project updates : : small springclean shock

So I took a day off from the storage room springcleaning. The plan was to invest my time in some office and product strategy brainwork today and I was really looking forward to it. Instead, I woke up (yes, I literally did) to breaking news that guests were coming tonight, which threw my househelper and I into a state of panic as we had to somehow move my springcleaning HQ to some other place in the house (because it's in an open area diagonally next to the main door)...or tear it down altogether.

Knowing that there was no other place that would be able to house everything at HQ, the only solution was to break the place and all its items down into chunks of items - all items that are in pending and waiting to be bought was to be pushed back into the storage room (that I just cleared!) and everything else into my room. In the morning, I helped with moving things around before I rushed out of the house to the office, but when I got back, I could help but gasp at the state of my room. As so:

The sight brought with it an instant... I would say "headache" but I don't quite get headaches so easily... anyway, the effect was the same - shocking! I was so stressed out, I ate a whole pack of dark chocolate covered almonds from the fridge (yes, the yummy Van Houten ones... which I REFUSE to pay more than $2 for...I decided that on the day they raised the price last year to a disgusting $4.30 a pack! They're around $2.40 now, but that's still disgustingly expensive. I believe NTUC is having a sale on them for $1.95 now.) Okay, I digressed.

But yes, I was VERY stressed out by the whole trauma of the clutter taking over my room. I'm too shy to even show you the state of the landing. 0_o


I'm currently reading a book now called "The House that Cleans Itself" by Mindy Starns Clark and I've found it really great so far. A lot of her organizing and cleaning philosophies and strategies are similar to mine. (I guess reading it almost felt a little bit like talking/listening to a kindred spirit. :)) Thing is, there was one thing that she mentioned about spaces in a home in regard to stress that I found really interesting - that amongst all the areas in a house, there is always one particular space that specifically gets to us if it's messy. Why I'm saying this? Because it's pretty true of me, except that I have two - my table, and that cabinet on the landing - and today, both of them were in states that irked me so bad.

The good thing is that I took action (I didn't get a chance to take a photo of the table though):

New storage solutions used, things that didn't belong weeded out, drawers labelled, and a new space for travel things created (in the space that used to house alcohol. Most of the bottles were moved downstairs with the rest of them).

The bad thing, is that I had a bajillion other things to do and some things had to give - including missing a meeting that I planned to go to tonight that I completely forgot about in my task-focus. Looking at all the work I had to do tonight, I decided that travelling out was too much of a hassle and I just wouldn't be able to squeeze out enough time for it without sacrificing sleep - which is precious to the work that awaits me tomorrow, so I passed. Turned out, they were planning to celebrate my birthday. :(


I think I need to learn new strategies of organizing my time, especially during this crazy busy period. Can't wait for the day I finish the new projects and take that picture of completely empty storage rooms.


Tomorrow's going to be another day of clearing out the storage area. Wading through boxes of items in all sorts of conditions, dust and all, I swear gloves are one of Man's greatest inventions.


Will be opening the freecycle album over the next two days.
In the meantime, do check out the new garage sale album.

motivational mondays & goals : : relishing in the elephant

How do you eat a whole elephant?

One bite at a time.

First Floor

Second Floor

As you can see, I've gone and done it. I've broken up the elephant into little pieces. Or rather, I've illustrated my house down to every main piece of furniture that we own, as well as the organizational state it's currently in. Technically, we also have a little bit of a gardening space outside, but I figure that can wait till the inside is in order.

The goal? 

Simply to get everything into the green.

This week's goal will be to conquer project one - including our dresser and tweaking some other parts of our room. There's much to do...

One bite at a time. 

As long as I keep taking little bites, I'm sure the elephant will be out of the way and that the house will be clean and well-organized in no time.

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Post-edit:

I just realized that I forgot to include this week's article for motivational Mondays! Whoops, silly me. Obviously, this week it's about task-completion.

Enjoy: "Done: Reduce Task Friction to Get to Task Completion"

P/S: In efforts to save the Earth, I'm temporarily no longer printing out the articles to put on the door. Instead, I'm going to try to use other media to send the articles - such as email, or simply linking it here for them. Whether or not they actually take the effort to read it is a different thing... this is going to be a month-long test. Will review this in a month.

Remember! Conquering a whole mile starts with a single step.

One bite at a time. :)

project one : : our new dressing table

So after two weeks of stress in not being able to do any organizing, I took some time out today to finally get something done. 


