Clean all the things?

This was me just over a week ago:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

I was on a spring cleaning spree, determined to get our home completely clean and uncluttered.

This is me now:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

My energy levels are depleted, and I seem to have reached the point where everything I need to do is dependent on getting something else done first.  It's all intertwined.  I want to get everything done NOW but I don't know where to start.  It's very frustrating.

But I am not admitting defeat.  I've still got two months of spring to achieve my spring cleaning goal.  I will earn my trophy of adult responsibility!

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

 

 And I'll never let it go!

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

 

In the meantime, here's some more motivation I just found:

http://greenpop.tumblr.com/post/5006232853

I don't like housework, but I do love that feeling of relaxing in a clean house!  The last project on my list is to clean up our balcony - sweep up all the leaves, get rid of the dead plants, clean the plastic chairs.  When that's done, I plan to sit out there on a lovely warm evening (daylight savings is starting soon, after all!), with my bird pattering around at me feet (he needs a place to wander around, and he can't fly away, since he's missing half a wing - poor birdy) and enjoy some Bulmer's cider that I've had in the fridge since last summer.  Can't wait!

Clean all the things!

Last year there was a particularly profound post on Hyperbole and a Half to which I could relate entirely (except for the swearing and the surfing of the internet at 3:17am.  I need my sleep.)  I would love to have my life completely ordered - to keep my inbox clear (and actually reply to emails before a month or two has elapsed), to stay on top of paperwork and various errands, to be productive with my academic work and to keep my home clean and tidy.  Like Allie from Hyperbole and a Half, I write up schedules and make resolutions, but it never lasts.

When I first got married and we moved into our rented unit, I was enjoying the domesticity.  I do appreciate a clean home, and at first I didn't mind the housework.  But I still remember clearly the moment I realised that the housework was never going to end, and that every week for the rest of my life, I would have to clean the bathroom, dust and vacuum, wash the floors...  It was a little depressing, and made me feel tired just thinking about it.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

Fast forward three years: we're in our own unit.  Generally, we keep the place pretty clean and tidy, but there are many things that have been bothering me for a very long time.  These things are beyond the scope of the standard house cleaning procedure, and require extra energy and motivation.  For example:

• window frames that probably haven't been cleaned since this place was built 30 years ago and are caked with dirt that can't be removed without vigorous application of a toothbrush
• a wardrobe stuffed with clothes I don't wear but might one day
• tchotchkes cluttering bookshelves
• books that aren't arranged by genre, author and year of publication
• scuff marks on walls
• dust bunnies behind furniture
• windows so dirty you can hardly see through them (cleaning windows on the 3rd floor is not easy...)
• overflowing filing cabinet
• plastic crates full of thesis drafts and random papers

On Friday of last week, I was sitting on the lounge after lunch trying to find the motivation to give the house a basic clean, after which I was going to get out my sewing machine and have some fun.  Once I got started, however, I just couldn't stop.  I just kept finding more and more things to clean.  The mirrors in the bedroom are a bit smudgy - better give those a clean.  Since I've got these glass/mirror cleaning cloths out, I may as well clean the windows too.  And while I'm cleaning the glass, wouldn't this be a good opportunity to finally get rid of all that caked-on dirt along the bottom of the window frame?  I'm vacuuming, so I should move all the furniture and get rid of the dust that's collected behind.  But the chest of drawers is too heavy to move with the drawers still in, and if I'm taking them out, I may as well tidy those too.

It seems I've caught spring cleaning fever and I'm not going to stop until our entire home is uncluttered and cleaned thoroughly from top to bottom.  Matt didn't realise just how serious I was about the "thoroughly from top to bottom" clause until he emerged from the bedroom after sleeping in on Saturday morning to find me dusting his collection of role-playing character models with a toothbrush.

So, this is me at the moment:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

The sewing machine is still in the study, and I've only cleaned the bedroom and living room so far.  That's ok.  I'm looking forward to having a perfectly clean and ordered home.  I just hope the spring cleaning fever lasts until all the things are clean!

