[Public] Reminiscence: Foundations - Cleaning & Organizing Consumes Me
Well, the weekend's over. Wow. Another one come and gone, and it blazed through blindingly fast. With the exception of several hours spent playing World of Warcraft Friday night -- most of my weekend was entirely occupied with more unpacking, cleaning, organizing, and decorating... Whoa! I got a lot done, but, as usual, not as much as I had hoped. Boy, did time fly!
I mentioned Friday that these activities have been taking a lot of my time lately, and I'm not kidding about that. When I tell friends and people who are interested in seeing me more about it, they're like, "WTF, how does that happen?" To be sure, I often sort of feel that way myself. ;p A clean, orderly, and nice looking home is important to me, though. Somehow, It seems the people who press me the most to hang out often have some of the more unkempt homes I've seen. So, I probably make a trade there. Hrrm. It's amazing to me, though, just how quickly time can go by when I'm trying to do something that seems relatively simple for myself. Here's a couple of examples.
Yesterday, I spent nearly six hours just cooking. I don't have time, energy, or inclination to cook every day, and I prefer to eat as healthy as possible and avoid fast food and freezer foods. So, at some point, I started cooking once a week, usually on Sunday, and got into the habit of preparing most of my food for the whole week in one day. That's quite an undertaking, and it usually creates 2 or three sink-loads of dishes by the time it's all over. It really is the best way to make sure I keep myself properly fed, though, and doing it all at once frees up more time later in the week, too, since all of the preparation, start-up, and clean-up times are pooled together and done all at once. Also, luckily for me, scion8 and flamingsword tend to pick up with food provisions where my cooking falls short, so the weekly meals tend to go fairly smoothly. So, what did I make this last time? Massive proportions of baked apples, mashed potatoes with gravy, herb-spiced macaroni with roast beef, and a personal-hallmark sort of potato-omlette-thing that scion8 is quite fond of. (We call it the 'Potato Monster'. Hehe.) I should post the recipe for that thing sometime soon....
Early on in getting moved into my current place, I started (and completed) a project to paint and build a new computer desk. Now, something bought and quickly assembled probably would have worked well enough, but to get the style I really wanted and to get something with the functionality that would have optimally suited my needs, a custom piece was essential. That suits me well enough; I pride myself on my creative prowess. I know, though, that this is something that has tied me up that is beyond the interests of most people. Painting the pieces for this project, alone, took about four days. Then, there was another three days of initial assembly, and another two or three days to get my stuff all setup on it. Heh. Then, I realized that I wanted it setup a little differently, and took all of my stuff off of it and rearranged it all this last weekend -- which took about another day. So, that's 11 days, at least, that I spent just right there. You could probably add in the three extra days it would take to make two full weeks of time spent if you take into account time that was spent acquiring the materials for the desk, organizing the desk in relation to other furniture in the room, and setting up stuff near the desk (like pictures and things) that aren't directly related to the desk itself but are necessary accoutrements to getting the 'desk area' setup. Yeah, wow, two weeks just to get my desk setup. It's interesting how things can sound simple, but then consume so much thought and energy, indeed. (I might also say, that there are even more things I want do to with my desk, pending funding; and that this setup time didn't include the time spent setting up scion8's computer area, or the nearby entertainment system, and then the time spent integrating certain elements of all of these electronic systems..... Yeah.... ^.^) You can bet I'm ready to finally get on with using the desk now that it's finally complete!
I also finally finished setting up and organizing scion8's and my bookshelves this last weekend. That has been a truly impressive sink-hole for time and energy, far beyond anything I ever expected. I'd say it's taken a good solid month to get everything in place with those. You see, we like books at my home -- so we have six bookshelves. Just getting them built and into place in the room was a several-day undertaking. (Which was complicated by the menagerie of boxes everywhere that goes along with getting settled somewhere.) Then, a couple of weeks were spent getting books organized into the units. If you're a single bookshelf kind of person, than you just won't understand how long it takes to set to order an appreciably-sized personal library. When you take into account size, type of content, and authors, a project like that can be quite the puzzle. That's complicated for us because we have doors that mount on our shelves. (I think it looks cool, and also I think it makes the room look a LOT more orderly. I love books, but I hate book clutter. ;p) The hardware that mounts the doors is bulky, and you have to sort of plan the placement of the books around having room to attach that hardware. Even after the mounting hardware is in place, the process is still tricky -- getting the height of the doors on the shelves is difficult due to the way the whole thing assembles together. I often averaged only being able to put on two doors in a night. (And there were 11 of them to put up!) BUT! That's all finally done now, and I know where the things I need are, and it's all nice and tidy like I like it. ;) Yaays!
