The good, the bad, and the ugly

Well, let's start with the ugly:

Yes, there is shredded paper on the floor from the dogs, and yes I chose to blog about it rather than clean it up.

And these are the highlights I chose to share, but the entire house is a mess.

Now the good: We love each other and our two amazing kids, and we are lucky to have a home filled with many things that we love and that give us joy.

And now, the bad: The "get rid of half our stuff and blog about it" idea did not solve our messiness problem by creating a home so easy to maintain it requires almost no effort.  So we're re-evaluating ourselves and our lives once again, and here's what we've learned so far:


1.  We are what a magazine article referred to as "passionate starters" but "lackluster finishers"; in other words, this blog kinda represents us in that we tend to start things passionately, and we aren't afraid to try new things, extreme things, pretty much any kinda thing, we'll try it, but we'll be damned if we'll see it through to the end!

2.  While we did not finish the blog project as we had intended, we did do some great things, got rid of a bunch of stuff, and organized our home so that everything has a place, which makes us feel great and has removed the overwhelming feeling of not knowing where to put things when it is time to clean up.

3. We don't like cleaning and are annoyed at the fact that it needs to be done on a regular basis.

4.  Therefore, we avoid it until the house becomes so messy it bothers us, which takes a considerable amount of time, and then by the time we are bothered enough to want to clean up, it is more difficult because there is so much to do.

5.  At this point we are not sure if we need to get rid of more stuff (because, as stated earlier, everything now has a place, it just needs to be put back in it), or if we just need to adhere to strict daily cleaning routines that prevent our house from ever getting so messy that it cannot be cleaned up in less than several hours. 

6. Obviously, the less stuff we have, the easier it is to clean, so we probably still have too much stuff, and we certainly still have more stuff than we need; however, pretty much everything in our home is used regularly or gives us or our children joy.


So, we're going to try to adhere to a cleaning routine of 20 minutes a day, plus at least 1 hour each weekend day, and see if that solves it, and if that doesn't work we'll try getting rid of more stuff and see if we can achieve a perfect balance of just enough stuff to make us happy and still be easy enough for us to maintain :)

Update

Where to even begin here... well, let's start with the good:

- On June 5th, Lauren and I participated in the Sunburst 10K. I say participated, because we only ran about 6K of it - but we traversed a distance of 10K in total. And while we very quickly learned that not training for the 2-3 months before a 10K is a bad thing (who knew?), and our bodies paid for that for a week or so, it's given us a new dedication towards making this something we do. We've started a 2-3 times a week training program, with the goal of running in a few 5K's, a 6K, and eventually running an entire 10K either at next year's Sunburst or before then if we find one we want to do and are ready for it. We've got three races in particular we are planning on signing up for in August, October and December - so we're hoping that our new-found dedication will keep us on track to run these and run each one a little bit better than the previous one.

- We're happy with our house. It turns out, what we thought would take at least six months to make us even begin to see happiness only took about three. Sure, we still need to deal with our laundry room, and we would like to paint the kitchen cabinets, and put up a few hooks in the garage to create a little more room in there. But, we aren't sitting around in our house constantly feeling like we are surrounded by things that make us unhappy and feel uncomfortable at home. We don't feel like we have out of control clutter, and we even have space in which we could store things now if we chose to do such. It's been an amazing transformation - one which will assuredly continue - but we are so much closer to our goal than where we started at this point, it feels amazing.

- I've started teaching again. I got offered a math class at Ivy Tech, and started last week. I love that feeling of helping someone understand something that they previously just could not wrap their head around. It's nice to find a different kind of fulfillment in work.

