The Lost Cause

[hwango]

My room is full of junk. This is hardly news, but it's something that's reinforced painfully every time I embark on one of these cleaning missions. This time, I'm attempting to reacquire the use of a few drawers that are A) Full of useless things and B) Inaccessible. It seems to me that if I can dispose of the contents and then relocate the stuff blocking them (which is stuff I actually wish to keep), things will improve. I could even (and this is crazy) put the things CURRENTLY BLOCKING THE DRAWERS INSIDE THE DRAWERS. The madness.

But, back to the hopeless part - I just spent about 90 minutes simply moving things out of the room in question. Nothing organized, sorted, cleaned, or anything - just relocated. This has created only the tiniest dent in the heaps of stuff. It will probably take at least twice as long just to figure out what to keep and where to put it. And all that putting it back will accomplish is to block access to other stuff that should get similar treatment.

What I really need is another room twice the size in which to put EVERYTHING, sort it all out, and then put back only that which I wish to keep, packed efficiently. And then, of course, the buckets of time needed to perform this massive undertaking. What I actually have is a space about a tenth that size, and only a couple of days in which to use it. Sigh.

On the plus side, I stumbled across a long-forgotten tiny box of Magic cards that said it contained Unlimited edition commons and lands. In theory, this would be worthless, except Sinkhole was originally printed as a common, and there were two of them in there. A minty fresh Sinkhole runs about $28 these days, so finding them was a nice little surprise.

Comments

[one-time-pad.livejournal.com]

This is why I bought a house: it's a customizable box for all my stuff.
But then, I do regular sweeps and stash things gathering dust in the attic ... and then I donate things to charity that I haven't used in two years. ;-)

<== is strongly anti-clutter.
<== recommends judicious use of a shovel.
<== has relatives that could be on those "Hoarding" t.v. shows, and takes violent steps to stay ahead of the curve, so take what he says with a grain of salt.

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

While you're trying to clean, put four boxes against wall outside door. Trash, recycling, donate, and wash. (If you can fit them IN the room with you, even better) If you have enough space, smaller boxes labeled with other locations in the house like "garage, kitchen" etc. or by a task/hobby like "magic cards, art supplies" before you take any of the rest of the stuff past that point, eye those boxes and see what can go in them. it'll help trim the pile down some before you just relocate it to temporary location. and even if you don't have time to sort the smaller boxes and put them actually AWAY, you've at least started the process of grouping like to like.

[gunthersdncemix.livejournal.com]

Yes. I'm still doing this, but it helps.

Also, *lots of hugs*

It was really nice to see you the other day too :)