the place where things to be donated accumulate with no future action seeming apparent.
The entryway is just another place where there is flat space and things have a magic ability to accumulate. These two parties wouldn't be an issue since they are sorted and from unpacking IF they'd been put away immediately after rather than sitting there for almost a week.

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Not too bad, but that's just in comparison to a hideous nightmare :-).

Actually, there's some good structures and organizational elements here. It does need elimination of some serious clutter, some assigning of homes to items and perhaps some added elements to have more type C and D storage in the garage.




Note: still room for a 7-seater car at least :-)

(ps: the deep freeze also should be organized)

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Front door is mainly here for a contrast. Nothing startlingly wrong, but not that warm and fuzzy a greeting.
There's a flat rail at the top of the stairs on a divider between the hall going to the office and the stairs. As you can see, it's another location that has falled prey to the tendency of flat spots to accumulate junk.





This is the top of the cabinets at the back of the landing. Also symptomatic of lack of follow-through and seizing any flat spot.

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Umm.... eek.

While every other space in the house has been organized at one point, this room has never been so in the time we moved into the house. Not only that, but I gave up on it within months of moving into the house (i.e. before T-man was born).


With our move towards laptops, this could definitely be improved. Also by eliminating unneeded textbooks.









The closet currently is a mishmosh including holiday items, gift wrap and office supplies. This is one area that a serious improvement could be achieved with relatively little work.

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Tends to be a dumping grounds. At the moment there is no room in the closet for guests to put anything.

Also, there is no drawer or shelf space at all for them to organize their things.

The bookcase is actually not as organized as it appears either.

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In good news, the bath is already subsantially improved. I took just six minutes and it made a startling difference. Keep it up?

(Note: there are actually two sinks in the bathroom. You just can't see the second one for the junk.)

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One of the things that quickly obvious is the master is quite lacking in closet space. A long term plan is to turn this bonus room into a closet, but for now there are other simple, free improvements that should be made.

Laundry was one of the areas that was most obvious when I quit prior to the exam.

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evidence of the aforementioned problem.

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And to finish this tour, the baster bath. In addition to the jacuzzi, there is also a shower which I somehow didn't get a picture of.