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I've had this thread bookmarked since last year; my employment situation is such that I only work during school term time, which means that after the Christmas silly season is over I have most of January before I go back to work. Plenty of cleaning time! I am a hoarder and a slob, lazy with my housework, I have three cats and a few fish tanks. I also probably have some form of depression which manifests as apathy or lack of motivation, however every time I have sought medical advice some other issue has been found which got the blame instead. Hypothyroidism, PCOS, central obesity and vitamin D deficiency. In recent times I've noticed that my partner shows some signs of being a hoarder too but he is not as disorganised as me so has been better at hiding it. I've been managing my hoarding for a few years now by not allowing myself to get "more stuff" (by being firm with the goals of any "collections" I have and recognising when the collection is complete, for example) and I've become a lot better at recognising and throwing away junk. My family tend to give me hand me down clothes though so that is getting a bit out of hand and needs to be reined in. The Kondo technique of saying goodbye to things has been really helpful for me, and so has the "carry things from the room you're in to where they're supposed to be" idea, and so far this year I have done some 20/10 clean up sessions to try and sort through my piles of unwashed laundry. I managed to get sick (possibly from the dust that got stirred up) so I have been having a break from the cleaning but I'm starting to feel better, so I am making this post as a reaffirmation that I am going to continue what I started once I recover sufficiently. Achievements so far: Bedroom furniture reorganised for less clutter Laundry/old clothes/linens partially sorted, washed, put away or thrown away, some sorted piles still need washing Laundry sink reclaimed, water filter correctly mounted on wall no longer in sink Laundry storage tidied and usable Lounge room de-cluttered and cleaned Game room table cleared and cleaned Bathroom de-cluttered and cleaned Dishes being put in washer instead of piles Cat litter trays washed and restocked with clean litter To do list Finish clothes/linen sorting/cleaning/tossing Bedroom floor cleared and clean, extra laundry basket for better laundry sorting Mirror/cabinet purchased for bathroom to be mounted Hobby room clean out, rearrange furniture, get rid of items associated with obsolete hobbies Get started on spare room House maintenance Mop floors Toilet bowl STILL BROWN WHY Actually I'm at a bit of a loss with the toilet bowl, in the very bottom of the bowl under the water it is brown no matter how long I leave bleach or vinegar on it, no matter how much scrubbing. Would baking soda + vinegar do a better job? Drain cleaner? It looks like caked on organic layers (not poop, it's kind of orangey like rusty mildew) but it's hard to tell, maybe the shiny porcelain surface was somehow damaged and it is just stained now. The toilet (like the rest of the house) is old! Having a gross looking toilet does detract from having the rest of that area clean. Actually if it is a rust stain, which is possible, is there any way to get rid of it?
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Jan 11, 2016 06:15
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Toilet bowl: buy some CLR at Home Depot, pour in and let sit, then scrub with the toilet brush. You might have to repeat the process a few times, but it worked for my toilet that had the same issues. Also great job on tackling stuff! It sounds like you've made crazy headway. I had gone through my closet a couple weeks ago and pulled out four trash bags of clothes to donate. I finished the KonMari book on Saturday, went through everything again, and filled another two and a half bags and that was *just* clothes- I still need to go through shoes and accessories. It's amazing how much better everything looks and how much easier it is to put an outfit together now!
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Jan 11, 2016 15:10
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A pumice stone can be a good last resort for stained toilet bowls. Look for the Pumie brand stone in the cleaning products area.
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Jan 11, 2016 16:36
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30 Goddamned Dicks posted:Toilet bowl: buy some CLR at Home Depot, pour in and let sit, then scrub with the toilet brush. You might have to repeat the process a few times, but it worked for my toilet that had the same issues. If that doesn't do it, try The Works. I have serious hard water stains if I don't stay on top of them. CLR didn't even scratch the surface (literally) while The Works ate through it like it wasn't even there. And it's usually about $3 per bottle.
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Jan 12, 2016 00:55
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I posted here earlier about decluttering, and a few weeks ago I got a copy of Marie Kondo's book and got some more stuff out- about four large bags of clothing, six or seven bags of fabric and yarn (to donate to a library fundraiser), some garbage, and so forth. Also one of my roommates moved out and the other roommate and I cleaned out the freezer, which was so packed with with food that putting something new in meant you just shoved it into the wall of frozen packages and hoped it would stay there. Now that there's room and I don't feel like I'm intruding on somebody else's territory, I'm actually buying and eating frozen foods. I really do still have too much stuff and it's hard to get rid of a lot of it, but I'm getting better at it. One thing that the KonMari book did was to get me to figure out what I wanted to do with my space, which is something I've never been able to do before. Being able to ask myself "Do I want this item more than I want to be able to use my room?" is really useful.
