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Post by CourageouslyLion SeeksSerenity on May 12, 2009 0:37:56 GMT -5
1. chair still 0 degree
2. itty bitty fireplace is 0 degree
3. daughter's cupboard with bottled drinks 0 degree Zero degree something else ....
close to a present zero degree spot.
... on the cusp of having household zero degree "zones" in your home! Exactly !!! Several tiny zero-degree "spots" near one another ... and pretty soon, you end up with a "zero-degree" ZONE. Eventually, this can spread .... and be a way of clearing one's home, one spot at a time. Adjacent spots becoming zones. Zones spreading into rooms, etc. As Mimi said: Chair by chair, inch by inch if necessary, you will get there! See this thread: takeonestepatatime.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=4206
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Post by still on May 12, 2009 16:07:32 GMT -5
0 degree chairs is stacked again - gotta take care of that and cruise the apartment and see if I have anything new to add to the 0 degree list .... ok, chair is returned to 0 degree. itty bitty fireplace is still 0 degree daughter's bottled drink cupboard is still 0 degree bathroom sink, mirror, itty bitty medicine cabinent 1/4 degree (down from 2 last night)   nothing so enchanted as an octuopus' garden |
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Post by still on May 13, 2009 16:07:52 GMT -5
0 degree stuff/areas: 1. kitchen chair 2. itty bitty fireplace 3. daughter's bottled drinks cupboard 4. bathroom sink and itty bitty counter my octopus loves you and me |
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Post by yellowhouse on May 14, 2009 0:25:20 GMT -5
I LOVE this way of thinking!!!!!!
I have been feeling depressed lately whenever I survey my mountains of crap. There seems to be no end to it all.
But...to give myself credit....I have desqualored FOUR whole rooms...and managed to maintain them. It is just the rest of the house that is overwhelming. The kitchen alone makes me want to crawl in a hole and never come out.
This thread has made me realize that keeping some areas of my house at 0 degrees is an achievement all by itself. I have to stop beating myself up over my horrific kitchen and give myself some credit for the areas I have made a difference in.
Tomorrow I plan to pick one of my still squalorous rooms and just turn one area of that room into a peaceful haven of 0 degree squalor.
Thanks, still, for giving this overwhelmed messie a new way of thinking about things
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Post by yellowhouse on May 14, 2009 1:04:39 GMT -5
Still
I noticed in your posts that your poor kitchen chair gets quite alot of use/abuse from your family. Is that chair a natural drop-off point?? Or does your family just tend to put things on it because it is now a clean spot???
Just wondering...my husband comes from a family of hoarders and if I clean off a spot in the house....he sees that as a place to start his next pile. He doesn't want to lose his stuff....so rather than finding a home for it he just piles it in whatever spot I have managed to clean.
Does anyone else have this problem?
yellowhouse
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Post by creativechaos on May 14, 2009 5:04:19 GMT -5
i feel for you, yellowhouse! i am a hoarder too. we (our messes) are hard to live with. it is unconscious; i don't "see" clean areas, or i "see" them as an available flat space i guess. i can clear a spot somewhere, but keeping it clear is another story.( we call the cleared spots "inspiration spots" in another group i am in.)
would somebody please explain to me exactly what a 0 degree squalor is? besides no dirt or dust, does that mean nothing on top of furniture or a flat surface? no vases of flowers, no pictures, etc? this concept is almost inconceivable to me. the only level 1 thing i have is the chair i am sitting on. if i dust it, it would be a level 0.
wow, you are an impressive lot! congratulations on keeping your places so clean and cleared and staying on top of the maintenance!
