Organizing - September 30, 2012

I woke up this morning and got discouraged by my boyfriend's desk.  He has a toppling pile of papers, receipts, and mail that has always disturbed me.  So I sat down to organize it.  Basically, I just put everything into a manilla folder; unfolded packing slips and receipts, opened junk mail and recycled what I could, and basically made a toppling pile into a manageable folder.

While I was sitting there, the idea (memory of something I read?) of a 15-minute cleaning plan struck me.  So, after my boyfriend woke up and had his first cup of coffee, I decided to inform him of the plan and set the timer on the microwave for 15 minutes.  The goal was quantity rather than quality; do whatever will make the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time.

So he started on the bar, putting the bottles of alcohol away and closing the doors.  I started by making the bed and picking up the extra decorative pillows off the floor.  He continued on in the kitchen, putting away tupperware and filling up the dishwasher.  And I continued walking from room to room.

Again, the goal was quantity, so I put away the biggest items; shoes into the closets, dumping entire shelves into the junk drawers, and avoiding the laundry basket of clean clothes on the living room floor.  I'd pick something up and put it in its home if it has a home.  If it didn't have a home, I put it in the room it belonged in (we live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, so this doesn't require much walking).  We have some items that need to go into the car to head to the storage unit, but even just taking them to the car would have taken up our entire 15 minutes, so that had to wait.

Anyway, after the alarm went off, we stopped cleaning and each grabbed our second cup of coffee.  I started folding that laundry basket of clean clothes.  And we'll be heading to the storage unit later today.  The apartment is not clean, by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel much better about it and what we got done in such a short time.  We'll have to try that again later this week.