31 January 2010
FHCM: Coming Soon to a House Near Me

Filed under decluttering

There will probably be no FAWMing for me this year. I’m not ruling it out, but I’m focusing on getting the house clean this month, and I’m making that a first priority. The madness of January (professionally and personally) has passed, and February is normally something of a let-down anyway (it and October are my least-favorite months).

I still haven’t decided how I want to go about this. I could make it a time commitment: A certain number of hours of hardcore cleaning for the month, say seventy-five or so? I know that’s how NaNoEdMo does it. A time thing seems kind of lame to me, though. It’s not as fun as, say, a wordcount, a song count, or something like that. I could make it a square-footage thing. This would allow me to mark off already-clean square feet on days when I’m not up to the task (trust me: there aren’t that many already-clean square feet in my house for that to be a problem). I kinda like that idea. I could say every square foot (and all the space above it, up to the ceiling) must be cleaned. This would make certain areas, like the living room and hallway, pretty easy to manage, and other areas, like the closets and kitchen, much more of a challenge.

It would also work better with my cleaning style, which is to start at one end of a room and work across it. Stuff can be picked up and put ahead, to a section of the room that hasn’t yet been dealt with, but it cannot be put back, into a space that’s already been cleaned. This system has worked well for me for most of my adult life, but for some reason this job seems much too big to approach this way. I’m not sure why.

Another way I could mark my goal is to identify zones. I will totally clean each zone and not mess up previously cleaned zones in order to clean the currently-being-cleaned zones. This might work, especially if I allow myself one zone to be left uncleaned at the end of the month, like the walk-in closet or the cabinets in the laundry room. Something to consider.

I’ll decide in the morning. I can’t reasonably get started now anyway, even though I’m just six minutes away from February House-Cleaning Month, ’cause I still have to be up and alert for my job in the morning! You know what I need? I need about two and a half months when I don’t have to work and they still put a paycheck in my bank account every two weeks. Where can I get a job that allows me that?

2010-01-31  ::  me