And now, the bad:

- This class, though a great opportunity and something we decided together was the right thing to do, is making our schedules Mon-Thurs. even more hectic, such that simply keeping up with the dishes and laundry and maintenance cleaning is taking up most of the time we are able to edge out in between dinner and running or walking each evening and also trying to have a little time at the end of the night to just sit and relax....which means we are struggling to complete little blogworthy projects on a regular basis. So, it may be a while (say, 7 more weeks), until our next legit project blog....unless we surprise ourselves and manage a little project here or there before this class is over :)

Hey... There's a desk under there (parts 2 & 3)

Things are just getting crazy - first we find a desk under our paper stacks at home, now I find two desks in my office this afternoon. Here I thought lo these many years that I had simply been setting my monitor, mouse and keyboard on stacks of notes, design ideas, and unfinished projects from years of having to stop working on one thing to start and finish the next "super important new #1 priority" (that would then be replaced by the next project of the same status by the next grant or managerial whim). But, as it turns out, under all this stuff:

Were these desks:

If only I had known about these desks! Think of all the elbow room I could have been enjoying. Think of all the times I could have set things temporarily on my desk instead of setting them on the floor and having to tenuously step over them for a day or two. Think of all the paper, books, and wires I could have stacked all over each other... oh, wait - that's what got me into this mess in the beginning. But now, with these desks clear (and even more so when I clean off the other desk and file cabinet in my office), I plan on turning over a new leaf. I am determined to find new ways to be more efficient and organized to be more efficient at work. Any ideas, anyone? Got an item on your desk that you just can't live/work without? As you may have noticed, a knowledge of organizational tools is something I don't possess - so I'm open to any and all help out there. Cause I gotta say, it feels a whole lot less claustrophobic and a whole lot more comfortable in my office - and I'd kinda like to keep it that way.

Garage Days Re-Revisited

Over Easter weekend I told myself I was gonna clean out the entire garage. As it was, I did a lot of work, but really only got about half the garage cleaned out. And, there still remained roughly 627,000 pounds of sawdust on the floor of the garage. Now, "luckily", we've tracked a few thousand pounds of sawdust into the house via our shoes in the past month and a half - but work still needed to be done. Along with the sawdust, here was the primary spot to be addressed in this cleanup:

I can't even begin to describe what is here... but I'm gonna do it anyway. There was an old comforter, groceries (like ziploc bags and napkins) that were purchased months ago and never made it in the house, paint cans from colors of paint we painted over (good thing we saved them, in case we wanted to put colors we hate back up on our walls again), and lots of trash. So, along with the sawdust, we threw out a lot:

OK, so maybe not that much trash. But I did fill up two trash cans. And now, the garage looks like this:

After all those days feeling Helpless, taking The Small Hours to get some cleaning done made The Wait well worth it (I probably owe Metallica $1 million in royalties just for typing this sentence). We finally have a clean garage. All that we need to do now is re-do our laundry room so the cabinets that are currently living in our garage can go up in the laundry room, put up the racks on the walls so we can store our bikes there - and then, for the first time in months, we will be able to put two cars in the garage. I can't wait - because my car is the one that was living in the driveway through the second half of the winter and a rainy April.

it's mario time!

Since Brett's been doing the posting recently and quite frankly, I think they've been lacking in substance, so I thought I'd do a real post today, about some extraordinarily difficult work that we spent hours struggling to accomplish, but in the end the sense of satisfaction made it all worth it.

Do you know how difficult it is to stay together without killing each other on moving levels with heat-seeking bullets flying all around you?  If you don't I suggest you find out and see what you are really made of!

Ok, so we didn't really accomplish anything in the house today, but look at how happy this made us:

And, if I may say so myself, we've been doing so many more things around the house ever since we started this blog that it is getting difficult to come up with things that are blog-worthy, but don't worry, we'll think of something :)

Until then, we still need to get all the star coins and beat level 9, so watch out Super Mario Bros Wii!

"Switching" things up

The "light" certainly came on with this project. We've really "flipped" things around now. The results are definitely "electrifying". I... oh, hold on, I think the bad pun police are here to arrest me...

