Oh, man, y’all.

I knew we had houseguests coming this weekend, so I had to pause in the Great Declutter (briefly) to get the guest room partially ready for inhabitants.  What I didn’t know was that our houseguest was going to arrive a day early.

Now, this was not as big of a Panic Attack as it would have been, say, a month ago. (Thank you ChoreWars….), but I still hasn’t made up the guest bed or laid out fresh towels, or rearranged the shipping supplies that live in that room.  I CAN say that I wasn’t worried they’d find the room to be so covered in dust that they couldn’t FIND the bed, or have to lay out their stuff on a carpet of dog hair.  So, really, I’m pleased overall with the direction in which the house is going, even under duress.

I’m now down almost 1500 individual items in my studio.  More than that, overall, from all rooms.  It’s to the point that my Piles O’ Crap (of which there were many) are minimalized somewhat, and I’m even able to free up some of the copious “organizers” (read: crap receptacles) that I’ve bought over the years in order to keep the clutter corralled.

That’s the part that’s amazing me, I think.  I knew, in my head, that you can’t organize clutter.  That it’s just THERE, and you have to MAINTAIN it all or get RID of it.  One of the two.  All the organizers in the free world won’t help you if you have, oh, say, sixteen tubs of yarn.  (Not that I know anyone with that many…..uh….anymore. I cleared those out in November.)

Still, it didn’t sink in until I started getting ruthless with myself.  Being honest about how much time I have in a day, and what needs to be done to even just maintain a house of this size and this full of crap…er…valued personal items. My valuation had to change — a LOT — before anything was going to even think about getting done.

Before, it was so figuratively dark that I didn’t know I was in a tunnel of my own making.  (Probably a tunnel through all the crap, actually.)  Now, I’m starting to see the light at the end of it all.  I’m hoping that soon, I’ll find the actual end.  It means my chorewars points will dry up a bit (until I start painting and/or doing a *lot* more around here), but honestly?  Then I can dig in on the garage somewhat, and take a whole lot more points, even if the stuff isn’t all ours.  (I’m sure that’s where some of these mice are coming from, actually.)

Goodbye, SLOB…hello, light.

In some cases, literally.  This was the studio window this morning:

That is seriously a SHEET…pinned to the top of the windowframe.  This was for two reasons:

1.  I didn’t have any idea what I wanted for curtains, and

2.  Even if I did, they don’t make curtain rods that big.  Well, they do, but they’re a million dollars, and I’m cheap.

I’ve had the fabric to MAKE the curtains for about a zillion years now.  Or at least part of them.  I still want to make two more, for the middles of the window.  (That window’s, like, wider than my first apartment.  One curtain on each side won’t look like there’s anything there, much less keep out the light in the summer when it superheats that room to approximately the temperature of the surface of the sun.) I’m still not sure what I’ll do with the middle.

But today, I whipped up this:

Which is still pinned to the top of the windowframe.  It’s awaiting the tab-topper things to be put on.  But still, it’s a drastic improvement over the way things WERE, and that makes me very happy.  I’ll be amazed, however, if the two are the same length.  I’m not so good with the curtainy-goodness.  Or sewing in general.  Ahem.  (If we ever meet, ask to see the sewing scar on my left index finger, where an old machine tried to remove it.  Oh, but seriously.)

I got away from the alphabet there for a little bit during the first part of The Big Declutter ‘08, but we’re up to L, for Love.  What part of homekeeping do I absolutely love?

I like planning.  I get a lot of great ideas.  All the time, in fact.  And if I was only superwoman and had extra hours in every day, I might even do some of them.  But the decorating bits and the cooking bits, I can usually at least do passably.  And I really do love organizing…not that you could tell from my house.

I love that I’m making a *home*.  I love taking all these raw bits — all the detritus and accumulation of living, and making a place I want to come back to and that my husband likes to come home to.

Granted, we have very different ideas of what that IS, exactly, but he’s coming around.  (After growing up with a very warped idea of “clean”, he’s kind of getting a taste of the simplicity of the whole decluttered world, and finding out that it IS a little bit more peaceful.  I think if I keep it up, he’s going to eventually make that connection.)

I’m rambling, but you get my drift.

Need to finish that other curtain and press it before it gets too late and I fall asleep at the machine.  No sense in letting it take off the other index finger.

Actually, it’s a big’un.

I started going through the studio, finally digging into the scrapbooking, sewing, fabric, and trims sections.  My friend was here, so I asked her if she wanted anything, and she said she’d donate whatever she didn’t want to a local school she supports.

So we started filling a large bag:

And because I’m nothing if not determined, we went through that space quickly, and ended up outgrowing a garbage bag.

Then two.

Then two, plus this:

For a grand total of FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY THINGS.  Everything from art supplies to fabric to faux fur to unused socks (for sock monkeys) to ribbons to trims to paper to packs of vintage postage stamps and EVERYTHING inbetween.

