Progress of the day. . .

Well, as you can see from the preceding posts, I took baseline pictures of the house and got them posted. This was a big thing in terms of progress.

Went through and read a fair bit of the information available throughout the clutter diet website. Two key things to think about: 1. the clutter rule of 10 and 2. work for my future self. While it may sound obvious, I really found the quotation, “hard work is often easy work that you did not do at the proper time” to be pretty compelling.

Things I have identified as needing to be done in the short time frame:

• Put together organizational toolkit including getting a label maker
• Get paul to look at systems workbook
• Spacescape the laundry room.
• Get itsdeductible set up as well as a folder for the electronic pictures.
• Generally, pick a spot and move clockwise.

Today I also worked at organizing some of the material available. One of the components of this was sticking plastic paper clip things onto the weekly assignments and knowledge base articles so I could tell their topic at a glance.

• Black – General Downstairs
• Blue – Laundry
• Pale Blue – Kitchen
• Green – Bathrooms
• Red – Bedrooms
• Hot Pink – T-man
• Salmon – Office
• Yellow – Garage
• White – Outdoors/Other
• Orange – donations
• Purple – J-dog
• Lime Green – Paper systems
• Red-Orange –
• Metallic –

What's nice about this is for each weekly assignment, I've placed the plastiklips on the first page for the subjects of each of the courses. This allows me when working in the laundry room to flip through the binder of weekly assignments and read the tips/assignments that apply to that space as well as find the pertinent knowledge base documents that I've found, printed and annotated in cases. I've started using OneNote to organize some of this as well and I think it would be good to work towards a "cheat sheet" for each space that includes information on its systems as well as my notes from the assignments and documents that apply to it. I'm not worrying about that yet, but it's definitely on my mind. I'll address the binders that I've developed in another post later.

I think both the Morning to-DEW and the SSS’s before ZZZ’s are good fits for our lifestyles and needs. We need to look at them more and turn them into true systems/routines rather than just ideas, but I see real potential here.

Another issue is with the system planning and tasks. Ideally, I think only the daily wipe-up type and the periodic deep cleaning should be handled between Paul and I, with the normal weekly cleaning to be handled by a house keeper. But this requires us identifying the housekeeper, setting things up with her, getting the house to the point that she can clean it and maintaining it in a state that she can continue cleaning.

Will we live on to fight another day? Will I find a solution for the front of the refrigerator not being magnetized? Will we find a recycling solution? Tune in again to find out.

Goals and dates:

Spacescape laundry by 6/22

Get Paul to look at Systems book by 6/25

Identify d (and c) level storage by end of June

Come up with ideas for recycling plan by July 11

Destination station by end of July

Set up organizational caddy by July 4

Come up with a laundry system (lights, darks, colors/stains) by July 18

Set up itsdeductible and picture location by August 14

The beginning. . .

So, one of the ideas laid out in the introduction "getting motivated" workbook is that if you do something four times, you've done it and are on the course to a habit. Therefore, I'm starting with the daily goal of doing at least 7.5 minutes worth of clutter diet stuff AND blogging something about the process, ideas, products, etc. each day for four days. I honestly anticipate more than 7.5 minutes of actual organization (i'm not counting prep), but my original manageable goal was 15 minutes and the workbook said to cut it in half.

I intend to come back with a fill-in post of context about what is clutterdiet as well as why I'm doing it, but for a brief intro, clutterdiet is a system designed to help you eliminate clutter and keep it off much like a diet and exercise program is designed to help you shed pounds and maintain that health. http://www.clutterdiet.com for basic info. It's actually the sister company to the organization company, http://www.livingorder.com/, that we used when we moved.

My goal is to take some pictures and get them posted in another blog tonight showing the reason why it is so incredibly necessary and important that this organization, clutter removal and cleaning occur. Basically, the house hasn't been organized or cleaned since February. I had a professional exam and made a conscious decision to just give up. Well, the big side effect of deciding to not clean is that you don't do maintenance organization. So now, I can't just hire someone to come in and get things in order because the place is such a wreck in terms of clutter, mess, dirt, trash, etc.

Unfortunately, I'm not exaggerating, but I do think I'm actually not in bad shape because I'm aware of the condition that the house is in and what it will take to get it in order as well as having the confident knowledge that we can be organized within our current space.

My deadline for myself for getting these pictures up is 2:00 pm Saturday, but I'd really like to see them up tonight.

Almost forgot: with the 4 day goal, I'm supposed to assign rewards, so here goes.
Day 1: Time to play Wii
Day 2: Movie with Paul while RH babysits
Day 3: Bath
Day 4: silly online game (frenzic, sudoku, etc.) for half hour
Big reward for succeeding across all four days: Audio book!

I think audio books might be a great route to take for rewards, because I can put them on my phone and then play them while I'm working on the next period's task thus making it more enjoyable and more likely to succeed. Maybe an audio book for each full week completed for four weeks, then one for each two weeks of success for eight weeks and then to one for each three weeks for the rest of time? Rather than standardize what "an audio book" means officially, lets just go with I need to be accountable to a degree of reasonableness.