In the shoes of a slob

Ever since I was little, I have really envied those lucky people who are just naturally neat people. My friends D and S that live a few minutes away from me are prime examples. Their house is always in neat order (except when they are costuming for Scarborough Faire), everything has its place, and you can tell that that they never live in fear or in CHAOS (a Flylady term for Can't-Have-Anyone-Over-Syndrome). I have other friends like that too...we are friends with another couple in Frisco, K and J, who are just like that, and their house is always immaculate.

P and I, on the other hand, are not that way. AT ALL. We constantly live in a state of chaos. Every time someone just wants to "drop by", we scramble around and make sure that anything embarrassing is put out of view. It's really terrible. Until about a month ago when we started this journey to declutter our house, we had pretty much given up on ever being neat and organized people. It's a crappy way to live.

Lately, it's been much better. When P asks where the batteries are, I can tell him with certainty. When he asks what I did with his Phillips head screwdriver, I can answer with an 80% probability of being right. It's very nice to know that we are working towards everything having a place in this house and knowing where everything is at all times instead of just guessing. We still have a long way to go, but we're closer than we were.

My office is a prime example of what slobs we are. I did remember to take before pictures this morning before I started cleaning up, so you all will get to see the TRUE Erica at work. My dad probably remembers the true Erica from when I was a teenager...my mother had to threaten me with grounding to get me to clean up my room. It was pretty bad. And not much has changed in fifteen years, I'm sorry to say.

The good news is that the office is now completely decluttered. And I do mean completely. I ended up using a fair number of the bins that I bought in anticipation of this miracle, and filled up THREE more trash bags full of trash, old bins, etcetera, and our dining room now is FULL of stuff to move out to the garage for our garage sale. But it is ready for painting. Our numerous electronics are disconnected, our furniture is in the center of the room with everything in the room piled on top of it, and all I have to do tomorrow is run around and spackle the nail holes, throw some drop cloths over the mountain, and go for it. And going for it I will be, since I am relegated to working in my bedroom until my office is done. I might actually go work at my office some this week...I'm going to see how it goes and if my back hurts from sitting on my bed.

The office closet has a little setback, sadly...in the process of ripping out the old closet hardware, P discovered that one of the supports is nailed crookedly into the stud, and in the process of removing it, he ripped a small hole in the drywall which must be repaired before painting and installing the new shelf hardware. Boo. But that's a minor detail. The main room is ready to go, so I'm going to start painting tomorrow night. I can't WAIT to see how the paint looks! And I am so glad we decided to paint. It's amazing what you discover about the condition of your walls when you take everything off them and move the furniture away. Ew! That office is nasty!

The other part of the team started cutting the crown molding, realized that it is a lot harder than it looks even though our neighbor offered to come over and show him how to do it, and switched to installing the master closet hardware. He was still productive, but I'm going to have to go buy more crown molding for our little bedroom project later this week so he has some waste to play with. Good thing I have plenty of paint!

It is VERY late, so I'm off to bed...just wanted to post a progress update on where we are!!!! The house looks like a wreck, but it IS getting better.