What’s sad is that I’m not even half-way through the studio yet.   What’s sadder still is that I HAVE THINGS LEFT.  It’s not like I’m giving away *everything*.  For every thing I give away or throw away, there are probably at *least* two still here.

It’s downright embarassing.  And was completely out of control, obviously.

I just need to remind myself that it was a process in acquiring all of this; it’ll be a process in getting rid of it all, too.  At least it’s going to kids who need it now, and are drastically underfunded.  (Arts program funding at our local school district is nearly nonexistent.  This will help somewhat.)  And maybe I’ll be more likely to use what’s left.

I actually *maxed out my chorewars points for the day* doing today’s declutteration.  Seriously.  I’ll have a bunch to claim tomorrow for today’s decluttering, which is kind of nice.  AND I found my absolute favorite pan of cheapie watercolors, too — the ones that were toted along with me around the entire country over the past six years, having been lost three years ago.

I’m just embarassed by how much I have.  I thought I’d done a pretty good job of clearing out most of it, but it’s like a hydra in here — cut off one head and find that there are three more sprouting out of its neck.

I can’t wait to finally be free again.

This is my seriously scary (though less so now, thank you chorewars…) kitchen of doom.

It’s open to both the living and dining room, and as such, the clutter from the living room (also known as “the husband’s work crap”) spills over into it via the channel under the cupboards.  Not to mention the fact that we have to keep everything on the counters rather than under them, in those bottom cupboards/drawers, because there is a serious Mouse Problem in there.  As in, anything we put in there becomes an immediate Mouse House, replete with ripped up bits of insulation and lots and lots of the nastiest poo pellets you can imagine.

I wish I was exaggerating.  I’m not.  We’ve tried glue traps and poisons and everything short of locking a live cat in them.  Doesn’t phase them.  They are the UBERMICE, genetically engineered with the intelligence of Einstein and the flexibility of Rubber Man.  They are sneakier than …uh…something really sneaky.  And OH MY GOD THEY POOP A LOT.  One would think they would die just from overpooping, but nooooo.

We are powerless.  We gave up our cupboards after the first set of 24 (!!!) glue traps came back with one to two mice apiece in them, and STILL we have mice.  One day, they will carry off one of the dogs to be their servant.  When we complain about this little mouse issue to our landlords (aka “the inlaws”), they tell us it’s because we live in the country and there’s nothing they (or we) can do about it.

Gee.  Thanks.

I clean things with bleach.  A lot.  For a reason.  *shudder*

All mice aside, though:  there are some other things to be done. That piece of fabric hanging there on the wall next to the windows is a test to see how the fabric looks in various light.  Under it is an open cabinet where we keep the kitchen towels and the mugs, since it’s mouse-free up there.  I’ve picked one of the two to make a curtain to hide the clutter, and the other fabric will be the curtains for the window.  Right now, there’s just a little swag thing, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but doesn’t look so hot.  (The whole lower floor gets very little light, so I was reluctant to cover the window too much.)

I’d like to also do something with the cabinets.  Paint them, restain them, something.  They’re that sexy 1970’s dark wood that sucks up the light and doesn’t even remotely match the countertops, which are blondewood-toned melamine or whatever that stuff is that artificial countertops are made of.  They’re also dirty as hell from sitting unwashed for a zillion years before we moved in.

We need a backsplash behind the sink.  One of the window trim pieces fell off the window god only knows when, and has been long gone since before we moved in, so I’m thinking about putting steel of some sort behind there, all the way up to the window.  Easy to clean, and relatively practical for the times when I’m working with dye and splash it on the wall.  There are blue spots in my yellow paint there now.  Go figure.

The cabinets on the right are starting to sag, too, so we need some kind of brace support on the nearest-to-the-camera side.  You can’t see it well in this picture, but they’re pulling away from the ceiling a little, which is kind of scary.

And the big thing I want to do is get a hanging pot holder dealie for the ceiling.  Hang a light or two from it (the one light over the sink doesn’t work, which is why the torchiere is in our kitchen), and get all the pots and pans out of the cabinets, freeing up space for some of the clutterybits that reside on the countertops.  I think it’ll work — we’ve got 12′ ceilings in the whole first floor of the house.

Oh, and the floor.  OMG, the floor.  If we were staying here for longer than just a few years, I’d soooo get a new floor.  That cracked lineoleum that’s flaking all over the place?  Nasty.  Nasty to the point of being repulsive.  I try not to think about it too much.  Maybe I’ll get a big 5′ x 8′ rug at some point, maybe sisal or something, to cover the majority of it up.  The edges are all caked with waxed-on dirt, since the mother-in-law person used to use wax cleaners on the thing, virtually ensuring that the resultant mud would be cemented on for all eternity.  (No, seriously.  20 year old wax is like hardened glue — there is not a cleaner/wax remover/stripper/anything that will take off the muddy wax buildup.  It is now a feature of the house, and may be the only thing holding the kitchen together.  I have a secret fear that, if I was to find the magical floor-cleaner that would turn back time and remove it, the whole house would collapse like a house of cards.  And it’s probably not all that unfounded.)

