I posted a comment on reddit last night and many people are dropping by to check things out. Hi, redditors! It makes it much easier to go on when you know somebody is looking. I also had someone else request more pictures, so I will endeavor to add even more. As I told a friend, some just feel TOO embarrassing to share, but that’s part of the point. If it is so bad I am embarrassed to show it, then it REALLY needs cleaning, and will look twice as awesome when it is done. 🙂 In some ways the rolling the whole day at once yesterday worked. I knew what was coming up next. In other ways, it took a lot of the fun out of it. I knew what was coming up next! Rather a paradox…lol. But I think I will go back to my rolling one chore at a time. And remember — if you don’t have dice yet, that is no reason you can’t get started. Pick a random number if you have to. Or have someone else give you a number. Write the numbers on a piece of paper, close your eyes and pick one.

So…first up today is — 45 minutes in the Upstairs “Hall.” Here we go!

Before                                                     After

The floor is still a disaster. We had a sick cat a few months back, and she apparently used this area as a litter box…that carpet is disgusting — but I can’t do anything more about it without a deep cleaner, so I’ll have to wait until I get the carpets cleaned. But, the area is at least picked up. And I am celebrating with the diet soda I promised myself when I finished the chore. 🙂 Let’s see what’s up next.

Ah! A room that hasn’t been touched yet — my “Junk Room.” This is a little area in our Master Suite that might be a study to someone else, but we’ve just kind of stacked boxes in there. There are boxes in there that haven’t been opened since before we were married…almost nine years ago. I know what they say about that — if you haven’t seen it in years, do you really need it? But I can’t risk losing some things I remember having but can’t find…lol. So, I am actually looking forward to this one. And I think I’ll replace some of those cardboard junk boxes with plastic that I can see what is inside. 🙂 Off to spend an hour in the “Junk Room”!

UPDATE ONE:  Well, it doesn’t look like a whole lot from the pictures, but I feel pretty good about the results of my hour. I’ll let you decide:

Junk Room

    Before                                                                    After

At least there is more clear floor there now. Didn’t get any boxes filled, but I did get some shelves set up and some things organized on them. And there is a cleaner path to the bathroom. 🙂 What’s next, I wonder…? First roll was 15 minutes outside in the back yard. As I said yesterday, there really isn’t much left to do out there, so I re-rolled the location — transferring that 15 minutes to the Study. That won’t get a lot done in that madhouse, but I do want to straighten out my reference bookshelf, so I’m going to focus on that.

UPDATE TWO: Here are the results. What do you think? It doesn’t look like a great deal, but for the time involved, I think it looks pretty good. 🙂

Reference Bookcase:

Before                                                      After

At least all the books that were stuffed on top are now shelved correctly. Organized those into the shelves where they were supposed to be. Still not enough room for all my reference books, but that’s a problem for another day. 🙂

My next roll for the day is 45 more minutes in the Upstairs Hall. I thought about re-rolling it, but decided to go ahead and keep it. More time to work on that desk from hell.

That will add up to 2 hours and 45 minutes. I think that will be it for today, because of the extra hour yesterday. Is that fair?

UPDATE THREE: Got the desk cleared — though admittedly a great deal of it was sorting into a box for filing later. Confirmed that the boxes which have been serving as “legs” for the desk have collapsed. It’s supposed to be a floor desk anyway, so it might get to go back to that configuration (it’s not as if we really need another desk, but that one is special.)

Here’s the photos:

Before                                                     After

This desk was handmade by an artist friend of mine. I love it, but I’ve been mistreating it. I’ll make sure it gets a nice coat of Pledge soon.

I ran across something when I was sorting stuff today that I thought was relevant to share.  This was an organizing tool we got at work several years ago. It is a corporate standard, as I recall. And it translates well for home use as well.

               The Five S’s

• Sort: need or don’t need — be hard on yourself
• Set: have a place for everything 
• Shine: maintenance schedule for keeping it clean
• Standard: EVERYONE does it (this is going to be the hard part when I am done!)
• Strict: monitor/audit — make sure that it is maintained.

I also ran across a similar set of rules in an organization article about dealing with closets — these are very easy to wrap your head around, and they can be adapted to overall cleaning, not just closets:

• SORT — take out everything and quick sort it into piles
• PURGE — put things that belong elsewhere, need fixing, or should be given away in appropriately labeled boxes
• ASSIGN A HOME — find a place for everything to go
• CONTAINERIZE — use labeled boxes to store things in and dividers to keep things neat
• TOSS IT — throw out things you no longer have a use for, that are broken, don’t fit, or are outdated

It’s been a long day. Planning on taking it easy for a few. See y’all tomorrow. 🙂

DAILY WRAP UP: 45 minutes Upstairs Hall + 1 hour “Junk Room” + 15 minutes Study + 45 minutes Upstairs Hall = 2 hours 45 minutes. (A little short, but yesterday was an hour long.)