After a quick trip down to Ikea, we found our dressing table. It was slim, had a drawer and had a clean design - just the way we wanted it. And just to prove that girls can do manly things too, I decided to put it together all by myself.

Hello challenge.

It looked pretty achievable...

Yes, with the help of Ikea's DIY manual.

Okay, maybe this was a bit daunting:

But I was determined!

Not to mention that I was quite in awe of some of the types of screws they had... Like these:

It took me a while to figure some parts out, but within an hour of trying to match the picture to the actual bits... Hey presto!

Hello New Dressing Table!

What a difference it is compared to the state that this corner was in a week ago...

Now to get all our girly stuff together, put in some mirrors, perhaps a small whiteboard for happy notes...and we'll be ready to get pretty!

project one : : shelf update

Here was how the health of our tall shelf was:

Clutter galore.

(I think I should start a counter of how many times I use this phrase)

And here is how it is now...

The organization of the shelves have changed - including a full shelf each for the sisters, and a full language shelf. The vanity things have also been moved away to make space for the administrative things. More books will be cleared away when we come to the book-edition of Thursday Treats (i.e. the day I go through the family library and see what we can give away). I'll suppose I have to schedule that soon.

And now to work on the other side of the room which is quite a big mess now with all the furniture and item shifting. There are a few processes that will need to be smoothed out, but it will be accomplished soon enough! :)

And just to give you a glimpse of the task ahead. here's my sister's new space... (Yes, this was taken on one of her messiest of nights since moving into the new space).

And Yes, that's a ton of things spilling onto her bed - which means she needs more space for her paperwork/books. I shall need to find some for her. We shall have to factor this into the choice of the vanity table which will be placed diagonally behind her.

And here's the big table with a bajillion things.

This is also the area for our akan datang vanity table.

Observing the things beginning to be left here are giving me clues to the needs of this area - such as the need for a place for my sisters to put their bags/purses. I just hope I'll be able to find a good solution to our needs.

Alright, Slow and steady...

One item at a time.

project one : : wardrobe update

You know there are days where you realize that photos are very powerful motivational tools? 

Well, today was such a day for me.

From this:

Clothes are jumbled up, bags are squished, and a bajillion and one things crushed everywhere.

To this:

The clothes are organized by type, colour and height.

Things that did not belong in this area were removed and brought to new "homes".

The area on top of the drawers looked like this:

As you can see the things that don't belong, squished bags, lots of other squished things...

And now it looks like this:

All our bags are now sorted into 2 of those 3 drawers. 

The top drawer is for bandanas, scarves and caps. 

The second drawer is for small bags, purses and clutches.

The large drawer is for larger bags.

Here's a look at one of the drawers:

No more pulling everything in and out and not knowing where everything is. 

Happiness!

A tool that I found very handy in organizing this area was a belt organizer from Ikea

It's pretty isn't it? To think our previous storage "solution" was a square rattan basket! You have no idea how frustrating it was trying to pull everything out to find that one particular belt all jumbled in the basket. Now we can see exactly what we want, and know how to get it specifically and easily, as well as how to put it back (which is important for a sustainable system). 

Simple.

The insides of the wooden drawers look a lot better now too...but I don't think it's appropriate to post underpants on anything public - even online..especially online. I mean, I even feel strange just seeing them hung out to dry on those bamboo poles. It's just strange seeing women's lingerie out in the open like that. Eww.

Anyway...


There's just one bag of belts (that white bag you see) and a box of scarves that we have to deal with, and we'll be done with this area. 
Hurrah! 

Cost of making the wardrobe a better place:

Ikea plastic drawer unit ($40)

Ikea belt organizers ($0, because we have had this lying around unused  for a while)

Ikea drawer oeganizers (that I used inside the drawers) ($12.95)

Total expenditure: $52.95 

For all the saved grunts, frustration and time, that's definitely worth it.

Goal Setting Sunday

So I'm starting a new job later today (yes I am!) and I'm both completely nervous and excited about it. It's a 5.5 day week job which means that I'm going to have less time to work on the projects, but I suppose we just have to work in smaller chunks. 

Goal for this week:

1.To finish up the organization of this mess

(which actually looks a lot better now..but I'm going to leave it a surprise till it's properly done up)

2. To completely get the tall shelf organized (you can see it pictured here), and

3. To get our new vanity table bought and set up.

It's a lot of project one work this week. 

Looking forward to nice, accomplished, photos!