That said, I’m still decluttering like a MAD FIEND.  Got rid of another four garbage bags’ worth of stuff since the Big Closet Clear-Out of 2008, in fact.  Almost 400 items out the door, ranging from old button packages to paper files that are out of date and/or unnecessary, to lamps that don’t work….and everything inbetween.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the Quakers, or the Religious Society of Friends.  While I don’t consider myself all that much of a Religious Sort(tm), the basic tenets of caring for the earth, caring for each other, and living simply really, really appeal to me.  I used to think I wanted a big house with lots of space, and now that we have one, it’s really kind of a pain in the ass.  There’s always something that needs doing, and having lots of space means needing a lot of stuff to fill it up, and while the acquiring of Varied And Sundry Crap isn’t all that hard for me to do, I don’t think it’s healthy having all this stuff around me all the time.

I know, I know.  Be grateful for the abundance.  And I am.  But there’s abundance and then there’s excess, and the two are profoundly different things.  We’ve been to the Excess point for a long time now, and when I started de-acquiring things to the dumpster or to friends, or selling off the excess in various venues, I’m noticing I have more energy.  A *lot* more energy, even.  It’s like I can start to breathe again, which I think I’ve said before, but it’s true — when there’s Too Much, the walls close in and I don’t know what to do next. It’s the paradox of choice — Choice is good; too many choices are confusing and disheartening.

Just in the past six months, I’ve gone through and gotten rid of just about 75% of most of my major clutterpoints:  yarn and craft supplies, clothing, kitchen junk, books.  People look at me like I might actually be insane when I tell them I sold off 75% of my yarn, and like I have lobsters sprouting from my ears when I tell them that more than half my books are gone now.

But seriously here — with the money that I got from selling off my yarn, I bought upgrades for my Other business.  Stuff we really needed, that made our lives easier and our work more enjoyable.  With the space in my kitchen created from ditching all the old stuff, I’ve been able to get a bunch of stuff off the counters that we DO use, which equates to more space to actually COOK in there, which equals a Happier Husband and a healthier way of life for us both.  (McDonald’s is evil.  Cooking at home means I know exactly what’s in that food we’re eating.)  And now, with the books (which is where I lose a lot of people who can’t imagine every decluttering their libraries) being sold as used on Amazon…I’m using that credit (which is considerable, let me tell you.) to buy things for the house, as well as buying books that I’m actually going to read.  (And once they’re read, they’ll go back up on Amazon as used, trust me.)  I’m actually finally getting a new comforter for the bed, a coffeemaker that doesn’t leak water all over my counters, and some baking stuff I’ve needed for a long time, AND that loaf pan I was obsessing over a few months ago — for essentially *free*.

AND I get the FREE SPACE.

It really IS kind of awesome, even if the whole decluttering thing gives some people fits.

My things ARE NOT ME. I’ve known that, intellectually, for quite some time now.  But knowing it in your head and knowing it in your heart — that’s two different animals.  The crap I surround myself with is supposed to reflect me, us, our lives together…or it’s supposed to be functional, allowing us to live our lives.  It’s not a substitute for life, or a replacement for having a life.  It’s not part of me — if it was ALL gone, I would still be me (and me with a clean slate, no less).

Realizing that fact has made it about a zillion times easier to shovel out from under the protective blanket of Crap that’s made its way into my life.  And once it’s gone, I think I might actually be even more willing to make a LIFE rather than a STOCKPILE.

Subject change:

Remember the scary picture of the tub a few days ago?  The one where the tin man crawled into my bathroom to rot and rust?

I got out the heavy-duty chemicals yesterday, and dumped a bunch of it in the tub.  I haven’t done the walls yet, but I rubbed a little bit of it on them so you could see the difference, for contrast.  (I’m doing those today.  It’s a multi-day job, since those chemicals can burn off your eyebrows if you’re exposed for too long.)

There really *is* porcelain-colored plastic under all that rust.

Who knew?

It’ll take today’s wall wipedown and tomorrow’s once-more-with-feeling on the tub itself with the Evil Chemicals Of Doom, but then I’ll have my tub back, thankfully.

Note to self:  broken or not, it needs a once-over at LEAST once a week, probably more often.

Does anyone know if waxing the walls will help prevent the iron from sticking?  I heard that somewhere — that a thin layer of TurtleWax would keep them from turning into Orange Iron Central, but I’m reluctant to try it if it means I have to then wash wax off the walls, too.

Back to the declutterybits.

So the past three days, there has been A Fire In Me ™.