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, we can move on. From the first time we even looked at this house, I knew I hated these light switches:

I'm not sure who decides to put switches in like this. I can only assume that the people that lived here previously had giant-sized hands that made using a normal light switch impossible. But, because they were functional, we kept them as-is despite my strong hate for them. But as we started repainting the house last week, we replaced some of them. And I realized something as a few more got replaced - it started to make this house seem more like I was living in "my home", rather than having taken over ownership of another person's house. So, today I decided to change the rest - and all without turning the power off (I only shocked myself throughout this whole process twice... but I don't seem to have any lasting effects, though. I only shocked myself throughout this whole process twice... but I don't seem to have any lasting effects, though. I only shocked myself throughout this whole process twice... but I don't seem to have any lasting effects, though). Why does someone do this without turning the power on? Because they are not smart. Regardless, we finally have gotten rid of all the switches that I've hated, with normal looking ones like this:

And, even though it was just something small, I feel even more comfortable in my own home. Combine that with the fact that we've, over the years, replaced most of the carpet with newer carpet or wood flooring, finally painted (almost) every room, completely redone both full bathrooms, and replaced the kitchen counters - and this more and more feels like I'm living in my own house. Now we just need to take care of this room at some point:

And boy do we have plans for this room. For starters, the cabinets we purchased for our failed breakfast bar will be replacing these hideously ugly cabinets. And we'll be finally peeling down this wallpaper (easily only the third ugliest wallpaper that was in this house when we moved into it) and painting it the color of our living room. We'll probably be replacing the yellow sink and toilet in the adjoining half bathroom as well:

But while the cabinets and painting will probably happen soon, the replacement of these two items will have to wait a while, most likely. But man, can I not wait to get rid of those things - next to the pink toilet we once had in our house, this is easily the ugliest toilet I've ever seen. As I type all this, it gets me thinking - who buys a house with a pink toilet, a yellow toilet, a kitchen with ugly counters, and hideous wallpaper in half the rooms? Us, I guess :)

Taking it outside the home

Yesterday I had Ginny and Sorin at my office for a few hours - and it became painfully obvious just how messy my office was. Now, to be clear, it has always been very, very obvious - but it wasn't painfully obvious until yesterday. Luckily, no one got hurt - but there were definitely some close calls as Sorin (who has only been walking for a few weeks) was attempting to navigate around the room. So, I decided it was time to take what I had been learning throughout this process at home and bringing it to the office. Here's some of the dangerous territory as it stood this morning:

It's amazing how I manage to function in this office, but somehow I do. But as I was going through the stacks of papers, boxes, and other items in these photos, I could only imagine what the subconscious conversations were that went on in my head that made this occur. Here's a few examples of what I can only assume they were:

"Wow, I've got a few zip drives in here. Now, I haven't seen anyone use a zip drive in 5-6 years, so I can probably send all these to surplus to let them decide if they are trash or can be recycled or re-purposed. But, I guess I should hold on to one, just in case someone comes in with a zip disk that has a file they now realize they desperately need from 7 years ago. But, if the drive I keep fails, then that's no good... so I better keep all 12".

"Hey, here's that specialized USB cable I was looking for last week - turns out it was in this box from when I moved offices a year and a half ago. I definitely need to put this somewhere where I'll remember it. Ooh, I know, I'll put it back in the box, with the other 27 cables just like it that also lived in this box without being needed for a year and a half. But... what if I forget these are in here? Problem solved - I'll just order 52 more of them, so I'm sure to have one on hand. But where to keep those when they arrive... I know, in this box!"

"Hmm... I literally have no idea what this is. I better hold onto it in case someone else needs it some day."

If these conversations didn't happen, then I really don't know what to tell myself or anyone about how my office got that bad (What's that you say? Maybe the problem is that I've been lazy and have just stacked stuff up for years on end rather than going through it? Bollocks, I say, bollocks. And that's a word they use in England, so it most definitely has to trump anything you could now say in response.). But this doesn't even tell the whole story of how bad my office was - you see the red/yellow/orange box at the bottom-center of the second picture above? That's not even my clutter. Apparently word has gotten out that clutter is allowed in my office, and clutter has been migrating to join it's kin. I had never even seen the contents of that box before, but it's apparently been living in my office for over a year now; and that's assuming I didn't move that box of "not my stuff" from my old office... or even from my office before that.

But enough living in the past. Here's what my office looks like now:

So much better. I feel confident that my children can walk around my office without risking life and limb simply by being anywhere near the floor. And my office is now completely clean.

Well, accept this part:

...and this part...

...er... and this part...

...and, um... this part...