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Jan 15, 2016 23:21
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I'm about halfway through the KonMari book, but I'm struggling to take it seriously because of all the woo-woo stuff. When I did the thing about drawing a line going up to the right vs down, my heart didn't feel any lighter or beat any faster. I don't believe my clothes "transfer energy" between themselves when stored as they "desire" to be stored. I just finished the section on socks, but I don't think my socks really give a poo poo what they do in their downtime because they are socks and incapable of caring about things. I got this book because everyone raves about it, but so much of it is just cringy mysticism.
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Jan 23, 2016 20:41
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It might work for people with hoarding problems since the reasons people have for hoarding things are usually entirely irrational, ie "I can't throw away this food wrapper I have a special connection with it", or a slightly less dumb example, I can't throw away that shirt that doesn't fit me and that I'll never wear again because I remember having some good times while I was young enough to wear that shirt. I can't speak for the rest of the book but the part where you have some sincere goodbyes with some junk you've been holding on to for a long time does make it easier to end that "relationship" and throw the junk away. Use what works for you, ignore the rest.
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Jan 24, 2016 02:04
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Enfys posted:I'm about halfway through the KonMari book, but I'm struggling to take it seriously because of all the woo-woo stuff. I also let myself be selective with her advice, not just because some of it was too silly for me, but because some of it just doesn't fit with my life. For instance, I tend to forage for books and let them sit on the shelf for years before I read them, so I'm not going to junk the books I haven't read yet because it's the KonMari thing to do. I am, however, acknowledging that she has a point about not letting physical manifestations of intentions clutter up my life, so going forward I'm making sure I forage less and read more. Same with the sock folding thing, which I'm considering trying just for neatness reasons. I don't thank things before I throw them out, but I do take a moment to appreciate the place they had in my past and that I'm not doing them a disservice by realizing they have no place in my present or future. Basically, the book just wants you to appreciate what you have in your life, and that generally means discarding a bunch of other things. The book also wants you to take a mindful approach to what things you do keep around, but you don't necessarily have to do it Marie Kondo's way.
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Jan 24, 2016 02:10
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I KonMari'd! Since I know I have depression and anxiety and taking clothes to the thrift store would be a big challenge (and my family is largely unhelpful so I can't rely on them) I had to do a Nuclear KonMari and just throw everything away. To be quite honest 99% of it was in a very bad condition so I probably only would have donated one pair of jeans. One thing I noticed while cleaning is that the biggest issue for me is trying to be too frugal (I could totally use these pants someday in the future and throwing them out is wasteful!). I think I need to put that frugal part of me to good use when buying stuff, not when throwing it away. I also tried to be as aggressive as possible when throwing out stuff so I didn't really have time to thank each piece. I'm going to save that energy into thanking myself for taking this step and starting to organize my life. I started with my closet and found an absolutely baffling amount of poo poo I would never in my life wear (some of it was from middle-school and I'm 22  ). All of that ended up thrown out in four big trash bags. I also ended up throwing out two pairs of shoes and two bags. Tomorrow I'm going to vacuum/wipe the closet surfaces and then attack the pile of actually wearable clothes I store on my bed (because the closet was so full of poo poo I couldn't fit them in) and then put everything where it belongs.Room in the middle of KonMari (can't wait to get to organizing that bookshelf): 
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Jan 29, 2016 01:48
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Pieholes posted:I think I need to put that frugal part of me to good use when buying stuff, not when throwing it away. Wow, that's a really good thought. Probably needs to be etched into bronze somewhere.
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Jan 29, 2016 14:42
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Pieholes posted:I think I need to put that frugal part of me to good use when buying stuff, not when throwing it away. I was also amazed at this revelation. Thanks for having it for us! I'm going to try to apply it to my decluttering mindset going forward. I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff lately, and although I still have a long way to go before I'm done, the apartment is already noticeably more tidy! I really do feel better and more motivated in the rest of my life now that things are cleaner around here. I know part of that is that I've just been doing a lot of work lately to get rid of things, so I've built up a lot of Doing Stuff momentum, but I also feel less bogged down now that there's less clutter everywhere. An interesting side effect of the newfound order in my space is that the things that no longer belong are standing out a lot more; that, plus all of the practice I've gotten in evaluating what to keep and what to toss, has made it even easier to get rid of stuff!
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Jan 29, 2016 16:01
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Success! Still a few things to tweak here and there, I also have to get rid of the dress, guitar (i have some kid cousins maybe they want to pick up guitar as a hobby?) and extra monitor somehow. It's also surprisingly difficult to get rid of old electronics and books when you don't drive, thankfully my sister promised to drive me to the recycling station and thrift shop. 
