Tag: cleaning

One Down…

by eileentroemel, posted in Life

This week a friend came over to spend the morning helping me get my living room cleaned and organized.  Things got shifted, cleaned and rearranged.  The living room looks wonderful!  I’m very pleased and can’t thank my friend enough for helping me.

My stress level goes down every time something gets organized.  When I can move through the house and not be banging into things, I feel better and less stressed.  Now I have to work on the other rooms.

In my office I have a bookshelf which has random stuff all over it.  There’s no organization and in reality, I’m not sure what the heck is on there.  In the closet, I want to make a shipping center so when I have a package to send out, I can go in there and easily find what I’m looking for.  There’s three or four boxes of genealogy stuff to go through.

Genealogy always takes longer.  I started with a stack of papers less than an inch thick.  It took me two hours and I didn’t get all the way through.  It’s a lot of data to process, research to do and then where does it get put?  I have a file cabinet full of folders by last name.  If I have a folder, it’s easy enough to file.  If I don’t have a file, it gets more complicated.

Some of the work I can do on my own.  I need to start sorting through what is on the shelves and figure out what to do with it.  The closet I’m going to need help.  My biggest frustration is I used to tackle a room and get it done in a day or less.  Now with my limitations I struggle to get through a day unless I have someone else to help me.  I keep reminding myself, I can only do what I can do.

Fun Versus Work

by eileentroemel, posted in Crochet and crafting, Life

I have the feeling I’m going to be struggling with balancing out the need to have down time while I also have a long long list of things to get done.

Things I want to get done include:

  • going through the garage and organizing all the things out there including bringing in the last of Vicki’s belongings 
  • going through the back porch and organizing all the things we are storing there for the sale
  • cleaning and organizing the craft room
  • finish setting up the closet type space in the family room so the coats, scarves, etc aren’t tossed on the couch
  • finish cleaning the office
  • publishing and writing tasks
  • cleaning the basement (i.e. arguing with my husband about not keeping everything)
  • getting ready for the rummage sale I want to have 
Now there is enough here to keep us busy for several weekends.  I’m aware of this but for some reason, I want to get all this stuff done so we should work on it all weekend.  Right?  Nope.  I know perfectly well I’ll be lucky to finish one of these tasks.  
It may be a three day weekend but it’s also a pay weekend which means there are all the errands which go along with getting paid.  I have stuff to go to the post office.  Grocery shopping and other errands need to be run.  We have a family wedding to attend.  Preparations have to be done for next week and all of us going to work.  
On the fun side, I’d love to go to a movie or spend a day crocheting and watching movies (or both).  I’m well aware all three of us work hard during the week and need to have some down time on the weekends to recharge our batteries.  
Realistically, I’m hoping to accomplish one or two things on my list.  With the extra day, we might be able to accomplish something in addition to the normal weekend tasks like laundry, grocery shopping, and errands.  I’m crossing my fingers and trying to not be cranky about it.  

Organizing or Writing?

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

I have absolutely no motivation for cleaning my office.  I worked on it on Friday when I got done with work and got through a couple of piles but gave up once Ken got home.  I’ve sorted and resorted.  I need to make decisions and get things organized but mostly I look at the piles and think I’d rather be writing.

I have these great intentions of getting through all the mess and getting it organized.  I’ve bought the right things to help me with this but somehow I am still struggling with getting the work done.  My mind wanders from where do I want this to whatever scene I’m writing and pretty soon I’m off writing rather than organizing.

Today I’m going to attempt to work on cleaning.  Reality is my office will probably still be a mess and I’ll wander off to work on one of the stories I’ve been writing.  I am struggling with one large scene which involves several villages and about two hundred characters (not all named) and I know some of the people on the good side are going to have to die.  There are so many questions in my head about who, what, where, when and so on that I’ve not been able to put it down on paper.

I did map out how the villages and encampment look.  They are ridiculously horrible.  However, it gives me a visual and I’ll spread out these maps to figure out how I’ll be using them once I’m writing the scene.

I’ve also been playing with a character development which may be turning into an actual story.  It seems like every time I wake up or put it away another scene or a fix to where I’m at comes to mind.  I currently have five manuscripts that I’ve finished writing.  I will shift them to the editing phase but I need a bit of time to be able to edit thoroughly.  If I edit too soon, I get more involved with writing than I do with actual editing.

This is why I get distracted from cleaning and organizing.  It is much more interesting to work on the writing then it is to work on the cleaning.  I have to get both done and stop stalling I guess.  Anyone want to take bets on which will get done today?  Stop laughing – I know it will be more writing than organizing.  

My Home Office

by eileentroemel, posted in Life
My husband is amazing.  I grumble about him and how he annoys me as is normal when you’ve been together as long as we have.  However, yesterday he helped me in our office.  He worked on clearing out so we could rearrange.  He did all the moving, lifting, putting together, and all the physical stuff I can’t do.  He helped with sorting and organizing. 
Friday we went to Shopko and got two pieces of furniture – both of which were on sale.  Each one was supposed to be $100 but the two on sale ended up being $90.  We also got canvas boxes to go on the shelves that were on sale for either $4 or $5 instead of $10. 
Ken cleaned out the shelves in the closet and took down two of the shelves.  He moved the two file cabinets into the closet so they were not taking up space in the room but still very accessible.  The closet area got cleared out but we still need to figure out what is going where in the closet – other than the two file cabinets and containers of genealogy stuff. 
Ken assembled the two shelving units we got and I put the baskets in them.  As I was sorting through things in the office I realized I wanted two more small baskets for the smaller shelves and I was going to need the organizational stuff for the cubes.  We went out and got what was needed.  I think we ran out of steam.
Today I’m going to tackle the office again and see how much progress I can make on it.  The file cabinet drawers need a good clearing out as well as organizing all the stuff I want on the shelves.  I think that will be the focus but I’m not going to push too much for doing a lot – afterall it is the weekend.  

Time Sucks…

by eileentroemel, posted in Life
There are just some activities that suck up your time.  You say “I’m only going to spend ten minutes on…” and then suddenly it is hours later and you are still on that site. 
This week while I’m home alone all day I have certain goals – mostly to work on cleaning my office.  This means while I am checking emails and so on I have to avoid sites like Ravelry, Pinterest, and Facebook if I’m to accomplish anything at all. 
Don’t get me wrong I LOVE wandering around these sites.  I find inspiration and laughter and a lot more on the sites.  However, I lose time like it is leaking through a sieve.  If I want to accomplish stuff I have to not look at those sites. 
The other thing that sucks up my time is the Kindle Fire that was just handed down to me.  I’ve been setting it up and removing things from the carousel.  I like the format but Kindle missed the mark when they didn’t allow you to put things in folders on the Fire – now if anyone knows how to do that – they should let me know. 
Along with setting things up I’ve been playing games on the Fire.  Backgammon, word games, Phase 10, Skipbo, and so many more are on there, and last night I spent hours playing backgammon, and others.  I will not be touching it today as I have too much to do. 
I have a crochet to do list and the other tasks in the office I want to get done.  Since my gout is bugging me today, it will likely be a crochet day.  I have a long list of what I need to do for crocheting.  If I can’t accomplish one goal, I’ll work on the others.
However, I will be avoiding those damn time sucks as they steal away all my good time so I cannot get done the things I want to get done – even if they are fun to spend time doing.