“Pics or it Didn’t Happen”

That’s what my sister said when I cleaned out my truck.

My truck has been a point of shame for the last five years.  I moved and some stuff never moved out of my truck.  Some stuff was there before I moved.  A lot of stuff was added after I moved.  It became a running joke, but one that deep down was more embarrassing than funny.

One thing I can say is that it never got so bad that a window was covered.

The toilet paper was in there less than a week.  It wasn’t toilet paper that I “needed”; rather, Rocketdog bought it, decided her toilet didn’t like it, and I bought her kind to trade with her.  Moving on.

An hour, two trash bags, one load of laundry (a bathrobe, snow pants, a dress, a tshirt, and sundry socks and arm warmers), and a couple arm loads later I had this:

I know, right?  Now I just gotta find a home for all the stuff I brought inside (which is, truthfully, the reason I put it off as long as I did). 😦

 

The Psychology of Cleaning

Lately I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why I can gleefully jump into cleaning up this mess:

Yet this sends me into the fetal position:

As best I can figure it’s two-fold… first, it’s not my stuff. I have no attachment to the items, and other than the environmental aspect, I have no problem throwing it all away.

Second, and probably more importantly, the items in that mezzanine have no weight on my self worth. I look at that pile and all I can see are my shortcomings. The first mess isn’t in the slightest bit my doing. The second mess is 100% my fault. I suck at policing myself. I buy too much stuff. I have a crapload of stuff I will likely never use. The list goes on and on.

I kid you not, every time I do a real big clean, I end up crying. The messes i accumulate make me feel like a giant failure. I don’t feel better once it’s clean either. There’s always another mess lurking somewhere or one just waiting to be born.

On that note, don’t look in the back of my truck cab. Just sayin’. Yes, yes I should look into therapy…

Solutions Required: Laundry

I’m going to complain a little.  And then bang my head against the wall for a bit.  However, under no circumstances should anyone tell The Hippy about this.  He’d kill me if he knew his laundry was all over the interwebs.  Luckily for me, if a blog isn’t about politics or economics, he doesn’t read it.

I went to gather up the laundry for washing today–and admittedly, neither of us are good at getting dirty clothes INTO the laundry bin–and decided I was absolutely fed up with The Hippy’s clothes.  You see… His clothes are “stored” at the foot of the bed.  And by stored, I mean thrown in a pile.  As he sifts through the pile, the carefully folded clothes get jumbled into a mess.  On top of that, the dirty clothes, which, if not in the basket, are supposed to go in the hallway.  After a sniff test of every article, I discovered a dozen or so dirty shirts among the pile.  *facepalm*

I was about halfway through sorting when I realized it could be a blog entry.  So.. here it is…

All those folded shirts, plus some off camera, were once part of a massive blob of garments (resembling the pile next to my dresser) that went from end-to-end of the bed, PLUS wall to bed.  In other words, they were getting walked all over every night on the way to bed.  Here’s what it looked like after my hard work:

This is half of his clothes.  The other half are waiting to be washed right now.  It’s going to be out of control when I get that laundry folded up.  The Hippy NEEDS a wardrobe.  It will have to live in the hall, since our bedroom is 10″x9″ (and that’s the big bedroom).  He was supposed to keep his clothes in the other bedroom, but it’s impossible to enter the other bedroom, let alone open the closet door.  But that’s a post for another day.

Oh, and here’s a look at the hallway, where the wardrobe will live:

Most of that is dirty.  However, I found clean, never-even-worn clothes mixed in there.  To be honest, though, that entire stack isn’t dirty laundry. No.  Under the khaki is… wait for it… A Rubbermaid container of EVEN MORE OF THE HIPPY’S CLOTHES.  There’s even a basket (or maybe two) of his clothes in the linen closet.  Living with a man who NEVER throws anything away is infinitely frustrating.

Anyway… The point… My vacation is next week.  I will be scouring craigslist and my local thrift stores for wardrobes.  If we don’t get one, we’ll have to replaster the walls, because there will be a head-shaped hole somewhere very soon.

Here’s to the night

It’s almost 2am, and I can’t sleep, so I decided to reclaim my craft table. Some months ago it was taken over by a very messy gremlin, and I just decided it was easier to let it happen.

I don’t know why, but I find it impossible to put something back where it belongs. It’s a bit of a chicken or the egg problem, but I either stopped bothering finding homes for tools because I knew they would never go back, or I never put things back because I don’t know how to make homes. I find organizing my craft space to be incredibly overwhelming, and I do it in small chunks. This leaves many tools homeless, and they end up scattered on my floor or my craft table.

When it gets really bad, I find myself completely incapable of creating. At a time where I am trying to plow forward with my brand, I need to get rid of as many roadblocks as possible. I have my Etsy store to keep filled, a brick and mortar consignment shop to supply, and a December craft fair to participate in. I have bags and journals and cuffs to make, not to mention the headbands (of which I currently have just shy of a ton) and a collaborative effort on coffee cup cozies. I can’t short change myself with my organizing deficiencies.

If I want to be successful, I have to dress for it, right? Well, then, I imagine the same goes for my “studio.” I have to treat my space like it will create successes.