So, yeah, it's a work in progress

♪Memories♫... shoved in the corner of a closet

We decided to finish a closet tonight that we had begun working on a few weeks back - we took care of the main part of the closet, but had not yet gotten to the shelves at the top of it. Here's what those shelves looked like earlier today:

And here are what they look like now - after we once again got rid of about 75+% of the former inhabitants:

Why did we spend years collecting things like this, that we never touched after they went in this closet, another closet, the corner of a room, a drawer, or shifted all over the house in an effort to keep it for one reason or another? We hope we are really figuring these reasons out. On one hand, guilt has been a big thing for us. We have gotten tons of gifts over the years that we have held on to long after the use of those gifts have stopped. We felt like if we got rid of these things, we would be doing something to the people that gave them to us. For anyone that now sees something they gave us has not been kept - whether it is in this post or prior - please don't take it as anything personal. We still love you all, we still appreciate the gift(s), but we have realized that hanging onto stuff just because we love the person who gave it to us, when we no longer love or have a use for that stuff anymore, just clutters up our lives.

On another side of that same coin, we have held on to things due to "memory" purposes. Things that meant something to Lauren and I for a brief moment in our relationship, and felt like we needed to keep something to remind us of those moments. Turns out, we don't. Above all, we have each other - which has kept numerous memories of days gone by alive. We've both gotten rid of hundreds - yes, hundreds - of things from our time together; cards, memorabilia from vacations or events cute emails we printed out, and a variety of other things. And these things, like many other things, were stowed away and never looked at again. Great job they did reminding us of those times in a closet and/or box. We have each other, we have two beautiful children that remind us of each other all the time, and we have a boatload of memories - so the stuff is gone.

There are other reasons we've kept all this stuff, some reasons better than others. Honestly, there are still things we are keeping with reasons better and worse than others - and over time we may decide those can go too. But, for now, we're happy getting rid of what we've gotten rid of, and we know this is a process that doesn't just end in a few more months, but is a lifestyle change.

Now... let's move on to what we got rid of from the closet shelves tonight. Here is everything, trash on the left, donations on the right:

The pièce de résistance here is the MSU Police sign, pictured better here:

Why was this kept? Because, in my mind, it was a great time and a great story. My senior year of college, a bunch of my friends and I went to the Notre Dame football game at Michigan State. After the game, there were so many barriers to direct traffic that we ended up driving in circles. So, when we finally tired of this, we drove up to a barrier, a few of us got out, and we just put the 10 foot long barrier into our van and drove off. To all those that followed us off campus through that barrier... you're welcome. When we got back to campus, we took the thing back to our dorm, and later that year I cut the middle of the barrier out so I could take it home. I had this on display in my old apartment, but it just never went up in our current house. I always thought I'd put it back up someday in a new house, when we had a basement. But, I think I've moved on now - and despite having a great story behind it, it was time to let it go. At least I'll always have the story.

The Desk: Part Deux

I know what you are all thinking - "I follow this blog religiously (because it makes me scared about how bad a house can be) - and you guys already cleaned off the desk". And you would be correct. But what we didn't do was clean out the desk. The drawers... well... they were full of stuff. Stuff that, in many cases, had survived as "drawer filler" since my desk back in college, if not even the desk I had at home as a kid. So, clearly, this stuff was vital to our lives in numerous ways. So vital, that once again we threw out a large percentage of it. So here's the drawers, before (left) and after (right):

And here's what is leaving the house:

So, yeah - now we can actually access things and use them in those drawers. We had essentially gotten to the point where we weren't even opening those drawers anymore, because we knew it would just take too long to find what we were looking for. I can't remember the last time we had used a stapler in our house, knowing full well it was somewhere in the desk - but not wanting to wade through all the crap surrounding one. And now, we have a few, all easily accessible. The next step will be to decide which one(s) to keep, or if one of us will take one to our office, etc. - but for now it's just nice to be able to actually find one. That goes for the scissors, tape, paper clips, and post-it notes, too. Who knew - we had all this useful stuff in our desk, and we had put ourselves in a situation where we couldn't even use any of it. For our next trick, we'll be parking cars in ravines and surrounding them with useless paper, old pens that don't work, a bunch of electronics cables that I kept around "just in case we need them" (we didn't), and maybe even a pack of wild dogs. You know, just to spice up how we utilize our amazing ability to create clutter over time.

