in which we bore you to tears

I thought it might help kick-start the motivation to make sporadic public declarations of my progress in settling into the house and simultaneously preparing for our next move, whenever/wherever that may be.

Last month I got rid of a lot of things - about two plastic bins worth of stuff, and a crap-ton of plain old trash (and recycling). I still have half of one bin that nobody seems to want, so it'll be making its way to the thrift stores...eventually...

The one room in the house that I can consistently keep up is the bathroom. Honestly it's just too small and used too frequently to allow it to get out of control. Being forced to cut back on all my 'bathroom stuff' has been really good for me, though, seeing as I've long been one to collect lotions and gels and goops of all sorts. It's easy to say no, now. (For the record, soap is most likely to get used, and I love special soaps! Lotions, on the other hand, have a sad sad history with me.) Because this room is so small, it's not intimidating. I can handle it. And it never gets messy enough to get scary. The only time I spend more than about 6 minutes cleaning the bathroom is when I'm scrubbing the tub.

A couple of rooms are in ok shape and aren't ideal, but usually still functional. One is our bedroom. There are always piles of clothes and a little bit of other misc, but we rarely have trouble walking...my how low the standards are... I'm working at reducing the clothing piles bit by bit, and if nothing else, maintaining them instead of making them bigger... It's slow going, but bite by bite it's coming along. There's one corner of my dresser that I saw almost every day for a week. (granted, it's gone now...but not for long!) It's not much, but it's something...and I'll take anything right now. It's coming along. And we make the bed almost every day, which is nice. It's like an oasis of clean and smooth...

Another room that's hit-or-miss is the kitchen. There are just some days when I plain old forget to do dishes. Other days, I am too busy or just undisciplined. In the winter, we could eat dinner there. In January, I felt like things were coming together. Somewhere in there, it all fell apart and I felt so overwhelmed that I couldn't even handle going into the kitchen. It was terrible...I felt terrible. I'm not sure when I decided to buck up and handle it, but it happened a few weeks ago maybe, and since then it's been a slow steady climb toward having my counter and table back. I realized the other day that it would take maybe 5 or 6 minutes to get it to the point where we could start eating dinner in there again. That's becomig important to me. It will happen, maybe in the next day or so even.

A couple of big but simple things need to happen for the rest of the house to come along. I have a pile of dresses that I need to find something to do with - old prom and bridesmaid dresses. As soon as they go off to consignment or charity land, and this old dresser set sells, I can arrange the guest room...which means that the guest room furniture can go into its room and out of my dining room, which means I will once again have access to my attic, which means that more sorting and settling and tossing can occur. It all depends on me deciding what to do with these dresses.

Then we can tackle the office. And after that, we can go back through what's in the attic and clear out even more.

A plan, see? A plan!