I’m still blaming ChoreWars.  I’m locked in a vicious battle with GreenApples for the top spot in our group — we go back and forth being number one.  And I have to admit — the competition has been not only fierce, but motivating.  Yesterday, I was literally looking for things to wash, just so I could get the wash-fold-put away points.  I’ve been decluttering like a mad fiend so that I might be able to get ahead.  I’ve been sweeping things I swept two days prior (and finding that the dogs really DO shed about a dog’s worth of hair a day, and that perhaps I should be sweeping daily ANYWAY….), doing the dishes by hand right after we eat, vacuuming upstairs every time my husband so much as walks through….I even found myself wishing that it would warm up outside JUST so I could wash the windows without having the Windex freeze into fractal-like ice.

In short, I’m scaring myself, but my house is not only GETTING clean, but STAYING THERE.

Last night, when my friend Nikki was over, I mentioned that I really wanted to clean out the closet in my master bedroom.  That I have clothes that are totally Wish List items at this point, thanks to the expanding nature of my ass.  (My activity level dropped to nil when I moved from the northwest to the midwest, since I have allergies that keep me from being outside most of the time.  As such, the weight came over to say Hi and never left.  Ugh.)  Being just a touch OCD herself, she offered to cheerlead while I decluttered.

Over the next several hours, I threw away or gifted more than 50% of what was in my closet and my dresser.  There are EMPTY DRAWERS NOW.

I know.  I almost fainted, too.

Before:

I know this doesn’t look all that bad to some of you.  I’ve been slowly clearing out the bottom of it for several weeks, even before the ChoreWars Mania hit me.  But it was really hard finding stuff to wear, because the whole thing was disorganized and crammed full of stuff that didn’t fit.

We don’t have a linen closet, either.  (Well, we DO, but the mice know where it is, so we don’t keep anything in it that’s not in sealed rubbermaid containers, and no linens.  Otherwise, there is poop and chewed holes, not necessarily in that order.  I know, ewwww, right?)    So our towels resided partially in that one cubbyhole and in that laundry basket on the floor.  Not really an efficient use of space, and honestly, most of them had seen better days anyway.  We started with that, and got rid of all but about a dozen towels, six washcloths, and three hand towels.  They don’t all match, but that can be a project for another day.

Then we started in on the hanging stuff and the shelves.  What didn’t fit, was stained or threadbare, or didn’t look good on me…GONE.

We ended up with NINE GARBAGE BAGS FULL.  Nine.  And this:

the right side:

and the left:

Excuse the pictures — it was 2 a.m. before we were done, and there’s little light in there.

I still want to do something with the walls, since they’re still the blue that my master bedroom used to be (as in: retina-searing blue), and maybe get some better storage options in there, but OMG.  FUNCTIONAL CLOSET.

People are starting to arrive for S&B, so I need to get running so I can shower and get the cupcakes frosted (and a second batch made).  But I had to pop over here to squee a little bit about that closet and the fact that I’m actually DOING IT.

It already feels less congested and more free in here, and I’m not even remotely done yet.

I can’t wait.

(And ooh, the points!)

And, apparently, “jar”.

This is my windowsill in the kitchen.  It used to be covered with a lot of clutter and crap, and this past week, I threw everything away that was on it (or moved it to where it belonged, at least), wiped it off despite the peeling and rotting wood, and lay down a handwoven runner that I made a while back.  The tealight looked kind of pretty next to the jar, which used to be full of old sponges for some reason.  It will eventually contain flowers from outside, if the peonies bloom again this year.  And you can just barely see the hills beyond the house.

The hills that would, mind you, be kind of pretty, if they didn’t belong to a rock quarry that’s cleared them of any living vegetation.  *grump*

It seems like the light here’s been so pretty the last couple days.  Blue-ish and clear.  A big change from the overcast grey of the past few months.  I’m also blaming the sun for this cleaning spurt.

Today, I actually maxed out the ChoreWars points you can earn in a day…by 2 p.m..  I tried putting in my points for the lunch dishes, and it cut me off!  Apparently, you can only earn a thousand in a day.

Yes, I said A THOUSAND.

Today’s been de-clutterpalooza over here at Chez Wife.  I tossed out some stuff from the office, then hit the upstairs bathroom and got the medicine drawer and the other drawers/cabinets, and started in on my art studio.

Oh. my.

A mouse got into my art supplies drawers.  Or the bottom two, at least.  Chewed up what is probably thousands of dollars in equipment and supplies.  I ended up throwing out LITERALLY more than a hundred and fifty things, just from those drawers and the surrounding area.  Listed a bunch of books on amazon.  Gave away even more.

I’m finally starting to be able to breathe up in here.

There’s still a LONG way to go, don’t get me wrong.  My tub still has the dead tin man thing going on and there’s more clutter than space, and dust motes outnumber the occupants here a few legion to one.  But I’m getting there.  Slowly.

I have to run and get groceries, and take a few hours to myself this afternoon.  Out, away from it all, to get some more fresh air and perspective.  (I’m shopping for a pair of matchy-matchy lamps for the bedroom, to be honest.  Now that it’s cleaner in there, I like sitting in bed, reading before sleeping.  I didn’t know how much all that dirt and clutter was affecting the way I felt, really.  I knew I felt a little anxious and depressed with it all messy, but didn’t realize that I was subconsciously avoiding the whole ROOM.  Sheesh.)