Today, we did nothing

As we continue through this project, we have (thankfully) abandoned the competitive challenge of achieving a numerical halving of our stuff and are now focusing on making our house more comfortable and uplifting, and our lives happier and more fulfilling. For the past week and a half, that meant busting our butts and doing a ton of work, sacrificing both family time and sleep in the process. This past week, I would say I averaged about four hours of sleep a night - and I was feeling it.

That all came to a head this morning, when I just couldn't function. I was light-headed, I was almost falling asleep constantly, and I was so completely out of it I had to call in sick to work. Not a good thing, in the end. I look around our house, and it makes me extremely happy - I feel much more "at home" and comfortable in our home than I did before we repainted everything. So, in the long run, I really feel like all the work is worth it; but I definitely think the way we went about it was the wrong way to go. We constantly try to jam as much "activity" into as little time as possible under this idea that it will free up time later for us to relax. In the end, though, it ends up meaning less sleep, as Lauren and I decide to forgo a few hours of sleep a couple of times a week in order to talk, relax together, and maintain the strong connection we both desire to have in our relationship. Rarely does all our hard work lead to a consistent amount of rest and relaxation time, and we often feel like we are simply surviving and living day-to-day, instead of looking at the big picture.

I, for one, know that taking a step back and relaxing is something I struggle with, anyway. With the vision I have for our family, I feel a lot of societal and personal pressure to always be "on the go". A lot of times this means working, getting things done around the house, and a wide variety of other things that need to happen to keep a roof over our heads, food on the table, and keep our house in some sort of order (which, is something we continue to work on as a family). But many times this feeling manifests itself into a feeling of "needing to be busy". And often it's with things of little to no importance; reading sports articles online, playing video games, reading, watching TV - anything to fulfill this internal nagging pressure that says I must be doing something - no time to "just be". These things - while they give some immediate gratification and are nice, relaxing things to do in moderation - tend to be something I overdue in a subconscious attempt to quell the internal feeling that I need to be doing something.

That brings me to last night. Before going to bed for the night, Lauren and I watched the series finale of LOST. And for some reason - which I didn't realize until talking about it and thinking about it for a while - this episode hit me very hard emotionally. At first I thought I was just feeling that "let-down" feeling of something being over; even though I liked how everything ended for the most part, I had spent a lot of time talking with Lauren and other people about LOST theories, ideas that the show made me think about, and a wide variety of other things - so I was prepared to feel a little bit let-down after it ended simply because it was ending. But then I realized that what I was feeling was a lot more than that. The show (especially the finale) focused a lot on the idea of an afterlife - and getting to spend that with the people that meant the most to you. This is an idea I struggle with - and because of this struggle, tend not to really think about it that much. I love the idea of an afterlife, especially if that afterlife meant I would get to spend an eternity with Lauren, Ginny, Sorin, and all of our friends. But no matter how much I want to believe that is the case, and no matter how much personal and academic theological/religious study I do, I just can't comprehend how such an afterlife can exist. I want to believe it - but it just isn't that simple for me. So seeing the LOST finale with this representation of such a fulfilling afterlife really hit me hard. That is what I would love to see - a forever of getting to spend time with those I love, to enjoy the great memories and times, to create more of them, to be forever filled with and surrounded by such love.

But even more than that, it made me more aware of how much I want these feelings in my life now. I want not only to have that with my family, but outside my family. My job - it pays the bills, and creates the possibility for the lifestyle I envision us having as a family, and gives us the ability to give to our children the things that we want to provide for them. And I don't expect it to do more than that - even though it would be nice, my job is a means to an end - I work to live, I don't live to work. But I want to have more in my life that is fulfilling.

And now we arrive at today. After spending a lot of the day resting and slowly re-gaining my mental faculties and motor skills, I spent some time taking care of the kids while Lauren did some much-needed planning for the summer classes she is teaching. Now, I very much enjoy spending time with my children, and I feel very blessed to have a job that allows me to spend more time with them by giving me a schedule where I work from home one day a week to spend time with them. But, if there is one way that I fail my children in these times, it's by attempting to turn these days and moments into "multi-tasking masterpieces". I play games with them, do work, do some dishes, laundry, and even work in some time surfing the web, watching TV, reading a book, or playing a video game. Now, I think there is a place for all of this - and at times they are a necessity. But over time, as our lives have gotten more and more busy, there has been a part of me that has been slowly realizing that my multi-tasking has turned into more time doing that other stuff and less time interacting with our children.