Unclutter Your Life - Day 1

Day 1 of Uncluttering Your Life in One Week involves uncluttering three areas:

1. Your wardrobe
2. Your office
3. Your reception station

Wardrobe

The basic process to purge wardrobe clutter is simple - start at the top of the pile of clothes and sort them into three groups: items to keep, items to purge, and items requiring extra attention, like repairs. The tricky part is deciding which items belong in which group. Erin suggests a few main guidelines

1. Only keep items that fit you now. Like many women, my weight fluctuates. Well, really, over the course of the PhD, it's just gone up. Erin would advocate getting rid of all the clothes that don't fit me at the moment, but I just can't bring myself to do this. I have so many lovely things that I still hope will fit me again one day. I generally try to buy clothes that are stylish but not too fashionable - I don't like to buy things that will only last one season. So many of the clothes I have that are too small at the moment will potentially still look ok (and not too out of style) if I can lose a bit of weight. That might be a vain hope, but I did manage to lose some weight after I submitted my PhD thesis last year. I put some back on over Christmas, but if I can get back to my healthy eating and exercise routine, there's a good chance I'll fit into these clothes again. So I've made myself a deal - I'll toss anything that I don't fit into by the end of the year, and I've tried to keep only the nicest of the too-small clothes.
   
2. Purge seasonally. I'm putting off my purging until the end of the year, due to the weight-loss possibility, but if I get to the end of summer and find that I haven't worn an item, it will have to go. The same thing will apply to winter (but not until 2011). So uncluttering my wardrobe will be an ongoing process.
3. Consider your personal style/uniform. An example of a "uniform" would be Steve Jobs with his black turtlenecks and jeans, but I haven't yet figured out how to apply this to myself. The problem is that most people would have a number of roles, and perhaps need a different uniform for each - suits for the office; track pants for doing the housework; casual gear for weekends; nice dresses for weddings and other special occasions; exercise clothes for going to the gym... I think this will be taken care of by the "purge seasonally" requirement - it will just take a bit longer.

I've been through my wardrobe at home and ended up with a bag of clothes to donate to the op-shop and another to take to a charity bin for rags. I still need to work on all the clothes that are lingering at my parents' place - things that don't fit but I'm hoping will some day. If I stick to my plan, these will definitely all be gone by the end of the year - either taking their place in my regular wardrobe or being uncluttered out of my (and my parents') life.

Office

According to Erin, " In a competitive marketplace. a clean, organized, well-decorated office might be the key to keeping your job, earning a raise, retaining a client, or being promoted, irrespective of the quality of work you actually do" [44]. I don't have a job at the moment (not a full-time paid job, anyway) so I don't really need to worry about the perception people will have of me from my office. However, I do know that having a tidy and organised workspace is extremely conducive to productivity, and conversely, I feel I cannot do any real work if my work area and my thoughts are in a mess. Monday's job is only to deal with the physical space of the office - the filing problems are taken care of on Tuesday.

The most obvious thing, of course, is the desk. I've had an Ikea desk that's just a basic rectangle with a pull-out side panel. I didn't work at home for my PhD, so it's not until recently that I've found it's not really the best set up for me. I much preferred the corner workstation I had at uni. We also needed to buy a new desk for Matt, since the keyboard shelf from his computer workstation mysteriously vanished during our move. So, we took the plunge and bought a new desk from Officeworks and another Billy bookcase from Ikea to store all the books and papers from my PhD (until today they were sitting in two large piles in the corner). I now have a corner desk with a raised shelf for my laptop and extra shelves underneath for storage (handy for things like the external hard drive). According to the principles of uncluttering, I only have things on my desk that I use regularly, and just two decorative objects - a photo of Matt and the paperweight the university gave me as a gift when I submitted my PhD (not sure why I want that one on my desk...) I have a few books that I refer to often, and an in-tray. Erin's obviously into the whole Getting Things Done system, because she says that the inbox should be processed a few times a day, and action taken on each item the first time it's touched, and the inbox should be emptied at the end of the day - no exceptions. I'm leaving this step for next week...

Reception Station

This is basically the entry point to the home, and should include the following:

• Somewhere to remove and store muddy and wet shoes
• Somewhere to hang jackets/coats and store hats, gloves and scarves during winter
• An area to sort through mail, with a shredder to immediately shred things like pre-approved credit card offers
• A trash can
• A place to put coins
• An inbox
• A designated space for a backpack, purse or briefcase
• A space for keys
• A space for charging cell phones and other electronic devices