Then it’s Back With A Vengeance Time.  I want to bag up all this stuff and take a picture.  Seriously, folks — you won’t believe it.  BAGS and BAGS of what amounts to TRASH that’s been living in my house, rent-free, for all this time.  Stuff that I never really thought of as “trash”, either.  It was my art supplies, or my old paperwork, or some toys that we were keeping, or clothes in my closet, or some old hot-rollers for my hair from the days with Really Big Hair…not “trash”.    But bagged up?  It’s trash.  And it always has been; I just didn’t have the eyes to see it or the heart to get rid of it before now.

What I really DO know, though, is that my house is going to be much easier to clean when it’s all gone.  And there will be room to breathe and grow again.  It’s like that jar, sitting there on the windowsill — empty and ready for something more beautiful than itself to fill it, rather than storing stuff that no longer brings joy.

And that makes maxing out my ChoreWars just that much better.

My life up and got purdy on me the past two days.

I’ve been blaming it on that post-sickness energy that you get.  Y’know the kind — where you wake up after being a giant pile of mucous for a week or so, and realize that HEY…I really AM human under all this snot! and suddenly, there’s all this energy that you never thought you had.

Maybe that’s just me.  People keep looking at me like I’m crazy, but I get it every single time I’m sick/healthy again.

And it really *is* partially the ChoreWars thing.  That stupid competitive side of me keeps telling me that all these people with the Really Clean Houses don’t have NEARLY the kind of raw material I have to work with.  Just getting to a place where my house doesn’t look like it’s been rescued from Condemned status would be one helluvalotta points.

Case in point….and you might want to shield the eyes of small children and the elderly from this one.  The shock may scar them for life or strike them dead on sight.  Seriously.

This is my bathtub, AFTER nearly a half-hour of scrubbing at it with salt and vinegar:

Tell me it doesn’t look like someone murdered the Tin Man and left his ass to rust in there.  Go on, tell me.

That, my friends, is literally TWO WEEKS of iron build-up.  TWO. FREAKIN’. WEEKS.  Not two DECADES.  Not even two YEARS, but two WEEKS.

Our water is THAT hard.  Well water.  I usually have to use these really noxious chemicals to clean it every other day, but it was broken two weeks ago, and I’ve been a little afraid to run a full tub.  So JUST FROM SHOWERS…..we get the Death of the Tin Man.  Seriously.

And since the vinegar/salt thing is working less than well, tomorrow, I’m back on the acid cleaner.  I think, when I use it, I can actually feel it giving me cancer.  But if it’s cancer versus the Dead Tin Man, I’ll take the carcinoma.  (Don’t they give you chemicals as treatment for that?  Am I the only one who sees the irony inherent in that?)

But seriously, for every picture like the scary one there, there’s this kind of thing emerging now, too:

That would be my newly-cleaned, newly bedecked-with-curtains, JUST SHY OF EMPTY (as in, all laundry completed) laundry room of comfort and joy.  Complete with the world’s sexiest dryer, which is from the 1950’s and still has a foot pedal to open the door.  I love it just a little bit.  And now that the laundry mountain is tackled and vanquished, the floors are sparkling, and the washer/dryer themselves are be-scrubbed and glowing, I kind of want to sit in there all day.  Like, ALL DAY LONG.  I think it’s the one truly, completely clean part of my house.  I love that.

There’s the half-done spots:

Like my dining room/part of the living room.  The floor’s still disgustingly being held together with duct tape to keep the ants out, but the vinyl’s mostly clean.  (Need to swiffer again tonight.  Four dogs.  Vinyl floors.  You do the math.)  But it’s getting there.  Two days ago, you couldn’t see the tabletop, and the dog hair was so thick that I could have literally knit me a new dog, if I was in the market for a fifth.

All of this is being compounded by the universe, too.  In the mail today, Jane Brocket’s “Gentle Art of Domesticity” and the new Everyday Food  (O Martha, how I love you so…).  Think it’s trying to tell me something?

So now….Ironing.

I don’t do it if I don’t have to.  I’m sooo bad at it.  I put creases where there aren’t supposed to be any, and flatten out the ones that are supposed to be there.  I learned this about myself a long, long time ago, and finally came to the realization that I need clothes with no ironing required.

Or I put things in the dryer with a damp washrag, which usually fixes everything anyway.

So if you come to my house and expect a nicely-pressed tablecloth and starched napkins…welll….you’ll be a little disappointed.  Just sayin’.

One other small thing of note:

I realized today that through ChoreWars, some of you from my Other Life might be able to figure out who I am.

Doh.

