Jackpot!

I tried to come up with things for my list that would challenge me in many aspects of my life. One part of my life that I have always struggled with is keeping my clothes put away. I just despise putting clothes away, it is not so much the act of folding or hanging when things come out of the dryer as it is that next crucial step. As you can imagine unpacking is one of my least favorite things to do. And because of this intense avoidance attitude cleaning "my room" has led to the slobby space below. 

View from the hall



Total disarray



There is a desk and chair under that mountain, and yes there in the floor is the bag I took to Oklahoma: both 2 weeks ago and at CHRISTMAS. Time to unpack for sure!

Looking at the pictures it would be easy for one of those really organized people to say how do you find anything? Or cringe in disgust but there really is a system. Kind of like those people who have crazy messy desks but can still locate everything I have a place for clean clothes, dirty clothes, ironed things, clothes on hangers but not hung, and even folded clean clothes. The pile on the floor is mostly from bags that never got unpacked, and are organized by which bag (and therefore which location I intended to wear item) so easily accessible. I have no excuse for the desk, it has just piled up things that I cannot put away due to the closet door being blocked, I did locate my teaching certificate and diploma in there neatly laid flat still.

So decision time has arrived, I had to come up with a solution. I need this room to function as an office and a craft space plus we still need it if we have guests spend the night. Plus The BF has a chest of drawers in here full of those clothes that are rarely worn (mostly winter stuff and ski clothes) Very multi-purpose space!
Right now all the room can do is hold the piles I throw into it and under the bed and stuffed in the closet are boxes that never got unpacked when I moved. Determined to unpack and unclutter this room I began with the underbed boxes. And that was working great and then lightbulb! We have a nice raised air mattress that we could use for guests and a huge basement to store this bed in. That would mean these boxes could not return re-packed with the same stuff I have not seen in 3 years, garage sale much?

Totally cleaning out the bags, purses, and wallets to donate from under the bed... what do I see?
Cleaning up never paid so well.

After finding $100 bill in a wallet I was reinvigorated! I think the only one in the house upset about that was Cricket and try to follow this logic: The windows in this room only have blinds on them but the blinds are pretty see through. Cricket loved laying on the bed and barking at anything that moved down the circle.

Obviously this pic was taken right before or right after company, look I was even washing the sheets!
It also makes me laugh b/c the only time she lays like that is when she is totally exhausted, oh the joys of going on a good run!

 I think she has serious anxiety about a robbery of a house with their driveway on the circle, problematically she has not figured out yet that the neighbors are not robbers and she does not have to bark at them every time they come and go to their own houses. And don't even think about turning around in the circle after dark, she sees headlights and panic sets in!

Back to the cleaning process, and my is it a process! Next step is the massive amount of paperwork in this room. Old bills, old receipts, junk mail, clipped and not used coupons, the list could go on forever. I spent about 3 hours going through all of it, organizing what needed to be kept and labeling the different piles. There was a FULL trash bag of junk to be recycled after this step.

Closet next! and guess what? More paperwork. Luckily this stuff was organized before entrance so it was easy to go through. The shelves and floor were cleared out and wiped down (am I smelling like PineSol yet? Cricket does not like that smell and has abandoned me totally. Feeling a little lonely and abandoned, I have been in this room for hours now with only the occasional trip to the bathroom I decide it is time to retire for the day.

Like I said earlier I have been subbing more this week, so I had to abandon my project for a few days but with Spring Break coming up don't worry there will be some awesome after pics soon.