Posts Tagged ‘Organization’

Rollin’… rollin’… rollin’…

Sunday, September 7th, 2014

Quick note: I’m not a hoarder, this is what moving looks like. This is also a graphics heavy post.

In the deep recess of my mind I will always have the “I need to sit down and get this done” mentality. The reality of that, however, it just doesn’t freaking happen. I’ve deleted five posts that were sitting in drafts over the course of the past few months. I’m to a point in my life where I’m really just too bored with things to even care about them. I always find a way to side track myself just to get away from the task at hand. This is killing me on all levels because I feel like I don’t actually complete anything from start to finish in the usual time frame.

Last month Sean and I headed up to New York because he had an appointment in Manhattan, and we hadn’t been up there in well over a year so we were doing double-duty on this trip by getting my childhood bedroom packed up so we could move everything into the house. I wanted to get up there earlier, but I also wanted to get the new house settled a little bit before there would be complete and total chaos with new stuff. I’m actually happy I did it this way because the end result of unloading the truck into the living room put my OCD about keeping things clean into a tail spin.

As you can see from the photo below, the living room and dining room were covered in boxes and bags and just fabric everywhere. It took me a solid 3 days to get everything where it was supposed to go.  Literally, three days, 8-10 hour days a piece. Books were put on the shelves, furniture was moved to the rooms they actually belonged in, DVD’s and Games were put away, shelves were hung in the hall closet to accommodate the extra jackets, winter gear, and even board games (that I had no idea I had a stock-pile of) and then all of the clothes somehow wound up inside of MY closet. This is primarily because it’s a 8-foot by 8-foot room and there was enough space on the floor, and enough height with the shelves that I could actually get the boxes into the shelves.

cleanhouse

So this is ultimately how the house looked after a solid 3 days of busting my ass. And even though the mess of stuff didn’t actually wind up in the den initially, since I was on a cleaning rampage anyway – I went a head and not only rearranged the furniture in the den, but cleaned and organized it from top to bottom as well.

den

Bella now has her own little corner by the doors, I needed this to happen because I wasn’t able to close the glass doors with the way the furniture previously was formatted. So I had to move Sean to his own corner, which works out better for him because it’s right in front of the TV. Not many people believe that it’s a 70-inch television, but it is and it just looks super small up against the huge wall it’s on.

The closet was a different story.  I think since it’s in an area that doesn’t get a lot of daily foot traffic, I was able to keep it at the back of my mind… as well as at the back of the house. I had no ability to even really access the closet, because three weeks of laundry kind of piled up in front of it. Of course, after the laundry was done I still couldn’t get towards the shelves because of everything on the floor inside of the closet that needed to be sorted through and thrown away.  In the end, however, the final result makes me very happy. Note: The bathroom and closet are not green, they’re white…for some reason the tablet is randomly changing things to different colors.

closet

Another area we’re tackling is the kitchen.  I’ve been fairly unhappy with it since we moved in. The location of the island really cut down the proper use of the counter space. So, what we did was get rid of the island. Does this sound crazy? Sure, but we turned the island so that it is up against the wall instead of coming out from the wall. We then purchased two upper cabinets to hang above it, and cut the depth of the counter top so there is no longer the ability to put the barstools up against it. This isn’t something I’m worried about though, what we’re going to be doing on the other side of the kitchen is opening up the wall to have a picture window (that will allow for more light in the Living Room), we’ll be purchasing two lower cabinets to flank on either side of the bar stools that will now overlook the living room and fireplace. This area will more than likely be used for quick meals, or going through the mail, or just sitting down and having a cup of coffee.  Maybe if Sean and I ever decide that we’re ready for children this could eventually turn into a homework space. I don’t know… I just know that by opening things up into the Living Room/Dining Room it’ll just make the kitchen feel larger than it actually is.  In order to do the walls, however, I’ll have already needed to have countertops ready to go.  We’re replacing the butcher block look formica with a slate black color, I’ll need to purchase two counter tops to replace the existing ones, and then an additional one to put against the new wall. I’ll be painting all the cabinets white, putting in new flooring, and going with a grey tone on the walls.  I’ll have pictures of that in an upcoming post, this one was a little picture heavy and I’m personally not 100% happy with how the kitchen currently looks so obviously there’s nothing to show.

In any event, I actually finally sat down and got everything in my head written down. I am going to try for more posts, lord knows there’s enough going on that I want to blog about but at least for now the “I finally have 30 years of my life under ONE roof” post is finally complete.

I hate wires!