P/S The sisters and I have decided to get rid of the big white table so that we can get a vanity table in our room instead. I broke a little connector knob thingy off one of it's leg-planks though, but if you're willing to fix it, it might work for you. 

This is the only picture I have of it now.

It measures 59"(L) X 29"(B) X 30"(H). If you're interested, just leave a comment with your contact details, or drop me an email at springcleangirl@gmail.com. The earlier it's claimed, the earlier we can get our vanity table! :)

Goal Setting Sunday

So I've started on reorganizing the room, and so far, after breaking a table and creating a miniature flood in the room (I could literally sink my fingers into half an inch of water all over the floor!) which destroyed some paper-based things that were on the floor, I have lived to say that I did not expect organizing to be so...dramatic.

I would post up photos of the flood if I actually had pictures, but there's just something about having a table break, crash into the floor, knock over a whole bucket of water, and seeing the fast moving flood of water quickly being absorbed into all sorts of things, that makes you just not think of stopping to take a picture.

This is all I have to show from the incident:

Yes, that's a part of the table that broke.

It doesn't look like much here, but this whole board was not connected to the table before this. However, with the help of my amazing househelper, we managed to kinda fix it back together. But as it is right now, any random kick to this board holding the table up would send it crashing down again. I suppose it's a good excuse to get rid of the big fella...

But even after the events of the past week, I'm still more than ever determined to keep going at the goal of a beautiful organized home! :)

So it's Sunday, and today's the day I set goals for the week ahead so that I don't lose sight (and motivation) of the end-goal. This week I'm going to be continuing on the girls' room. I'm gonna have to tackle a couple of big things including:

Our amazing(-ly messy) open-concept wardrobe...

I know it looks like a mess, but what you see is basically a system that doesn't work.

What especially annoys me in this area are the bags that are put into a flimsy cloth-mesh sort of laundry basket we bought from Ikea. As you can (kinda-sorta) see here:

The mesh laundry bag is actually pretty, but the assualt that the bags have on it obviously shows a wrong choice of container! We can't access the bags. We can't even see what we have! And just thinking about digging through that pile to find a matching bag is absolutely stressful! We're going to have a get a better system for this.

I'm thinking drawers.

Other things that you see in the main picture are a futon that we don't use at all (one of my mum's random "in case we have guests" buys), and my new Nike shoes that I bought from the Outlet Mall in Aurora, Illinois! :) But these are not supposed to be here! :( So the futon and the shoes will have to make their way to some other part of the house where they'll belong. There's also a random mix of other things stored in the strangest of containers back there - including a whole bag of old belts my mum used to have, my fencing gear, and some other things that I'm sure are to give me the "Oh! I never knew/forgot I had this"-es!

I'm not even going to show you what the insides of the drawers look like now.

Yes, for the sake of your heart.

This table will also need some sort of new life:

Yes, this is also the one I broke.

Sometime yesterday, my sisters and I agreed to get rid of this table and find a piece of furniture for a vanity area instead. I'll have to think about what to do with all those files and random things all over it though. Getting rid of the table doesn't make what it currently houses disappear.

This tall shelf by the toilet will also need to be cleared out.

I technically once did develop a system for this shelf (I'm especially proud of my Language shelf), but looking at the state of it, we're obviously lacking space for our toiletries. I also have a ton of things from my travels and from friends who buy me the most amazing stuff...will need to find a space for them too. Prolly going to be giving/selling some of those books/items away.

I might embark on a new project in another area of the house tomorrow as well. Really looking forward to it.

Organizing thought of the day:

In psychology, we have a term for blame-naming called the "fundamental attribution error" which basically means that you blame a circumstance or behaviour on the intrinsic nature of a person. For example, in the case of a messy environment, you choose to say "Oh, he/she is a messy person" instead of considering the environmental factors that might have encouraged this behaviour. I used to think this way a lot about my family which caused me a lot of discouragement, but as I researched into psychological illnesses such as hoarding behaviours, and in observing the lifestyles of messy people, I've found that the causation may well be the other way round - that it is not the person that creates the mess in the environment, but the environment that might encourage the person to be messy.

Okay, let's make it simple. Let's say I put you into two environments - a neighbourhood coffeeshop and a 6-star hotel. Immediately, as you think about these places, you can very quickly know what sort of behaviours would be acceptable in both circumstances. You'd carry yourself very differently in these two places wouldn't you? You probably wouldn't care as much If you dropped a piece of tissue paper on the coffeeshop floor, compared to dropping it on the pristine floors of a well-maintained 6-star hotel. Environment influences behaviour.