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Post by still on May 14, 2009 14:28:02 GMT -5
Yellowhouse I love your avatar! What beautiful cottage! I am so glad you have joined me on the 0 degree thread! I loooove company!  In my mind, desqualoring 4 rooms and maintaining them is a Master's Level accomplishment! Woo-hoo! Hopping mushrooms to you and those 4 rooms!  Yes! Yes! Yes! Give yourself credit. For those of us who find keeping a chair cleared is a major accomplishment, you are a superhero!   ! The mystery of the chair ... You probably don't want all the information I am about to give you, but .... You are right on all counts. It is in an easily accessable place, it is an available stacking place, etc. My daughter and I share a very small, one bedroom apartment. The computer table is just inside the front room. Beside it I have one of those wooden folding tray tables where I write and lay out the stuff I use when doing work on the computer. My little girl cat kept jumping up on the table and asking me to hold her while she naps. She would skatter my stuff on the table or sit on it - and it's not terribly stable; and I can't type and hold her while she naps, so I put the kitchen chair (which has a pad on it) next to the table so she would feel like she can be close to me. BUT, it is so centrally located it is an easy place to put stuff. When my tray table is too full I put stuff on the chair, my daughter drops the mail on it because it's next to me and my tray table is usually covered. She hangs her jackets on it. Other stuff gets stacked on it to wait until it is taken care of, and on and on and on. The thing with your husband seeing cleared areas as a place to stack stuff also comes into why stuff keeps ending up on the chair. I read something by a professional organizer that cleared that up a bit for me. She said there are two kinds of people - those who love to be organized and can remember where everything is if it is organized, and those who have the problem with "out of sight, out of mind." My daughter and I are both the second kind. Anything that gets put away gets completely forgotten, even if it is in a logical, easy to access storage/organizer. That may be part of what is going on with your husband. The other thing, too, is how we grow up. If he grew up in a home where that was the normal behavior - clear spots are for putting stuff, that would explain it, too. I am so glad you felt encouraged by the focus of this thread! Thank you so much for sharing that. Good luck with your next project - it sounds like a wonderful idea to tackel one spot in a room you want to desqualor. Hugs to  Happy de-squaloring! Creativechaos There is a thread on the General board that gives different definitions of degrees of squalor. The one that is most often used on SOS - I am quoting Linoness, here - has four levels. I would have to go back and look at it to double check how accurate my definition here is, but in my mind, 0 degree is when it is in such a state I would be proud to have people come over. Having flowers, knickknacks, ets. would be allowed in 0 degree based on my definition. Lioness gives some guidelines on this in one of the previous posts on this thread that make sense to me. You might want to look at that post and see if you agree. But, I think that however the degrees are measured, it ultimately has to be your own defenition. What is 0 degree to you? Self-report on 0 degree stuff: 1. kitchen chair 2. daughter's bottled drink cupboard 3. itty bitty fireplace 4. bathroom sink with itty bitty counter space
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Post by yellowhouse on May 14, 2009 15:15:55 GMT -5
Still, Thanks...I often wish my own yellowhouse looked as inviting as my avatar I was proud of my four rooms when I finished them...but then I came to a screeching halt. I haven't been able to make any additional progress since then and I've been feeling pretty bad about it. One of the rooms that overwhelms me is the foyer. It is a very large space and has been the dumping ground for everything that has come through the door for the past few years. I am as guilty of this as everyone else in my family. You can imagine what it looks like. So....today I tried the new method. I ignored the mess in the foyer and concentrated only on the large cupboard next to the door. It is supposed to hold my mail, bills, schedules, paperwork, etc. It has been trashed and unusable for a while now and paperwork has been in piles all over the place. And I made progress!!!! I located bills, schedules, misc paperwork from all over the house and organized everything into the cupboard. It looks nice. Now I just need to defend that cupboard as if my life depended on it. And maybe I won't pay bills late because I can't find them or miss events at my daughter's school because the schedule is nowhere to be found (happened last week). |