Sunday, July 14th, 2013

I wish I could understand why, even living in a wireless world, I can’t fricken escape them! I just spent the last two hours pretty much ripping every single wire out of the walls/surge protectors so I could properly reorganize.  With the addition of the new computer (had to purchase a Windows machine, clients were complaining about cross-browser/cross-platform crap) I was really crunched for space on my desk, and this is something I desperately need so I’m not stuck with the overflow of paperwork I seem to accumulate for some reason.  I wound up moving the tower to the shelf next to me but that then required the printer being moved to the shelf above me, and then anything that I had on that top shelf needed to move to one behind me (that Sean put up on the wall last night), and then I needed to drag wires from underneath the house so I could move the cable box. Thank god there was extra slack.  But for now, everything WIRE related is pretty much set on where it’s going.  The only issue is having to get all of the daily essentials reorganized since everything else was shifted around.

Even with an excessive amount of shelving I feel like I don’t have enough room to properly organize this room.  I’ll wholeheartedly admit that the bed is just way too damn big for the room, but when you factor in that Sean is in a completely different room for the entire day (his private office space) there’s really no reason why I can’t make things work in here.  The only thing he’s got in here is clothes for crying out loud.  Meanwhile I’m always sitting here looking at wires and crap that just needs to be put away and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out where it all freaking needs to go.

I really need a cup of coffee, that’s got to be why my brain isn’t working right now.  I haven’t even looked at my emails today, it’s Sunday I need a damn break. Tomorrow is a completely different story, I know that I’m already completely overloaded and I also know there’s more stuff coming in.

On the upside… I’m about 50% done with the new template for Krissy.nu, took me a few years but I’ll finally have something new up.  I wish I could go back to a time when there was a new theme every month and the main income was just from sponsored posting.  Can’t do that anymore, there’s just no damn time and sitting at a computer for any longer than I already do would drive me crazy and completely kill my back.

I think it’s time for that cup of coffee.

The Goals…continued

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

So there was a bit of a bump in the road last night that I certainly wasn’t expecting.  The ideas that I had for organization and shelving were a bust because of the size of the space located directly next to my desk.  The shelves we have on that side now are hanging over on the top of the hutch on the desk so it’s really not a wise choice to add more shelving below because that would require cutting compressed wood and that’s just never pretty.  So, instead we’re figuring out what to do with all of the other sections.

Our first step – the closet!  Sean is going through all of his clothes and seeing what he can throw out and what can be compressed down into a vacuum bag.  He really doesn’t wear all of the clothes he has and if he does it’s typically something he’ll wear seasonally (ie – the jackets) so he’s working on his side and I’ll go in and begin working on my side as well.

Instead of getting rid of the dresser I’m just going to better organize the one we have.  It would be great if I could find a taller one with just one more drawer in it but since that’s not going to happen there’s really nothing I can do about it (IKEA & Walmart were also a bust for shelving/cases).  I want to figure out a way to get the bucket-o-pajamas into another section of the room.  I’m thinking of a box under the bed or compressing the seasonal ones (you don’t need heavy fleece pants in the summer).  So that will cover that section.

Our desk is horrible.  It’s poorly organized and I was lucky enough to find some small low-profile bins to put on the shelves so that will instantly clean things up and that’s always a great thing for me.

So yea, it’s really not a matter of cleaning things up it’s just a matter of organizing things better.  The ultimate goal is to get all of our stuff out of the tub but I imagine with a new bed that’s higher off the ground I’ll just be able to fit the bins underneath and that will clean up a lot of the clutter.  So basically find a hidden hole and stick it in (but label it first) HA.

The Goals

Friday, April 17th, 2009

I haven’t really had the ability to sit down and work on anything for myself lately.  This weekend is going to change all of that as some kind of a design bug has bitten me and I have the itch to get a lot accomplished.

My ultimate goal for the weekend is to get everything in the bedroom 100% organized.  I intend to go to Home Depot and pick up the shelves that I need and I also intend to get myself over to Walmart to pick up the storage containers that I need as well.  Why? Because over the course of the next week I’ll be purchasing a larger bed so we can get Sean off of the floor and the organization will just seal the deal so we’ll actually have room to move around.  The closet will be organized, everything storage wise will be taken care of, a lot of junk will be thrown out and I’m even going to organize all the paperwork that is just kind of floating around the room.  It’s been a difficult transition when it comes to moving two rooms into one and while we’re using the bathroom for a lot of over-sized storage, I would ultimately like to even break that down quite a bit.  We can’t really use the shower anyway considering there are still no walls available but I’m sure it’ll al work itself out in the end once I get down to the nitty-gritty and take care of it all.

