Grit and Glittr
Currently catching up on Season 2 of Battlestar, Season 2 of Teen Wolf, and Book 2 of Avatar. I liveblog Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Elementary, under read-more and tagged for spoilers.
My fandoms: Angel, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Battlestar Galactica, Being Human (US), Bones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cardcaptor Sakura, Castle, Coupling, CSI (Las Vegas), Cowboy Bebop, Dexter, Doctor Who, Dollhouse, Dragonriders of Pern, Dresden Files, Elementary, Escaflowne, The Finder, Firefly/Serenity, Game of Thrones, Good Omens, Grimm, Harry Potter, Hawaii Five-0, House, Inception, Legend of the Seeker, Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit, Marvel movieverse, Merlin, Monk, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Neil Gaiman, Neon Genesis Evangelion, the Old Kingdom, Once Upon a Time, Psych, Quantum Leap, Scrubs, Sherlock, Smash, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis/Universe (RIP), Studio Ghibli, Suits, Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Torchwood, Touch, Warehouse 13
Still need to see: Alphas, Community, Eureka, Fullmetal Alchemist, Justified, Legend of Korra, Lost Girl, Veronica Mars
Oh my god the things. I cleaned all of them.
Last night I turned my bed 90° and swapped it with the tall bookshelves. This afternoon I switched my nightstand out for a medium bookshelf, and turned the nightstand into my shrine table, and stacked the wee bookshelf that used to be my shrine table with its twin. And I returned the five pairs of shoes that had been loitering in the sunroom to their proper places in my closet. Plus two loads of laundry. That little rocking chair was mine when I was in elementary school; I can still fit in it if I cant my hips diagonally a smidge.
In the sitting room I moved the TV into the corner at an angle, brought the rocking chair, the bowl chair, and the printer table forward towards it, consolidated the random boxes and bins into the back corner with the other things waiting to go into the attic, moved the exercise bike to the wall, and vacuumed and dusted everything. There’s a futon downstairs that will come up to complete the empty side of the TV area, but that was the only thing I couldn’t do by myself.
Our new vacuum is fucking amazing. I was only gonna move the TV today, but I had to vacuum the bit of carpet it would now be covering and the difference between the clean stripe and the rest of the dog hair-encrusted room was so dramatic I couldn’t just leave it like that, so I had to do the rest.
I did marathon it…an hour last night and four hours today. I have trouble keeping my momentum for these rearrangement projects otherwise. But the good news is I can maintain it going forward with 20/10s, now that it’s no longer in a horrifying state. And I feel awesome.
My kitchen is fruit fly central. I want to cry. Instead I’m going to unfuck those sons of bitches. See how you like that!
Wellll I got up at 3:30 PM today, but I finally finished the laundry I started last week before I got sick. I had just left the loads in the washer and dryer all week and lived in my pajamas. But now it’s all dry and folded and put away. And my outfit for tomorrow is laid out.
Tomorrow I absolutely want to sweep my room and wash my sheets so I’m not drowning in dog hair anymore.
Hmm, it’s 10:30. Now that I’ve determined that browser Netflix is doomed (fucking Silverlight update), instead of going back to my phone and starting the next episode right now, I’m going to unfuck my morning. If I’m still awake after a shower and a 20/10 of dishes, I might watch the episode then.
That was an excellent decision. I’m clean and my clothes for tomorrow are laid out and the kitchen doesn’t look so fucking awful, just in time for my dad to get back from his business trip.
Go me.
It’s a thing I got from unfuckyourhabitat on here.
Your basic units of time are 20/10s and 45/15s, meaning that you work or clean or study for the first number and then you get a break for the second number. It creates a more manageable chunk to get stuff done in, so you don’t have to think about cleaning your entire house or finishing an entire project, just twenty minutes of it at a time. And it makes it easier to clean regularly, instead of hating yourself during marathon cleaning sessions every few weeks when you just can’t take it anymore. And having the break built in helps me to quiet the part of my brain that whines that I will never get to do anything fun ever again because there’s so much work to do so I should get some fun in before I start…and then I never start because ooh shiny.
I’m not perfect at it—sometimes I ignore the bell or forget to set the timer—but it’s super helpful anyway.
1. I live with a Lab and a Rottweiler. My house is never going to be dog hair free. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile to keep it dog hair free-ER.
2. Once I get to the stage where I have fewer than five dishes to wash each time, I can get a lot done in twenty minutes. I was able to sweep up the kitchen, living room and stairs tonight. This is heartening because I had a fear I’d just be using all my 20/10s for dishes forever and never get to the rest of the house.
3. When I use my 20-minute timer for *everything* I can get a lot done. It keeps me moving and I’m gradually getting less likely to camp out on a fun task while forgoing the unfun ones.
