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I love many things about my humble apartment. One thing I will not miss about the lifestyle I'm leaving behind is laundry. I hate carting it up and down stairs, sometimes not being able to do it when I want to, having to hoard loonies and quarters, the poor reliability of the machines, and especially the way they chew my clothes. I gave up going to ( Read more... )

Just now as I was washing up the last few dishes from my long long weekend with Danny, I thought about how much of a difference I've experienced in this mundane but important aspect of my life.

In the past I consistently left dishes sitting at least a few days. Often some would sit for several weeks. I might clean the fridge out a few times a year ( Read more... )

Danny and I just finished spring cleaning my living room. It had been in pretty good shape as recently as Christmas, however I spend many hours working and playing in the armchair, so the area around it looked like Shelob's lair. Books, papers and tangles of yarn spread across the floor and threatened to absorb the entire room. But this was not an ( Read more... )

The decluttering habit moves ahead. I continue carrying junk to the dumpster every time I go out, and actual housecleaning has become a regular activity. I've kept the kitchen table clear and done dishes every day this week. On weekends when I'm home I devote some time to the rest of the apartment. Today I spent two hours.

The big projects still ( Read more... )

This weekend I made great headway in decluttering, although it went in an unintended direction. Saturday I cleaned out the fridge and worked further on the kitchen, reorganizing to take advantage of a drawer I had freed up two weeks ago. Today I moved onto a shelving unit in the front room, containing tools and equipment for camping, gardening, ( Read more... )

Danny has to work tonight but we're spending the weekend in Guelph so I can address one of the major decluttering projects. So far it has gone well on the micro scale (I've established the habit of taking something down to the dumpster every day, and it has begun to make a superficial difference); not so well on the macro. Of the six major ( Read more... )

My birthday treat to myself was to organize some pantry shelves in the kitchen. The main problem was that, since I went gluten-free, my baking supplies have proliferated (because I keep experimenting with flour blends) to the point where I can't see anything. Small packages of unidentifiable powders accumulated. Is that cornstarch or tapioca flour ( Read more... )

Now it's time to refocus on Change 2 for 2011: declutter. I've looked forward for many months to concentrating on this one. Two objectives come to mind: tidying the apartment, and changing my housekeeping habits to keep it that way, moderately. I don't want to be a neat freak; just prevent the kind of mess that deters me from starting new projects ( Read more... )

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