So the reason I sort of fell off the blog over Christmas was that, about three days after I went on break[1], I got sick. I got nobody else sick, so I figure it was allergies, but still. Tired, sore throat, gunk galore out my nasal cavities … blech. I managed to take the boy to the best-friend-in-law’s Peter Pan [2], finish up all the Christmas shopping, and survive the holidays[3]… but I was tired and living on Mucinex and Alka-Seltzer sinus.
I started feeling better the Saturday before I had to go back to work, though that gave me about four days.
Now, I had heard about Unfuck Your Habitat before, but I’d never really checked it out. But earlier in the week, a friend had posted one of those “Things To Make Your Life Easier” memes on Facebook–you know, use nail polish on your keys so you know which is which, cord labels made out a bread ties–and once again, I saw vertical folding. My dresser was a freaking disaster, I’d just gotten a bunch of new t-shirts and funky socks for Christmas, it was not looking promising … so I’d thought, why not?
By the time I was feeling up to doing anything, the post was lost in the mists of Facebook. So I googled “vertical folding” and found an article from UFYH. It took me about and hour and a half of unloading and refolding my clothes, but in the end …
I’m actually the most proud of my underwear drawer, which involved my making dividers out of comic backing boards, but I decided it was likely not a good idea to put photos of my underwear on the internet, even if my sock section looks freaking awesome.
A couple weeks (and two bouts of laundry) in, and I’m really just rolling everything more than folding it–my drawers are really shallow–but there’s nothing in my dresser that can’t be rolled.
So from there I went onto the UFYH website and started exploring, and discovered the joy of the 20/10 (20 minutes of cleaning, then a 10 minute break, then 20 more minutes of cleaning, and so on), and the following Monday I did our closet:
I then followed the Tumblr, got the app, started doing the “resets” (daily cleaning) and attempting to unfuck my morning (mixed results so far, because I sort of have two ‘mornings’; there’s the get the kid to school morning, then four hours later there’s get ready for work morning, so … I’ll figure out how to adapt it eventually), and then put the damn thing to the test …
Yesterday, I unfucked the filing.
I honestly thought it was one years’ worth … yeah, it was two. Possibly two and a half. All piled on the bookshelf next to my desk. Three 20/10s before I was at this point:
Then a lunch break and another two, and …
Holy cats, I have a bookcase! (This made the unfucking of my car today decidedly anticlimactic.)
I like the whole ‘system,’ thus far. I dig the swearing–it’s like cleaning a la Quentin Tarantino!–and the snarkiness of the blog, and I like feeling that it’s something I can maybe maintain (‘resetting’ the house sounds so much more do-able than ‘cleaning’ every damn day, and I think it’s making it easier on the husband, too). I also like the 20/10s. Because I sometimes feel overwhelmed and sort of defeated before I begin (like, when I look at the filing? Or the after-Xmas closet?), but this gives me a structure.
In the end, I’m hoping once the major unfucking is done, the resets will not take up a whole lot of time. And when, inevitably in a house with an elementary-school-age child and a parent who works in a library, we all go down with the plague again and the house devolves into chaos and despair, I’ll have the 20/10s and the app and the blog to fall back on.
We shall see how well it works. So far so good.
Oh, and yes, I am totally doing paperless billing now.
1 [back]College library day job; I get Winter Break.
2 [back]David costumed it–steampunk Peter Pan! Hook and the pirates basically stole the show, though Peter and Tiger Lily were excellent as well. The boy loved it; it was a very late night for him, and he was desperately trying to stay awake through intermission, but he refused to fall asleep until he found out how it ended.
3 [back]I hate the holidays. I just do. I spent a lot of my life trying to deny it, and I always ended up feeling like utter hell once they were over. When I finally admitted it (in a hysterical monologue in the car to my husband about eleven years ago) and gave up on trying to enjoy them … I started actually enjoying them a lot more. I don’t try to Scrooge on anyone else’s enjoyment of them; I will not Grinch your holiday party. I just want to peacefully hate getting out the decorations and ignore most of the specials on TV while debating whether a hockey stick or a cattle prod might be more effective in the damn store two days before Christmas.
Laura E. Price 