If you do, or if you suspect, please…keep that information to yourselves.   This is the place that I’m kind of trying to keep to myself.  Where I can work out all this domestic stuff without worrying about the public eye, or how it will reflect on that Other Life.

It’s not that that Other Life isn’t *me*.  Because it is.  But so is this, and while it might seem kind of like the Anti-OtherLife, it’s all part of this crazy thing we all do, called living.  I’m a little one-dimensional in that Other Life, intentionally.  Keeps a safe distance between us and the ones who know us through that other thing.

So, please….if you find this, and you know or think you know or have a sneaking suspicion that you know who I am in that Other?  Forget you know.

Thank you.

I’d say the “C” is silent, but then it becomes Horewars, and that isn’t quite the connotation I’m looking for.

But this:

has become my new best housekeeper’s friend. Seriously.

I’m on the Reclaiming the Home team, from the blog and ravelry group (in the sidebar), and MAN…it is TOTALLY helping. At the time of this writing, I’ve got 588 points, which puts me in about 8th place overall. And I’m competitive, so if it takes me forever, I’m totally going to get up there in the top three.

Better, my house is happier. I’ve been fighting a nasty flu bug for the past three days, and just getting up out of bed has been challenging. But with the ChoreWars thing looming, I vacuumed almost all of my house (three more rooms to go!), dusted things that sorely needed it, vacuumed my STAIRS and the WALLS of the stairwell (four hairy dogs + 1 hairy husband + lots of static electricity from the old carpets = furry walls. Seriously. It was gross.), did all my dishes and put them away, folded ALL the laundry that was waiting, decluttered a bunch of stuff, put a TON of stuff away, swept almost all the lineoleum in the house (three more rooms!)….it just goes on and on.

I still want to wash all the windows and do more laundry (and put it away!), and there’s still some seeeeeerious decluttering that has to happen in the kitchen before I’m done. But my house is FEELING cleaner already. And that, to me, is priceless.

I’ve been really hesitant to get into those daily cleaning routines (like the ones from RealSimple that I mentioned before), because it’s so dusty and nasty out here in hooterville that I never see progress. I never get to feel what it’s like to have a truly clean house (and probably never will, based on the amount of crap that’s tracked in)…so I’ve been disheartened in the past. Now, though, I get to look at my points and see that HEY…I’ve actually DONE something. Quite a BIT of something, actually! It’s keeping me going. I LOVE THAT.

If you click on that “reclaiming the home” link under “crafty wives”, you’ll get to the page where the link is to sign up. (Not sure if I have permission to hand it out or not.) It’s freakin’ fabulous.

Which leads me to H for Handbooks…

I just got this in the mail today, and just reading through it, I kind of love it a little. Okay, I love it a LOT. It’s british, but finding used copies is pretty easy, and I think Amazon now sells the new ones, too:

It’s called “How to Be The Perfect Housewife: Become a Domestic Goddess and a Queen of Clean: Lessons in the art of modern household management”, by Anthea Turner. Apparently, there’s a british television series called “The Perfect Housewife”, and this is the companion book they put out.

It. is. fabulous. It’s separated into lessons, starting with de-cluttering room by room, storage, and cleaning, heading into laundry and home office stuff, then on to repair of things like clothes and shoes, and finally into things like shopping and homemaking and entertaining and safety — seriously….this could be the only primer you’d ever need, even if you knew NOTHING ahead of time.

Personally, I think every woman should be handed a copy of this when she gets engaged. (Of course, some would take offense, but for the ones who wouldn’t, this is a great gift.)

It has me all raring to get my house into some semblance of Homehood, and that’s a positive thing. Since that’s one of my goals from this Wife Project, I’m going to be keeping it close to my chest, following the lessons from 1 to 20 in order. It makes it feel like yes, it’s actually POSSIBLE to have a home, even with conditions so out of control as ours.

Motivation, of course, is priceless.

I’m off to earn more ChoreWars points!

Oh, folks. That poor kitchen of ours was in dire need of attention. Not that the REST of the house doesn’t need a bit of it, too, but the kitchen? Scary.

There was SO much stuff in there that wasn’t ours — stuff left behind by the previous tenants that was ‘gifted’ to us. Most of it was in iffy condition, and has been clogging up the cabinets to the point where we don’t have room for any of it anymore. Or, for that matter, stuff we DO use.

Add to the problem by making the cabinets sit there in various stages of disrepair and grime, and you’ve got a recipe for Crazy Wife, which is never a good thing.

So last night, I tackled one of them. I got the biggest box I could find, and dug into this:

That’s the left and right sides of just one of the cabinets near the floor next to the oven. The bottom of it is disgusting and still needs to be lined (possibly with something totally antibacterial….I mean…LOOK AT IT…ick!), but, after getting rid of everything left there by the previous owners, or anything of ours that was beyond saving or was missing parts, and voila:

Three items left. THREE. (The stack of plates is being washed and will be in with our plates, but I moved them after this was taken.) And one of them, the bowl in the upper left, is iffy. It still might go. But it’s all 1960’s fantabulousness and has an avocado and blue handpainted flower on the bottom, and I kind of love it a little, in that I-heart-kitsch kind of way.

