Good Start, albeit the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Was there an iceburg in a proverb? I don't know, it just sounded astute.
But, I made good progress in that back bedroom this morning. Was motivated to get up early. (7:30) and make a nice dent in the room. You can see some actual carpet where there was a solid cover of junktified clutter. As I "break down" boxes and consolidate them / eliminate cherished junk, I'm trying to convert the space into "kid space" rather than try to wholesale clean and THEN move our son in.
However this still leaves my with my closet problem. Mind you with the exception of our faux walk-in closet in our bedroom, these are the ONLY two storage alcoves in our home. Both of them are piled to the ceiling with cherished junk. Excuse me, rather, they are piled to the ceiling with junk and spilling out into the floor. Rather than rip out the entire contents of the closets, I'm going to attempt to conserve the kid friendly space I created and whittle down the closet space to mere essentials.
I do have a rental storage unit that is also completely packed. Some of these items can go into that, but that storage unit a.k.a. "THE BLACK HOLE" is best left for later description.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Room #1 - Kid's Bedroom
I'm starting with this phantom room because, frankly, it doesn't exist yet. This is the approximately 12 by 12 room in the rear of my home that functioned at my office and study until we had our child three years ago. On two occiasions I have purged this room of clutter and found ways to fill it up again to the point of unusability. I'll talk more about the life cycle of this room in future posts.
PROBLEM: Our three-year-old still sleeps in our bedroom, IN HIS ORIGINAL CRIB!!! In order to foster independence for him as well as a play area for him, he needs to have exclusive access to this room. We have made partial attempts to convert this area into his bedroom / toy room to no avail. G's artifacts are scattered throughout the house and so I feel that attacking this room head on is the first key to chipping away at the clutter in other rooms and reclaiming our bedroom.
GOAL: PURGE this room of any artifacts that aren't actively in use. COMPLETE the construction of G's bedroom furniture and move his furniture and toys into the room by Jan 1.
PROBLEM: Our three-year-old still sleeps in our bedroom, IN HIS ORIGINAL CRIB!!! In order to foster independence for him as well as a play area for him, he needs to have exclusive access to this room. We have made partial attempts to convert this area into his bedroom / toy room to no avail. G's artifacts are scattered throughout the house and so I feel that attacking this room head on is the first key to chipping away at the clutter in other rooms and reclaiming our bedroom.
GOAL: PURGE this room of any artifacts that aren't actively in use. COMPLETE the construction of G's bedroom furniture and move his furniture and toys into the room by Jan 1.
Messy is the new Clean
Call it a combination of a hectic life, few hours together as a family, apathy, denial or any other label you can think of. The bottom line is this: our house is a mess!
Our house is an 1100 sq ft nightmare of depressing insanity. Because of the disarray of our home we are probably functionally utilizing about 5 percent of our actual livable space. We have talked about selling this home and moving into a house that would better accomodate our family situation, but I think the monumental task of getting the abode even remotely presentable to sell would probably give us the propensity to actually live here.
So in the spirit of "less blogging, more cleaning", let me give you the rundown on the situation, the areas that must be addressed and hopefully though the journal and accountability (additional) that comes with opening my house to the eyes of the world can bring.
1100 Sq feet. This is a townhome with two bedrooms, two and a half baths, a narrow kitchen. A dining room, a living room and two corridors. I'll get to the actual issues that exist in each of these rooms as I tack on blog entries.
Residents of this house are the following personnae vitae
Me - "P" - a graphic designer
My wife - "J" - a photographer, and...
our 3 year old son - "G" - who is an incredibly smart and well adjusted little boy, despite our efforts to ruin his life and expose him to daily bodily injury in our home.
So, please feel free to rake us over the coals, motivate us, inspire us, flame us, give hints.
Let me warn you, this is the kind of situation that would make a televised organiztion program run for the hills. The scenario reveals some fairly disgusting habits and tendencies that I hope can be resolved by taking these steps. Because of the disorganization it has put an enormous amount of stress on our marriage, which I also hope to salvage.
Our house is an 1100 sq ft nightmare of depressing insanity. Because of the disarray of our home we are probably functionally utilizing about 5 percent of our actual livable space. We have talked about selling this home and moving into a house that would better accomodate our family situation, but I think the monumental task of getting the abode even remotely presentable to sell would probably give us the propensity to actually live here.
So in the spirit of "less blogging, more cleaning", let me give you the rundown on the situation, the areas that must be addressed and hopefully though the journal and accountability (additional) that comes with opening my house to the eyes of the world can bring.
1100 Sq feet. This is a townhome with two bedrooms, two and a half baths, a narrow kitchen. A dining room, a living room and two corridors. I'll get to the actual issues that exist in each of these rooms as I tack on blog entries.
Residents of this house are the following personnae vitae
Me - "P" - a graphic designer
My wife - "J" - a photographer, and...
our 3 year old son - "G" - who is an incredibly smart and well adjusted little boy, despite our efforts to ruin his life and expose him to daily bodily injury in our home.
So, please feel free to rake us over the coals, motivate us, inspire us, flame us, give hints.
Let me warn you, this is the kind of situation that would make a televised organiztion program run for the hills. The scenario reveals some fairly disgusting habits and tendencies that I hope can be resolved by taking these steps. Because of the disorganization it has put an enormous amount of stress on our marriage, which I also hope to salvage.
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