And there you have it. My office is always my downfall when it comes to cleaning. I'm not a horrendously neat person, but I usually manage to get to the main cleaning projects regularly. I can do dishes all day and never mind at all. Beds? No problem. Laundry. I rather like doing laundry. Dusting and vacuuming, not so much, but it gets done, albeit not as often as it should. The office, however, is always a different story. It requires lots of thought, lots of sorting and a will of iron to recycle, donate or toss the things necessary to really clean things up. I try to do it over a period of days, but when something pressing comes up, there goes the plan and I end up only halfway through. By the time I get back to it, I have to start all over again.
I'm not going to ask if you're neater than I am. Most of you must be. But surely everyone has at least one part of cleaning that they like less than others. What's yours?
Have a great day!
Myrna
6 comments:
I can relate to all the cleaning areas you mentioned. Yeah, I too can dust/vacuum occasionally (not as often as I did in my twenties and thirties, mind you), plus get those other things done, but books? They multiply!
I recently put my TBR books in alphabetical order by author and placed them in a downwards direction in a box that photocopy paper comes in. Just one level/row, so I can see the spines still. I filled up 8 or 9 boxes and piled them in my rec room (not quite out of sight but usually out of mind) to my ceiling. When I need to refer to one/get one out/add a new one, I have Post-It labels on each box front so I know where to look. If I had smaller (uniform) boxes, I'd use those instead, as there is a lot of wasted space above those books in those boxes, but I am too cheap to buy them. Free is the price I pay, if possible, to organize.
Previous to this, I had them stacked in rows in those same boxes, but I always had to dig, which wasn't time efficient (nor enjoyable). Even before that, I had them piled in a vertical filing-cabinet drawer alphabetically, but they occasionally tipped over when I opened/closed the drawer. Before I began blogging and speaking with authors, I didn't care who wrote the books (and now I specifically look for authors I enjoy), so I had them piled haphazardly in those same boxes but they were in my crawl space. All of these options became unacceptable to me, and so far my current solution is working for me. We'll see how I feel next year by this time, LOL.
Good luck, Myrna!
Elaine, I like your idea about organizing books. They're the one thing (group of things?) that seems to take over in my house. I won't say that I have no self-control regarding books, but when we go shopping, I'm much more likely to come back with a book than anything else. And space is limited!
If you pushed a bookcase away from the other, leaving sufficient width for your tallest book in between, you could pile all your books from the floor to the ceiling in whatever order you preferred (oldest on top or bottom, alphabetically, colour, genre, etc.). If you have two rows high, though, I would suggest they be piled AWAY from the first pile, as they'd tip into each other. You might consider pushing BOTH bookcases away from the right wall, so a pile could go against that wall, as well as between the bookcases to the left.
Whenever you want a lower book taken out, simply hold a yard stick (or perhaps a curtain rod if the yard stick is too short) in front of all the books to ensure they don't topple.
I would still keep reference books on your bookcase or hutch, with pleasure reading piled sky high....
I actually don't enjoy doing the day to day cleaning, but when it comes to my massive spring clean I kind of get invigorated. I like to have it ALL done before Christmas.
Mary, I once saw an episode of The Waltons (my, I'm dating myself here) where they took every stick of furniture out of their house and put it on the lawn in order to do spring cleaning. I've often thought that I'd love to have furniture light enough to do that. Wouldn't it be great to be able to get to every nook and cranny without having to shove heavy furniture out of the way?
Elaine, that's a great idea. Thanks!
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