Scarier still is the stuff we got rid of:

Those boxes weigh around fifty pounds. Seriously. Probably more, even. Two sets of mismatched dishes. Old tupperware. A non-functioning crock pot. A food processor that’s missing a crucial part. An old blender that hasn’t worked in more than fifteen years now and lit on FIRE when we tested it. THREE DOZEN teacups of dubious origin. (Don’t worry — I checked ebay first. Nothing in that box was selling for more than $2 a set.) FIVE glass pie plates. FIVE. Even I do not eat that much pie, and I LIKE pie.

Of all of it — only the food processor was ours. Everything else was already here when we moved in. And now we have at least one cabinet that can breathe again, and I’m starting to get motivated to fill up the dumpster before tomorrow’s pick-up.

I’m trying to get rid of as much as I can, and I’m aiming for 50% — meaning that I’d like to get rid of half of the items we have in the kitchen right now, since we really, REALLY don’t need as much as we have. There’s just too much, and most of it is non-functional. I’m thinking that with about half of it gone, I can actually store things in there, or *cook*, go figure. Plus, it means there’s open space for us to buy things WE like, rather than just whatever’s in there.

Which kind of leads me to “G” on that alphabet meme that I’m going through slowly here: Garbage. Technically, it’s “garbage disposal”, but since I don’t have one of those and haven’t really missed it all that much, I thought I’d talk a little about garbage for a second.

This is going to make me unpopular. I know it already. But all this stuff? Totally going in the dumpster. (We have a commercial dumpster since this is technically commercial property.) As much as I’d love to recycle it or take it in for donation, the fact of the matter is that if I had to wait to schedule a pickup, it wouldn’t get done. It would all sit here, eventually moved to the side and ignored, and probably end up in the Garage of Doom. Right now, it’s more important to me to get it out of here than it is to worry too much about the plates in the garbage.

I’m offsetting the environmental impact of my cleaning by buying an insane percentage less than I did before, since I know what I have already (instead of accidentally buying multiples, which I’ve done), and because I don’t want to clutter up the now-with-breathing-room cabinets again. I’m reducing not only my own consumerism, but helping to avoid unnecessary packaging that would normally also go in the dumpster. So I figure it’ll balance out. And I’ll plant some trees or something when the weather’s not so…uh…weathery. (It’s snowing here. Again. It’s getting old.)

I did order a few books on housewifery, and they should be here tomorrow. So my next entry will probably include a review, if they’re worth even mentioning. (One of them I got last time? “How to Not Be a Desperate Housewife” by someone or other. And it was horrible. I mean, not even worth the trees that died to print it. Stereotypical, and in places, downright offensive. I was really thinking that this woman should probably stick to the laundry, but then I realized that she’s probably got someone else doing it for her. It was frustrating, but at least it was short. It’s gone now, thankfully. I didn’t even want it in my house.)

But to end on a positive note: I LOVE that the kitchen’s getting some attention now. And I got a bolt I needed to start biking on the bike trainer again, so that’s going to help my overall energy level….which means I’ll be able to get more of the housewifey-stuff done, too.

It’s amazing to me how everything affects everything else in this life.

Off to watch movies with my man! (He’s watching some horror movie that I’d never watch if he wasn’t there. :>)

This is a bad picture, I know.  I apologize, greatly.  The midwest has been under a ginormous cloud for about the past week and a half, and I was getting tired of waiting for sunlight to take pictures, so the picture above was taken without flash under a whole lot of indoor lights that make it look all kinds of crazy.  But the intent’s there, and you can kind of get the gist of what I’m talking about here.

See, over on Ravelry.com, there’s this fabulous group I think I mentioned before, called “Reclaiming the Home”.  (If you’re a knitter, don’t skip Ravelry because you think it’s too trendy or too much of a timesuck.  I mean, it IS a timesuck, but some of the gems include a whole lot of organizational tools and groups like RtH where you can get TONS of information on things that you wouldn’t really associate with knitting per se.  Sooooo worth the wait for an invite.  Seriously, people….)

On the RtH group, someone posted this fabulous meme, full of questions about homekeeping and wifely goodness.  I thought about posting it intact, but many of the answers deserved their own entries.  So in an effort to post more often, I’m going to go through them here, and try to incorporate some new habits in the process.

 Question A:  Aprons, y/n?

I love aprons.  No, seriously.  But I love them on a kind of abstract level.  Like, I love the IDEA of aprons.  I love the function of an apron.  I really love vintage aprons, especially the ones intended to be used on a daily basis, and the ones for showing off when company comes over.

I don’t USE aprons, though.  It’s kind of sad, really.  I have this collection of vintage aprons, some from my mom’s mom, and some from various flea markets and thrift stores, and they’re all sitting in a drawer, folded nicely and waiting for me to get my head out of my tail-end.

