Someone tell me that it is not only a good idea to donate the 4+ years of Elle Decor magazine that I have stacked under my bed, but that evil will befall me if I don't! I don't know why I keep holding on to them -- I NEVER look at them. Bah!
I have yet to find the perfect Sunday, February 26th, 2006 Cleaning Music. So far busts include: PJ Harvey (too late-night), Badly Drawn Boy (too annoying). The only plus has been Fiona Apple (Extraordinary Machine), but I don't want to wear myself out on it while sweeping and sorting. Maybe I'll resort to the old Sgt. Pepper trick where I put it on and clean maniacally for the 30 or so minutes it takes to play. Except I am involved in slightly heavier-duty work than that. Maybe I will find some old mix CD or something. Did I mention that the theme of the afternoon is Bah! ? What I need to do is get some speakers for my iPod and just play that. Or... d'oh! I can just WEAR my iPod. Or put on Blur. Blur might work. The obvious lesson here is that cleaning makes you stupid. Maybe if I just start looking at this as the 2006 Spring Cleaning Extravaganza, it will seem less tedious... doubtful, but maybe.
Something I would vote for if given the chance: Clean once a year, but do it really, really well and everything will stay clean all year long with no further effort from the person who did the start-of-year cleaning. That seems fair, right?
I have yet to find the perfect Sunday, February 26th, 2006 Cleaning Music. So far busts include: PJ Harvey (too late-night), Badly Drawn Boy (too annoying). The only plus has been Fiona Apple (Extraordinary Machine), but I don't want to wear myself out on it while sweeping and sorting. Maybe I'll resort to the old Sgt. Pepper trick where I put it on and clean maniacally for the 30 or so minutes it takes to play. Except I am involved in slightly heavier-duty work than that. Maybe I will find some old mix CD or something. Did I mention that the theme of the afternoon is Bah! ? What I need to do is get some speakers for my iPod and just play that. Or... d'oh! I can just WEAR my iPod. Or put on Blur. Blur might work. The obvious lesson here is that cleaning makes you stupid. Maybe if I just start looking at this as the 2006 Spring Cleaning Extravaganza, it will seem less tedious... doubtful, but maybe.
Something I would vote for if given the chance: Clean once a year, but do it really, really well and everything will stay clean all year long with no further effort from the person who did the start-of-year cleaning. That seems fair, right?
Sometimes you have to take an intermediate step to get rid of something! For example a "trial separation" always leads to the real thing! It's just easier to get to than "breaking up". On my way to recycling all old bills and statements, I went through a brief period of scanning and filing them all on my hard drive. That turned into such a PITA that I was able to just shred/recycle them without a thought. Maybe you need to start going through your magazines and tearing out the pages you want to use in art projects or stapling together and filing the articles you want to save. Soon you'll probably find this to be so annoying you'll be happy to ditch the whole stack!
ReplyDeleteI am also a proponent of the Once-A-Year Cleaning!
As always, you make sense! In the case of the magazines, I like to think that the 2 years they've been sitting under my bed have been our trial separation. We are SO BREAKING UP now. I'll take them to the Title Wave and somebody will be happy to find them, so I don't have to feel guilty like I'm putting them in the garbage.
ReplyDeleteI've just reached that point -- I am so tired of all this stuff. I know with as much as I talk about it, it seems impossible that I'm making any progress at all, but I think I am. Slowly. I just feel like I'm stuck in mud until I get it taken care of. But I'll get there!
I know just what you mean - I get exasperated by my stuff all the time! Maybe it's something about being in ones mid-thirties that makes one crave simplicity. Or maybe we're just sick to death of cleaning and less stuff will make that process less painful!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it's one of those two things! maybe both.
ReplyDelete