I’m hoping it only takes me the full day on Saturday.  If I can put in 9 hours at a job during the week a straight 9 hours of work in my room would certainly get the job done.  This gives me a whole window of opportunity when it comes to sitting down with my laptop on Sunday (in a nicely organized room) and finally doing something with my personal sites.  I need to put acidgloss.net back up because I’m losing advertising money.  I need to get a new template up on this site because I absolutely hate using free ones and for some reason my previous pink/white template just doesn’t want to work anymore.  So instead of using the one I designed over a year ago, I fully intend to start fresh and see what I can come up with that’s simple and colorful.

I’ll just cross my fingers that everything goes the way I’ve planned it this weekend.

Reorganized & Unhealthy

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

I know I haven’t updated in a while but it has a lot to do with how busy I’ve been for the past five/six days.  Karen and I were talking the other night in the kitchen, which is a typical thing for us, and the topic of clearing up her desk area (in the kitchen) came up.  When she moved in she kind of threw all of the bills and other desk related things on a couple of shelves and into the filing cabinet and that’s been her system for the past few years now.  Me, being an organizational freak, asked if she’d ever let me do something with it and then out of no where she runs to her bedroom and pulls out all kinds of storage and organizational solutions that I was surprised she’d even had, considering the state of the desk to begin with.

The next morning (Thursday) she left to meet up with her sister in Atlantic City.  I then took over the daunting task of finally organizing all of her paperwork to make her life much, much easier.  After doing a complete and total clean up of the kitchen, giving me ample counter space to spread out on,  I started with the filing cabinet and about 6 hours later I’d completed my sort through about 10 years worth of paperwork to put it all into proper labeled folders.  When the weight of completing that was lifted from my shoulders, I looked up to the shelves above me and I’ll admit, my head began to throb a little.  I pulled things down a few piles at a time and sorted through everything.  I then reorganized the items that were meant to stay out on that shelf and everything is now complete.  The project time took me about 10 hours in total, and that’s not counting the two breaks I took to put my eyes back in the sockets.  Damn did they need a rest!

The next morning I knew that there was a lot more to accomplish, it was great to walk into the kitchen and not see that mess around the computer but when I’d gotten a paper cut the evening before I attempted to find a band aid in the medicine cabinet but was unable to dig through everything to easily find one.  Expired medicine and prescription medication for her mother (whom died in 2005) was taking over ample space in this cabinet.  So I went through all of that as well, and it turned out pretty nicely.  There was even extra space available on the top shelf so I then had room to get everything off of the counters that was medicine related as well.

I floated around the house and sprinkled some carpet fresh and then vacuumed the entire house and managed to clean up the coffee table and any other surface that was covered in clutter.  The only spot that I couldn’t get to (because my back went out again thanks to over-working myself) was our “Junk” area in the kitchen.  It’s a pile of just about everything, that’s hidden when you first look at the kitchen (it’s under the bar – that no one uses because of the awkward height of the chairs for it).

My back is still very sore, I have good days and bad days.  Unfortunately the really nasty weather isn’t helping very much either.  It’s got everyone in a funk and the cold weather isn’t doing anything good for my back these days.  I have the windows open during the day, even though it’s chilly, to air out the stale smoke smell in the house.  Karen went back to smoking when she put Candy down and she’s just now getting back on her Nicorette.  Unfortunately when she smokes in the house, my twinge for it kicks in and I started doing it as well.  I’ve always gone outside, probably why I was always able to tan so well considering I’d be outside all day long in the summer with my laptop and a cig.  But a few bad weeks and now I’m back on track with things.  I’ve also added filters to my cigs, even though I smoke Ultra-Lights I’m still injesting a lot of TAR, and now I’ve gotten myself tarless filters to help me cut down on that intake.  Eventually I’ll be completely done with it.  I’ve purchased my last carton and by this time next week (at the rate that I smoke) I’ll be “cold turkey” and able to get around without getting winded.  It’s a 10 year addiction that’s being thrown away in one night – hopefully my PMDD doesn’t kick in cause Sean won’t know what hit him.

I’m patiently waiting on call-backs from a few companies.  I’m still hoping to land the job for that interview I went on a few weeks ago.  I’m also waiting on some kind of an email from a company I was just accepted to as a contractor.  I sent in all of the paperwork last week, EIN# and everything else included.  I’m just not in their system yet so I can’t start floating through the LEADS to start working.

In any event, I need to find something to do.  There’s nothing really going on online and I don’t have any work waiting for me.  I think I’m going to straighten up the kitchen and make some lunch for Bella and I.  She isn’t feeling too well but that has a lot to do with the rain, we haven’t been able to bring her out as often as she’s used to so I think she’s feeling withdrawn as well.