We just simply don't have anywhere we could possibly fit all these things together. I can see how it would be handy - it would stop me from dropping the mail on the table, my handbag on the floor, my cardigan on the bed, my phone remaining uncharged in the handbag, etc - but I just don't know how to do it. And I don't really see why it's necessary to have a second shredder - why not walk to the study and shred the papers there? Perhaps if your house is really big this might be difficult, and then you might have room for all this. I think what I'm going to try to do instead is to develop routines. Mail goes to the inbox in the study. The handbag goes to the shelf in the wardrobe, after the wallet is cleared of receipts, the phone is checked for charge and any other clutter is cleared out. The keys stay in the door, or in the bowl on the bookshelf near the kitchen. The jacket gets hung up in the closet, or over the back of the chair in the bedroom if it needs airing. Rubbish goes in the bin in the kitchen and shoes are left outside the front door. Done. Now, if only I can keep to this routine...

Tasks for tomorrow

• Bathroom
• Files
• Routines for household chores
  

Unclutter Your Life in One Week

I'm on an organisational spree at the moment. The new year always seems like a great time to get my life in order and to change my habits so that disorder does not return. I've never been good at keeping New Year's Resolutions (but who is, really?) so this is not a resolution - just a desire for change.

And even more than desire, a plan for change. I enjoy reading "life hack" blogs, as part of my ongoing journey towards organisation and better time management. I don't remember why/when I first started reading, but one of my regular haunts is Unclutterer.com. It's a combination of the age-old mantra "A place for everything and everything in its place" and the newer (or perhaps just renewed) emphasis on minimalism (also seen on blogs such as Zen Habits). The editor-in-chief of the blog, Erin Rooney Doland, has recently published a book called Unclutter Your Life in One Week, which provides a week-long game plan for removing clutter from home, office and life. It seemed like a good way to start getting myself organised for the new year (the second step will be David Allen's Getting Things Done - incidentally, Allen wrote the foreword for Unclutter Your Life).

A review I read of Unclutter Your Life on another of my favourite life-hack blogs, The Simple Dollar, provides a glowing recommendation. Trent describes it as " This is the single best book I’ve ever read on organizing your life." However, he does acknowledge that accomplishing all of the ideas in the book in one week is impossible. The value comes in the detailed advice as well as the progressive steps Erin outlines. Even if it can't be done in one week, following all these steps should lead to a less cluttered (and therefore, according to Erin, more "remarkable") life.

I've read through the whole book, and now I just have to try to apply the advice and the steps outlined. Each day has three tasks: one at home in the morning; one at work during the day; and another at home in the evening. I'm going to try to complete the whole process in one week, but I have cheated a little - I started, somewhat half-heartedly, last week. From my overview reading, there are two main frustrating things I've noticed:

1. To begin with, Erin has a rather odd view of work-life balance. For work life to be in perfect balance with personal life, a person should be at work the exact same amount of time as they have free time. Obviously, no one really wants to be at work 84 hours a week. So, Erin advocates "work-life symbiosis", which is "what you achieve when all aspects of your life exist together harmoniously" [7]. I would have thought that this is what most people mean by "work-life balance." But that's really just a small point.
2. The fact that it is impossible to complete this process thoroughly in one week is a little frustrating, given that the title is Unclutter Your Life in One Week. The problem is that the processes outlined would take far more time than allowed. For example, the task for Monday morning before work is to unclutter your wardrobe. As this involves getting all the items of clothing in one place for sorting, first "Wash everything in your dirty clothes hamper and pick up any items that maybe at the dry cleaner" [20]. While all the clothes are out of the wardrobe, this is a good time to "repaint, repair, dust, hang hooks, replace rods, or change your wardrobe storage in any way" [22]. How can that possibly be done Monday morning before work? Perhaps the seven days are not meant to be taken literally as seven twenty-four hour days, but instead refer to periods of time, or ages - convenient marking points for outlining a process. A literary device or metaphor. Hmm. Where have I seen that before?!

All in all, this seems like it will be a very useful book, and if it can motivate me to unclutter and organise my life, I'm not going to complain that it takes longer than a week! But I'll reserve my final judgment for the end of the process.

Overloaded

I think I have taken on way too much teaching this session. One of my subjects is an online Science and Religion course. I've tutored it a number of times now, and once again I seem to have been stuck with the hyperactive students who post more than all the other groups put together!

OK, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but last session both my groups posted twice as many times as the next most prolific group. And they weren't just short, nonsense posts either - they had some really good things to say! So I guess I can't complain too much...