4. I really really need to stay off the computer until I’ve already achieved a certain amount of my day. “Just one quick thing over breakfast” never is; I tried that yesterday and ended up taking a shower (the next item after breakfast) at 9:30 PM and putting my pajamas right back on. My day just slides 6-12 hours and then it’s impossible to leave the house for errands or make calls. Today I left the computer closed and I was only 2-3 hours behind where I wanted to be which seems terrible compared to “on time” but it’s a MASSIVE improvement over how the rest of my week has been. I doubt my timing will ever be in sync with the rest of the world, but I have hope I can at least significantly lessen my impairment.
5. I had time today so I washed the super gross dog bowls. Victory! And I think going forward I’m going to wash their downstairs water bowl before bed and fill it fresh again for them in the morning, and rinse out their food bowls after they eat. Because the pups deserve an unfucked habitat too.
6. I think I CAN find the right mix of organic flow and tight scheduling I’ve been searching for my entire life. Having a timer and lowering my expectations is helping a lot. I’ve already got a few activity chains that work really well—I can make it to breakfast consistently and that’s seven steps. It’s another six steps to dressed, and linking that chunk up to breakfast is my next goal.
7. I’ve been getting at least 64 ounces of water a day just by carrying around a refilled Gatorade bottle and reflexively drinking from it. It’s weirdly great at interrupting the loops my brain gets trapped in, and I’m more alert with fewer headaches.
8. Laundry isn’t that scary if I just do it properly.
I’ve always been the person who lets the sink fill up with dishes until someone yells at me. Every time I see the sink and counter it fills me with dread and I just kind of toss my latest dish at the pile and run away. The biggest concession I would sometimes be able to make was to wash the whole day’s dishes before bed so I could put them away in the morning.
My dad not-quite-yelled at me to clean up the kitchen last week, so I did…but since then I’ve been washing every dish after I use it, with only minor backsliding.
And it is really the most wonderful feeling.
I’m not afraid of my kitchen anymore. Washing dishes takes somewhere between a minute and ten depending on the meal. The house I’m living in has a dishwasher and I’m not even using it because it’s so much more convenient to wash 1-5 dishes by hand than wait all week for the dishwasher to fill up before running it and then still have to wash pots and knives by hand.
I’m not even kidding, my mind is blown. I knew on a theoretical level that it was probably the better way to go but I couldn’t get over how much I hated doing the dishes. But with a little music and encouraging self-talk, and without it being a huge chore every time I force myself to tackle the beast that I created, it’s actually wonderful.
I hope I can extend this to all the other things I struggle with soon.
I have a bed again! :D No more chair-sleeping for me.
My dogs have been sleeping on my naked bed for almost two weeks, so I washed the quilt and mattress pad, and put the duvet and pillows in the dryer to get the dog hair off them. The sheets, pillow cases, blankets and duvet cover had already been washed weeks ago.
I also swept up all the dog hair and bits of paper from the floor, and washed a basket full of clothes. I stopped after the sweeping even though it made me see all the dog hair hair covering the rest of the house and I itched to SWEEP ALL THE THINGS because it would’ve been a never-ending exhausting marathon and then it would take me another month to do any more cleaning.
I put away my clothes right after laundering them yay! *bounce bounce*
I’m going to put some food in my face before putting the clean sheets on my bed.
And then perhaps I will go to this s&b. But it’s dark out and the car’s headlight isn’t getting fixed until tomorrow and my dad isn’t home with the other car yet. So maybe I will hide under a pile of blankets and record for Nobilis instead. Since the story is due by Friday and my dad’s working from home tomorrow and it might be terribly awkward reading Twelfth Night erotica out loud within earshot.
I STARTED MY LAUNDRY YOU GUYS.
Maybe tonight I won’t be sleeping in a chair. I’m pretty sure I haven’t slept in my own bed properly in like a month. It is a comfortable chair though.
Wow. I not only did laundry yesterday, I folded it all and put it away when it was done drying. I ran out of clean underwear a week ago but I spent the whole week in my pajamas anyway so….
Today I need to fluff the dog hair off my comforter and mattress pad and actually put sheets on my bed. Because I’ve been sleeping on a naked bed for like two weeks. No sheets, just the mattress pad, and under a bare duvet and a quilt.
Don’t ask.
Yes ma’am.
The massive piles of dog hair I just swept up from the first floor.
Even if you’re getting right back into it.
I did this the other day! Dogs woke me up at 6:30 after I’d gone to sleep at 2:30 (clearly failing at “turn off your computer and go to bed” club), so I got up, made my bed, fed the dogs and took them out, then went back to bed. It was great.