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Post by still on May 15, 2009 16:43:55 GMT -5
Yellowhouse Woo-hoo! On your "filing cupboard"!!! What an amazing accomplishment - and such an important one. I, too, have had to pay too many late fees on bills because I couldn't find them - or worse yet - forgot that I had them because they were in a pile somewhere. And I have missed important events, disappointing people I love or who were counting on me more times than I will ever remember. Hopping mushrooms and cheerleaders to you for such an important event as all this stuff organized!!!  Congradulations! And good luck on defending your territory! - ! Chair is squalored again. brb Had to put away my daughter's sweatshirt, lunchbox and shopping bag. Might have told her to do it but she's in the bath. Anyway, it's back to 0 degrees  0 degree stuff: 1. kitchen chair 2. daughter's bottled drink cupboard 3. itty bitty fireplace bathroom sink and itty bitty counter space is 1/4 degree because it needs wiping a little - I'd run and do it so I could count it, but daughter is in the bath. This still a ta-da, though  nothing so enchanting as an octopus' garden
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Post by yellowhouse on May 16, 2009 7:39:56 GMT -5
still, Kudos to you for defending the chair!! I have maintained the front cupboard. And I think the next thing I am going to challenge myself to do is my dining room. It has been unusable for a while now (we eat in the kitchen). I am going to ignore the piles of crap in the dining room and just clear off the table and create a 0 degree squalor zone on the table. I want to be able to eat there again. I may be on a roll!!!! And to think...your kitchen chair started it all!!! |
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Post by still on May 16, 2009 12:53:25 GMT -5
Yellowhouse Congradulations on defending your cupboard!  Your plan for the dinning table sound like a winner to me! Good luck!  ! on my kitchen chair starting it all! I LOVE that imagery. I am going to look at that chair with new respect from now on - ! I shall dub it: The Chair (Who Started It ALL)  Well, I can still list: 1. my daughter's bottled drink cupboard 2. The Chair 3. the itty bitty fireplace. I'm going to go wipe down the bathroom sink and counter top so I can count that too. brb Took more than a wipe down, but now I can add bathroom sink, counter, mirror and outside of medicine cabinent to my 0 degree list Woo-hoo!  octopus are friends, not food
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Post by sleepymom on May 17, 2009 0:25:14 GMT -5
I doubt it will stay that way long because of daily use, but for the moment, my entire kitchen counter is at 0! It`s about 12 ft worth (and yes, I did measure it ) of cleanness, stained & ugly, but clean. I even pulled out the microwave & washed behind that. I did put back the things that belong there- the coffee supplies, my kitchen tool caddy, but now I have a small pile of things on the table I need to find homes for. Planning to tackle the rest of the table tomorrow... |
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Post by still on May 17, 2009 10:34:22 GMT -5
Sleepymom Woo-hoo! on the kitchen counter top! Even if it is temporary - YOU DID IT!!!!  ! On the pile on the table from cleaning the kitchen counter tops. That happens to me EVERY TIME I clean up. I feel like a mechanic who puts the car back together and has left over parts.  Actually, the "What do I do with all of this since it's not going back where I got it from?" thing has been one of the things that has been in the way of cleaning for me - dreading "the pile". I have gotten so I put things in boxes. BUT, I am trusting that as I keep pecking away at the new skills I am developing working with SOS, even that will become nothing to fear.  Self-report: 1. The Chair is desqualored again and 0 degree; I used a "de-piller" on the cushion and it looks almost brand new again. 2. itty bitty fireplace is 0 degree 3. daughter's bottled drink cupboard is 0 degree 4. bathroom sink, countertop, mirror and outside of medicine cabinent are 0 degree Octopus are friends not fiends
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Post by messysue on May 17, 2009 17:19:31 GMT -5
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Post by still on May 18, 2009 15:43:03 GMT -5
Thank you Messysue for putting the degrees link here where it is easy to access! How thoughtful! 0 degree areas: 1. fireplace 2. daughter's bottled drink cupboard 3. bathroom sink, counter, mirror, medicine cabinent 4. The Chair Want to find something to add to this lists. brb |
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