Thursday, October 15, 2009

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.

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