It's a simple case of reframing. If you see a messy area in your home, don't be so quick to make the fundamental attribution error and blame it on the intrinsic nature of the "mess-causing" person. When you blame the nature of a person, it's almost as good as saying "there's nothing I can do about it" and "I just have to accept the person for the way he/she is, and live with it". But what if it was the environment that encouraged the messy behaviour? It may well be that your storage "solutions" may not quite have been the best choices. It's as simple as why a ring file is better than a shoebox to store papers any day.

Take a look at the area and the usage of the area, consider what is encouraging the behaviour, and whether there's a better storage solution to the problem. Sometimes it might be as simple as turning a piece of furniture around, or even getting rid of random storage bins that you don't really need lying around to tempt people to throw things in.

project one : : the girls' room

Finally, the commencement of Project 1: The girls' room.

So I figured that the best place to start would be in a place that would set an example for the rest of the family - my room. Supressed, resigned angst of living in the same room with two very messy sisters, I've had several frustrations with the layout of my room and all the clutter that has been building up. Though three of us live very different lives (the youngest in university, the older sister working, and me...figuring out my life), they're all just as hectic...which very often becomes a quick excuse for being messy. And worse so, when the environment supports mess-creation.

I, however, am on a mission! A mission to minimize such behaviour (and the consequences of mess and general upsetness of disorganized lives) by simply changing the environment so that it'd work for us fuss-free (and fRussTRATION free).

So this is my problem (challenge, whatever):

Please excuse the amateur not-to-scale plan. But this actually is a layout of my room. I don't know if you can understand it, but there are two doors (indicated by two parallel short lines) and a long window (this is the blue rectangle). The purple rectangles are the beds and the rest of the squares and rectangular objects in the room are other bits of furniture.

Today, I tackle the layout of the two tables and shelf in the main area bedroom space - belonging to my siblings. Currently, the layout completely doesn't work for us for two main reasons: i) as you can see, the door doesn't open fully (as indicated by the big red arrow). It's seriously annoying to have the door bang into the shelf behind it every time we open it, or to have it restricted to a width of nothing more than a person to get through. Not to mention how irritating it can get when we want to access items hung behind the door! ii) the tables are not placed in a way where they can both be utilized at any time. The space between the beds and the tables are too cramped. In fact, the larger table by the window is a "dead table" which currently serves no purpose except for lots of clutter-accumulation.

Here are some pictures of what they currently look like so you can have a rough idea of what I'm dealing with. Caution: Get ready to be annoyed...

Here's my door that can't be opened fully (watch that blood pressure!):

And here's the table by the window:

And this is how close it is to the beds...
Yes, the things below the table doesn't make it a very desirable table to sit at either...

And now for the head-on reality that we're dealing with:

Yes, as you can see...clutter galore.

But they're nothing that cannot be overcome with a bit of brain work and perseverance! :)

As I thought through the working and sleeping patterns of the sisters, I tried to find something that would work for everyone and this is my plan now:

And these are just the two tables in the main area. I haven't gone into my own table (which is actually quite alright), but then there's the shelf next to it (which is also a holding area for our ridiculously messy vanity area), and our open-concept wardrobe that currently looks like this:

Yes, I believe you have the right to gasp.

I will be working on this room over the next few days, and hopefully have something good to show at the end of the week. Will my solutions work out? I suppose the measure of how well they'll work would be whether the clutter reappears again - of which I'll just have to think of something else that works for us.

In the meantime, might as well stay positive. :)

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Tip of the day:

When reorganizing your room, consider the usage habits of the people using them. You need to answer the questions "Who uses this?" "How often is it used?" "When is it used" and "What is it used for". For example, my younger sister's desk (the one closer to the door) is used for studying, and she uses her table more often. This activity of studying requires concentration and private space where people won't disturb her. Placing her desk close to the door wasn't a good idea as people will be walking in and out of the door all the time. She sometimes studies late into the night, so pushing her table all the way next to her bed would create a private space for her. Not to mention placing it facing the window would be good for study/computer breaks.

Also, ask yourself "What are the problems that this person is currently facing?" or "Is this the right furniture to serve this person's purposes?" There are sometimes very easy and cheap alternatives to create a more efficient system. Think of other furniture in the house that are currently underutilized and might help.

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