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Jan 31, 2016 15:19
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That just reminds me that I have a guitar that someone gave me 7-8 years ago. I think I have used it for maybe 1-2 hours total. Probably time to find a new home for it. I did the clothes part last weekend. I don't quite see how I could have done the entire house in 2-3 days as that alone was exhausting and time-consuming. I genuinely had no idea how many clothes I had. I was shocked as I truly didn't think I was going to have that much to get rid of, but then I discovered I had saved clothes from a decade ago! It's quite embarrassing how much stuff I had and didn't even realise it. It was a very eye-opening experience.
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Jan 31, 2016 16:28
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 Not shown: the floor My hobby space is lovely in terms of organization. The problem I'm having is there seems to be a continuum between organized and functional. I want to combine the two. I don't really know how because there are so many things that go into painting miniatures. Paints Files Glues Pigments Airbrush Cleaners Brushes Ballast Flock Bases the list goes on And then there's the workspace itself. I am not really sure how to organize all this poo poo in such a way that it's also within arm's reach. And then there's storing all the poo poo you're painting, are in the middle of painting, or have finished painting.
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Feb 7, 2016 16:16
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signalnoise posted:
If the space doesn't have another function, or only rarely does, I don't see a problem with it as is. The biggest change I've been trying to make and a bit struggling with is time management, and part of that is knowing when you're done with this task for the day and putting it away. If I leave it out, it's still going through my mind as it's little effort to come back to and it doesn't feel finished. That might just be me, though. I will say I get a lot more done the better I adhere to this. I don't have the benefit of a workspace I can leave dirty, and I don't do miniatures, but I use trays for different leather tools organized by what part of the process they're in and try to do that part of the process for multiple pieces. This way, the trip only needs to be made twice (once to grab, once to put away), and it becomes a part of setting goals for this particular session. Once I'm done with the one tray, I can reassess whether I have the time and commitment to work on the step or not.
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Feb 9, 2016 00:07
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Enfys posted:It's quite embarrassing how much stuff I had and didn't even realise it. It was a very eye-opening experience. This is the best part of KonMari I think, the shame of going through your stuff and realizing how much of it is going to waste! Then hopefully the shock of it and resulting shame helps you curb those habits in the future. My favorite post-overhaul part is going through my closet every so often (maybe every three months or so) and realizing that I haven't worn X thing in a long while, even when it was in season, and setting it off to the side to be donated or sold. I find it really soothing, plus I never forget I own something now!
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Feb 9, 2016 04:47
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I just found out recently that Goodwill will often take fabric scraps or unusable but clean clothing (they appreciate it being in its own bag and not mixed in with the good stuff) and then sell it on the cheap to fabric recyclers! Here's an article that lists a few major cities and how you can get your messed up sheets in on that hot recycling action: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/rag-sorters-textile-recycling-187082 I know that in Seattle the only way to recycle fabric is through Goodwill, but that's not true in every city. However, if you've got a garbage bag full of bleach-stained t-shirts from an Incident Which Shall Not Be Detailed (cough), it's worth calling or taking it next time you're donating furniture or whatever.
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Jun 2, 2016 01:04
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Huh, that's pretty cool. I usually put textiles out with the recycling if I can't use them for anything else because my city actually accepts them (San Jose), but that's good to know for other places.
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Jun 3, 2016 21:49
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Enfys posted:I'm about halfway through the KonMari book, but I'm struggling to take it seriously because of all the woo-woo stuff. For me it's just a matter of interpretation, translating the animism into its psychological foundation. She talks about socks having feelings, but I just see it as shortcut language to my own feeling when I open the sock drawer. As humans, we do project a certain amount of feeling into objects, and their presentation can have very real, empathetic effects on our mood. It's why there is such a thing as setting the dinner table with parallel utensils as opposed to a random skew. The 'niceness' of objects, as it were, and their arrangement impacts the mind that perceives them. A more clear example is, when my pants are discarded on the floor or my bed is unmade, that weighs on my mind a little. When everything is tidy, there is no weight. Sometimes it is easier to say "what the pants want" than "what can be done with the pants that best serves me." When my accouterments are up and ready, so am I. When my socks can breathe, so can I. When they're twisted and tangled, that subtly tangles my mind. It's not the difference between feeling sluggish in the morning and feeling great, but it is a small difference that can add up with others. That said, I'm not sure her sock method works on all socks, but the point is to find a natural-feeling state for your items that brings you peace, and if a prescribed method doesn't achieve that, it is up to you to find a method that works. Another way to think about it is to compare how we talk about plants. For instance, I'm reading a gardening book that says, "marijuana prefers just a little more lime (a more alkaline soil) than corn or wheat," but of course the marijuana prefers nothing because it has no feelings. It's just easier than saying "marijuana will respond to soil containing a little more lime in a way that we, the growers, prefer, than does corn or wheat." Stinky_Pete fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Jun 7, 2016 |
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Jun 6, 2016 22:31
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