But with a week and a half of working hard and sacrificing family time followed by the emotional roller coaster that LOST put me on last night, I have a new focus on wanting to shift that multi-tasking back to more time with our children and less time doing everything else. So, despite having that nagging feeling inside telling me I should probably be trying to do something else, I really focused on giving much more of my attention to Ginny and Sorin today (despite still being exhausted). And while Sorin was taking his afternoon nap today, it was then that I was able to finally really shut down that nagging feeling that I should be doing something and really enjoy it. Ginny and I just sat outside blowing bubbles together for 25 minutes or so, and at one point I just looked at her and could just see in her face how much it meant to her to be having this "Daddy time" that I just couldn't help but start crying a little. It felt so good to share that time with her - time that we used to share all the time before I continually chose to allow the pressure to lessen that time more and more. And while it felt so good to spend that time with her, I also felt sad feeling like I had wasted so much time not spending that time with her other days. So now, in an effort to continually make my life feel more fulfilling and happier, I am going to make a strong, concerted effort to continue keeping this time alive with Ginny, Sorin and Lauren - and with others in my life as well. Who knew finding a balance in life was this difficult? I certainly didn't realize it when we started this whole project, but I definitely feel happy about how much further down this road we are as a family now, not even three months into it. Above everything else, though, I know one thing: by taking today and "doing nothing", it was one of the most fulfilling days I've had in a while.

The Evil Red is Gone!

So, we pretty much got rid of all the paint colors I hated this week, and that is part of the reason why we have not posted in a week--we have been busy tag-teaming the painting, which usually meant Brett doing most of the work while I cared for the kids, though I did help a little with the painting when I could!  Crazy us decided that since we were planning to paint Ginny's room anyway, we might as well repaint the living room, dining room and kitchen too, and why not try to do it all in a week and a half so it'd be done in time for Sorin's birthday party yesterday evening!

Here is Ginny's new princess room, which was initially the only room we were going to do:

Before:

After:

So, yeah, we couldn't cram anymore Disney princesses in there if we tried :)  Luckily, Ginny really likes princesses and has been excitedly jumping on the bed and pointing out all the different color dresses the princesses are wearing, and has been calling each one a "beautiful princess!"

And here are the before and afters of the living room, dining room, and kitchen, the dining room previously being an evil red color that has been making me more unhappy than I realized until the glorious moment when it was gone!

Kitchen before:

Kitchen after:

Living room before:

Living room after:

Dining room before:

Dining room after (complete with one wall that has magnetic primer for Ginny and Sorin's decorating!):

We always do this kind of thing, doing nothing for long stretches of time and then trying to do everything at once rather than adopting a more gradual, sane approach to getting things done.  And I think our problem is that we have yet to master the art of maintaining anything, our weight, our home, a schedule, etc.  When we finally get motivated to act, we always go to extremes, and then once we finish our short burst of insanity, we are exhausted and to recover we revert back to our minimal effort ways and wind up back where we started.

The next time we get an idea we should probably force ourselves to pursue it slowly, forcing ourselves to work a little at a time for an extended period rather than going full throttle for a bit and then slowing back to a crawl.  I guess this blog has been challenging in a good way in that we couldn't achieve our goal in a week or two, so we've had to figure out how to keep going once the excitement of the first few weeks wore off, which is one of our biggest struggles, but the progress we're making has made me so much happier, especially now that I've released myself from cataloging hell and feel free to just trash or donate anything I don't need or love without documentation.  I also have noticed that my usual flight of the bumblebee cleaning routine that is put in effect before having guests has gotten shorter and easier now that there is less stuff to deal with and more of that stuff has a place so I know where to put it.  Good thing, too - because with all the work we were doing painting, we didn't have nearly as much time as usual to clean up for Sorin's party!