semi-wasted day

I have done a lot today. Just nothing that needed to be done. I wanted to spend the day finishing the prepping of the outside today. As you remember, last weekend I had several yard related goals. I did not finish many of them. Today was going to be take 2. I was lazy in the a.m. and by the time I got motivated, it was pouring. So there went that.

I need to get my yard to a manageable place so I can actually start improving it. Right now, I am just trying to maintain it. This also seems to be the case with my organization. I need to create a system that maintains itself. Or rather, is cyclical. I kinda just pile up crap and then sort it out when it gets to be too much. I need to shred and purge more frequently. Who needs a phone bill from 3 years ago? hell, once it is paid, who needs the paper at all? I always muse that someday I will analyze my spending based on the data.....but really, who am i kidding?

I need to have a bonfire. I mean, I have EVERY piece of work I did for grad school. When am I going to look at this again? A summer goal is to get all electronic with that sort of stuff and file one hard copy away and leave it at that. But that means I have to open the "teacher closet" and see what is really in there, take it all out and look at all of it--meaning the mess is going to get much worse before it gets better.

I did a ton of organizing yesterday and today and I am proud to say I am not turning into my parents. If nothing else, I do look in all my closets, cabinets, and drawers semi-regularly and keep stock of what materials and products I have. My parents, on the other hand, have no idea what they have and just buy more. I have been helping my mom de-clutter and it is a distressing state of affairs. My father has over 30 screwdrivers. I do not remember the last time my father used a screw driver. They have 18 boxes of cereal--all opened, most stale. They have Parmesan cheese that expired in 2007. I dedicated 1/8th of their walk-in pantry to pasta and sauce---my parents eat spaghetti maybe once a month. They have enough loose tea to caffeinate my entire school twice over. I found 4 pounds of staples in their utility room. They have enough paper plates to throw a cookout for all of Richmond. Their wastefulness really upsets me. My mom once bought a new vacuum because she couldn't find hers--now really, how can you not find your vaccum cleaner???. They are so uninvolved with their own stuff.

They are getting older, and so they hire people to do most of their physical labor for them. My mom has not really cleaned her house herself in years and my father has not done much of the handy-work (yup, they are victims of traditional gender roles). But old habits die hard. They used to do all all that stuff. So when my dad sees a sale on a power drill, he will buy it. My mom still buys cleaning supplies even though her cleaning service brings their own. They just place the new junk in front of the old junk and never realize how much product they really have. Food, paper products, hygiene supplies, medicine, everything. It has gotten so ridiculous that I am trying to set up a system for them---so they know when they are actually running low and have to actually buy something....I mean, they have even have several cartons of milk in their fridge---they do not even drink milk! Just a splash in the tea twice a day. The thing is---when 5 people lived in the house, we went through milk like mad. They had to buy milk every time they went to the grocery store for 18 years.....and now they still do this.

I am setting it up grocery store style--everything in rows of the same stuff, all of one type of product in the same place. The only problem with this is that they will not maintain this. I found canned soup in 5 different places in their house. it is now ALL on the lower left shelf in the pantry. if they look there, they will see exactly how much soup they have in the house. But how long will this last? They will just pile stuff again and I will give in to my mom's pleading and de-clutter the place again. I think I found myself a permanent position at their house.

so today, I wanted to do stuff that needed to be done--- but the fear my parents' clutter has caused me made me organize almost everything today. i just have my bills, teacher closet, and tool shed left. and all the gardening and schoolwork I was supposed to do.