So, this is where most of my home-time has gone that wasn't spent just moving things or doing basic cleaning since June 11th of this year. And, this is to say nothing of the time spent on the bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathrooms, and closets -- largely by scion8 but also some by myself as well -- and the time that still needs to be put into these places..... Jeeze -- getting settled is a lot of work! I'm sure many more weeks will blow by before everything all setup and done with. Lols.
I mentioned Friday that these activities have been taking a lot of my time lately, and I'm not kidding about that. When I tell friends and people who are interested in seeing me more about it, they're like, "WTF, how does that happen?" To be sure, I often sort of feel that way myself. ;p A clean, orderly, and nice looking home is important to me, though. Somehow, It seems the people who press me the most to hang out often have some of the more unkempt homes I've seen. So, I probably make a trade there. Hrrm. It's amazing to me, though, just how quickly time can go by when I'm trying to do something that seems relatively simple for myself. Here's a couple of examples.
Yesterday, I spent nearly six hours just cooking. I don't have time, energy, or inclination to cook every day, and I prefer to eat as healthy as possible and avoid fast food and freezer foods. So, at some point, I started cooking once a week, usually on Sunday, and got into the habit of preparing most of my food for the whole week in one day. That's quite an undertaking, and it usually creates 2 or three sink-loads of dishes by the time it's all over. It really is the best way to make sure I keep myself properly fed, though, and doing it all at once frees up more time later in the week, too, since all of the preparation, start-up, and clean-up times are pooled together and done all at once. Also, luckily for me, scion8 and flamingsword tend to pick up with food provisions where my cooking falls short, so the weekly meals tend to go fairly smoothly. So, what did I make this last time? Massive proportions of baked apples, mashed potatoes with gravy, herb-spiced macaroni with roast beef, and a personal-hallmark sort of potato-omlette-thing that scion8 is quite fond of. (We call it the 'Potato Monster'. Hehe.) I should post the recipe for that thing sometime soon....
Early on in getting moved into my current place, I started (and completed) a project to paint and build a new computer desk. Now, something bought and quickly assembled probably would have worked well enough, but to get the style I really wanted and to get something with the functionality that would have optimally suited my needs, a custom piece was essential. That suits me well enough; I pride myself on my creative prowess. I know, though, that this is something that has tied me up that is beyond the interests of most people. Painting the pieces for this project, alone, took about four days. Then, there was another three days of initial assembly, and another two or three days to get my stuff all setup on it. Heh. Then, I realized that I wanted it setup a little differently, and took all of my stuff off of it and rearranged it all this last weekend -- which took about another day. So, that's 11 days, at least, that I spent just right there. You could probably add in the three extra days it would take to make two full weeks of time spent if you take into account time that was spent acquiring the materials for the desk, organizing the desk in relation to other furniture in the room, and setting up stuff near the desk (like pictures and things) that aren't directly related to the desk itself but are necessary accoutrements to getting the 'desk area' setup. Yeah, wow, two weeks just to get my desk setup. It's interesting how things can sound simple, but then consume so much thought and energy, indeed. (I might also say, that there are even more things I want do to with my desk, pending funding; and that this setup time didn't include the time spent setting up scion8's computer area, or the nearby entertainment system, and then the time spent integrating certain elements of all of these electronic systems..... Yeah.... ^.^) You can bet I'm ready to finally get on with using the desk now that it's finally complete!
I also finally finished setting up and organizing scion8's and my bookshelves this last weekend. That has been a truly impressive sink-hole for time and energy, far beyond anything I ever expected. I'd say it's taken a good solid month to get everything in place with those. You see, we like books at my home -- so we have six bookshelves. Just getting them built and into place in the room was a several-day undertaking. (Which was complicated by the menagerie of boxes everywhere that goes along with getting settled somewhere.) Then, a couple of weeks were spent getting books organized into the units. If you're a single bookshelf kind of person, than you just won't understand how long it takes to set to order an appreciably-sized personal library. When you take into account size, type of content, and authors, a project like that can be quite the puzzle. That's complicated for us because we have doors that mount on our shelves. (I think it looks cool, and also I think it makes the room look a LOT more orderly. I love books, but I hate book clutter. ;p) The hardware that mounts the doors is bulky, and you have to sort of plan the placement of the books around having room to attach that hardware. Even after the mounting hardware is in place, the process is still tricky -- getting the height of the doors on the shelves is difficult due to the way the whole thing assembles together. I often averaged only being able to put on two doors in a night. (And there were 11 of them to put up!) BUT! That's all finally done now, and I know where the things I need are, and it's all nice and tidy like I like it. ;) Yaays!
So, this is where most of my home-time has gone that wasn't spent just moving things or doing basic cleaning since June 11th of this year. And, this is to say nothing of the time spent on the bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathrooms, and closets -- largely by scion8 but also some by myself as well -- and the time that still needs to be put into these places..... Jeeze -- getting settled is a lot of work! I'm sure many more weeks will blow by before everything all setup and done with. Lols.