The problem is that I’m not a small girl.  So while the ties fit, the waist-aprons (the kind I have) cut me off right in the middle, and hang down all funny, like it’s just shade for my legs.  It’s the same reason I don’t wear full skirts — just either short ones or pencil-skirts that cling to me from the hip down, since my hips and legs are pretty darn good, but that belly has to go.  That kind of thing.

The one in the picture up there is my favorite “for showing” apron in my collection.  It’s sheer-ish.  Chocolate brown.  Long ties that hang off a decorative bow in the back.  (For me, it’s off the back.  For skinny girls, it’d probably wrap around back to the front and tie, to be honest.)  The band of cotton in the front has five rows of rick-rack — three chocolate brown to match the rest, and two contrasting bright aqua strips.  And I *love* chocolate and aqua.  My whole house would be some variation of those two if I could get away with it.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to try to use my aprons.  Not this one, since it’s for company, more than utility.  But one of the 1950’s cotton ones that are obviously well-used and were well-loved while in other hands — those would be practical.  And since I’m doing a fair bit of baking tomorrow, it seems like an apt time to try them out, both for nostalgia and for practicality.

So I guess the answer to the meme question would technically be no, I don’t wear aprons.  But I do love them, and WILL be wearing them, so I’m good with a tenative yes.

Somewhere, in the middle of the most reptilian part of my brain, I’ve got a notion of the Ideal House.

Most of the time, that notion is relatively well-behaved.  It realizes that I only have so many hours in each day, and that if I have any hope of ever finishing any project EVER, I’ve got to prioritize those projects.  (Sadly, I keep letting my job get in the way, but that’s another struggle for another day’s blogging.)  It waits patiently, and lets me coo little platitudes at it.  Things like don’t worry, I can create you one little bit at a time…, or if I just made some time to do this thing or that thing, then I’d be able to bring you to life…   My notion goes on with its notioning (whatever it is when notions do when you’re not actively working on them or with them) and I go on with the INSANE CRAZY THAT IS MY LIFE SOMETIMES.

Every now and again, though, my Notion gets all capitalized and uppity.  It refuses to sit quietly in the back like a star pupil, but instead becomes the village know-it-all and sits in the front lobe of my brain, waving its hand and grunting that IT KNOWS THE ANSWER!  PICK ME!  CALL ON MEEEEE!

Apparently, my Notions are seven years old, and well-read.

Anyway…

The holidays are a catalyst for my inner uppity Notion.  Add to the holiday idea that I just had a giant success at work.  Like, giant, giant.  Huge.  One that will mean a lot more money for my family.  A good thing, at least for a while.  So I have even less time to devote to this Notion Of An Ideal House than I did before.

Oooh, the Notion…   The Notion did not approve.  The Notion has been trying to catch up on her blog reading today, and has come away thinking that if I can just finish this gift for my in-laws, I could TOTALLY make a bunch of holiday ornaments, garlands, an advent calendar, pick up some festive lights and a real Christmas tree this year (we have only a small little 3′ thing that’s totally not in-scale with the rest of our house), and make all my holiday gifts.  And with my free time after that, I can read all those books I’ve been saving (and collecting.  let’s be honest here: my yarn stash is nothing compared with my book stash, which is hideously insane and almost obscene.), AND make a bunch of cookies to hand out.  Oh, and whip up some holiday cards with handwoven pins as the front image.

Um.

Notion?

YOU ARE KILLING ME HERE.

I’m back to the issue of Balance in my wifely pursuit now.  I waste a lot of time every day; I know this.  But I need that creative recharge time to, well, creatively recharge.  Or my brain implodes and I become one of those Scary People you see wandering the malls at closing time, staring blankly at anything with a price tag and trying to rationalize giving her mother-in-law a belt sander for Christmas because the sweater she was trying to knit for her just wasn’t happening.

I’ve been collecting Housewifery books for a while now, and all of them tell me that I need to put my home and marriage (and children, were there any) first, and worry about everything else second.  And I can see that.  I can see that there are major changes ahead if I continue on the course I’m on.  (In the new year?  I’m finally quitting smoking.  I bought the patch already.  I’m serious about it this time.  And I’m picking up a bike trainer.  If I can’t be back home in the Northwest, I can at least bike in my living room and pretend.  It’s time to do something about the fact my pants no longer fit.)

And I think the biggest change is going to be allocating my time more toward my uppity Notion.  Building my house the way I want it, to facilitate more Calm and Peace here (instead of “Chaos” and “Dog Hair Encrusted”, which it kind of emanates now.).  That means my job is going to be taking a bit of a backburner, in a sense, but in a way that will allow me to complete the essentials and still focus on Other Things.  (Right now, it’s all Job, literally all the time.  Soooo not working.)

Looks like I may have finally called on the smart kid in the back of the room.

I’m still not sure about the tree.  We’ll see.