100 Days of Goodbye, Day 29: The Strategic Placement Of Objects...and wigs.

Apartment Tetris time again!

Once more I am shifting things into open spaces until layers of stuff disappear. The difference now is that the further I get the more leisurely the game becomes.

I also had set the rule of "Decluttering is not organizing" and I've been working hard on that. I have actively resisted the organizational desire to go out and buy the thing to put other things in. I remind myself that bringing more things into the apartment is the opposite of de-cluttering. I tell myself that if I keep removing Rodent-girl's stashes that that will empty the thing-holding-places that I currently have and I'll be able to put the things I want to keep into those places.

I know that the above paragraph is filled with a lot of "things"…such is the way of life. You know what I mean by things. As I wrote the above paragraph I realized that my things are what George Carlin called his "stuff".

I knew that the reduction of clutter would make general cleaning a less arduous task. I didn't realize that the ease of cleaning would come from the fact that I've shifted into a mode of…I am not going to call it organizing, because that has the baggage of container shops, labels, and persnicketiness… I feel like what I am doing now is strategic, aesthetically pleasing, and ergonomic placement of objects.

I'm cleaning a little on my 3-day weekend and I've found myself more aware of putting and storing things where they are most used, thus making clean-up easier because the distance has been lessened between where things end-up and where they "belong".

It's nice.( So...what's this about wigs? )

100 Days of Goodbyes: OMFG, MY KITCHEN!

Never say never.

I went and bought three things to put things in. It was worth it.

You all know I cook. I cook every day. At the least it's my morning breakfast and on a busy day I am making three meals and doing some extra cooking task. Part of why I fell in love with my apartment is that it has a bright, spacious kitchen.

I need my kitchen to be wonderful because I’m there a lot. It has to be highly functional. I have to have tools, food, cleaning items and more to be easily on-hand.

I’ve learned from studying Rodent-Girl (my name for the part of me I'm learning about as I declutter) that I don’t function well in places with a lot of opaque containers. Rodent-Girl uses opaque containers and nooks to stash random crap and promptly forgets about it, to the point where she buys more crap to replace the crap that she didn’t realize she had….this includes beans, bulgur wheat, and other food items.

I spent a few hours looking around my kitchen figuring out where I use objects

I thought about what objects find myself putting away, time after time, because where I leave them isn't where I store them. I thought about what ugly, rarely-used (but needed) things are in plain sight and what often-used items are stashed in drawers and containers that are a hassle to return them to…and realized that I needed to reverse that dynamic.

My cuisinart hand held blender/wisker/food processor combo is probably my most used kitchen tool and the one I’ve never found a way to store. It needs to be within arm’s reach of the two very small surfaces I have available AND the base requires an outlet. When looking around my kitchen I had a eureka moment about HOW to do that....and that’s why I went to Ikea, around noon, on a three-day weekend.

( It was worth it. Read more and see the final result! )