One really amazing thing: for the first time someone has suggested rules/guidelines for making sure the discussion doesn't get out of hand. A brilliant idea - it's a controversial topic, people are passionate about their own views, and being online, people seem to feel that they have more freedom to be rude than they would be in person, and comments are open to much more misinterpretation. I've seen some nasty exchanges in the past - I hope this session is different.

I hate Mondays

Where did the weekend go?

Friday night

Matt and I went to see Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It was very well done, and I enjoyed it, but I did leave feeling just a little queasy. I'd been warned that it was very bloodthirsty. The blood didn't bother me too much - it was so fake - but one of the characters being thrown alive into a furnace at the end - that was a little harder for me to deal with.

Saturday

Matt had stayed at my place Friday night, and on Saturday morning we spent some time searching for a cottage in the Peak District to stay in while we're in England. My parents were both out, so we went to Oatley for brunch and then I drove Matt to Hurstville to catch the bus back to Wollongong (the trains weren't running). When I got home I read the paper then went back to bed for a nap because I was so exhausted. I was disturbed twice: once by the phone (I picked it up and there was no answer, so I hung up quickly - I hate those telemarketing calls!) and once by by neighbour who thought he might have lent my dad some kind of gadget for cleaning out gutters.

I finally dragged myself out of bed mid-afternoon, but didn't have much energy to do anything. I watched Down with Love (very cute) then finally mustered up enough energy to vacuum the kitchen. Last weekend I'd had to put a collar on my poor cockatiel because he was chewing at the skin under his wing, and when I took it off this weekend, he had a week's worth of grooming to catch up on, which resulted in a lot of feathers and dust on the kitchen floor. Then I played piano for awhile - something I don't do very often these days. My mum got home about 7pm, and we had a nice quiet girls night, drinking red wine and watching Firefly. And then I went to bed early, but didn't sleep very well.

Sunday

I had planned to go to the gym, but I was too tired, so I read the paper over breakfast and then managed to tidy my room a little. I picked up Lynley (my future sister-in-law) at 11am, and we drove to Miranda to look for a dress for her to wear at the wedding (she's "best maid") and to see 27 Dresses. We followed that with very naughty but very tasty churros and chocolate. We shared, so it was only half bad!

I got home around 4:30pm, feeling very much in need of a nap before church at 6pm. I knew, though, that if I had a nap, I probably wouldn't get up in time for church. So I made a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table trying to edit my current draft of chapter 3. I wasn't feeling very well, though, and as time went by, I was just feeling worse. I decided I wasn't well enough to go to church, so I had a rest, and got up an hour later feeling worse still. I had dinner with my parents, watched Grey's Anatomy, and went to bed early. And couldn't sleep. Grr. So I finished reading Atonement. I enjoyed it, though I did feel a little let down at the end.

Monday

Where did the weekend go? I'm so tired, and it's only the first day of the week! It took me over an hour to drive to uni this morning - an incident in the tunnel, slow traffic on Southern Cross Drive, traffic lights not working at Todman Ave (I waited for nearly 10 minutes before getting out of the right-hand turning lane and going straight ahead), a breakdown on Alison Rd, cars blocking the intersection where I wanted to turn right at Wansey St. Then an email saying I'd exceeded the volume of my account on my uni computer - we've gone from having the whole hard drive of the eMac to having a 5GB mobile account - so I've been sitting here deleting files.

Now it's 9:30am, and I really should do some work on my PhD...

It's my life...

And it's rather stressful at the moment. This is what I've got to do over the next couple of months:

• Finish teaching for the session
• Mark 55 essays (in the next couple of days)
• Mark 47 journals
• Finalise tutorial participation marks for 47 students
• Conference proposals
• Alister McGrath's natural theology conference (due 15 November)
• Three Societies (BSHS, HSS, CSHPS) conference (due 3 December)
• Application for job in Cambridge (due 21 November)
• Finish thesis (by Christmas, just in case I get the job in Cambridge)
• Chapter 1 - Rewrite sections on natural philosophy and 17th century English theology
• Chapter 2 - Finish revising section on history of science treatments of natural theology
• Chapter 4 - Finish writing section on Henry More and write section on Ralph Cudworth
• Chapter 5 - Write entire chapter
• Chapter 6 - Finish draft
• Revise all chapters
• Write introduction to Part 2
• Write introduction to whole thesis
• Write conclusion
• Final editing and formatting

I think that's all. No wonder I'm stressed!