Pound the alarm

Currently reading: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

No song of the day today, as much as I'd like to be listening to something a little upbeat (such as our current title-influence). We're listening to a training course in basic Excel skills whilst we go about our other tasks and talk about ourselves in the plural for some unknown reason.

There hasn't been an update here in a long time for the simple reason that my new job is extremely immersing, and I haven't even properly started working yet! Four weeks of training were meant to culminate in my first role starting last Monday, but I've had the worst luck in the world and that was cancelled, as was the role I was assigned to following that mishap. But we seem to be back on track and I'll be starting my first actual role tomorrow, nearly a full six weeks after officially starting the job.

In some ways, the job being so immersive so far has been good. I've got to know quite a lot of people, I've barely had time to stop and think "what am I doing?", although that has cropped up a little over the last few days, and they provided me with some wonderful food. I was also able to spend two weeks in the US, which is always a nice bonus.

But it hasn't all been sunshine and daisies. Oh no. And the main problem we're going to discuss in this blog post is something we've talked about before.

How on earth do people keep their living spaces tidy!?

This is the situation:

Problem area uno

Problem area dos

And yes, I realise this has only got worse.

This is even worse than when I decided to sort my room out initially! To be honest, my room doesn't completely look like the above. These pictures were taken a couple of days ago. Some parts are better, some parts are worse. Problem area #3 hasn't changed. There are a lot of large empty cardboard boxes in the middle of the room.

I know I need to just grit my teeth and get on with putting things back in their place, but that's a large part of the problem. I'm not sure where a lot of things should go, there's no home for them. For example, my new stretchy bands to use during pilates, or the new pc accessories I have for work. There's just no storage space! I solved one storage problem a few weeks ago, as you can see in the first image, and bought somewhere to stack all my shoes. I think my next purchase needs to be an organiser to hang over my door, because the one hook I have is being seriously overloaded at the moment.

I have to learn how to stay on top of this. I need to sort out storage, buy some baskets maybe, or another bookshelf, and I need to get used to putting things away straight away. Otherwise I'm living in a mess, and it makes me feel unprofessional and lazy. It makes me feel less of a sort-of-adult, and it just doesn't feel like home! So once I've finished this bit of training, I'm going to get to work. The reason I decided to address this issue here is that I'll feel more accountable. I'll have to do it just so that I don't leave this as a lasting impression!

Regular service will resume shortly.

The World (Is Going Up In Flames) [Part 3]

Song of the day: How Long - Charles Bradley 
"How long must I keep going on?"

There's something to be said about being ruthless when sorting. It's something I used to be terrible at, but the many occasions over the last year or two that my mother has asked me to clear some space in my bedroom in my parents' house so they can use it has taught me a thing or two. For example, over Christmas I decided (mum decided I was) to sort out my chest of drawers. Four large drawers, four small. Last time I sorted through it I got rid of a fair few items, so that instead of all the drawers being ready to burst, they were only semi-filled.

This time however, I was taking no prisoners. Whereas last time a few things got though the decision making process by the age old 'I might wear it one day', I was having none of that this time. After an hour or two, we were down to the following:

One drawer containing memory clothing, e.g. primary school dresses with everyone's signatures on, orchestra tour t-shirts for China and Prague.
Three boxes of jewellery, health+beauty products and other memorabilia (e.g. dance and gymnastic medals) that I just couldn't get rid of. These boxes fit into the same drawer as the above.

And I think that was it! Eight drawers down to one.

Something that helps you to be ruthless is moving the items you don't want to keep out of your room/ house as soon as possible. Last time I sorted through my clothes here in London was several months ago, but I put the clothes to-go in a pile that stayed here until this weekend. Clearing up on Saturday, however, involved me very quickly saying "yes" or "no" to items (think twice about your decision on the former, but only once about the latter), and then immediately going out to Oxfam with my bag of donations. The only textile items I have left that need to go are a bag of holey old socks, because I wasn't sure how best to get rid of them.

Day 3: 5pm, still sorting.

Being ruthless can be hard though. As you can see in the above photo, today I was sorting out my shoe collection. I owned about sixteen pairs, which I culled down to eleven today. Out of those eleven, I wear two, perhaps three on a regular occasion. Most of the eleven are heels that go with specific outfits that I wear only occasionally but don't want to get rid of yet. I don't mind about keeping them. What was hard was throwing away some of the shoes that have served me faithfully over the years but are far past it now. A pair of brown high-heeled boots that I wore almost every day last year, a pair of walking boots that I've owned for about five years and got me through the worst of work when I started but have just become too un-waterproof for me to continue using them, and a pair of black court shoes that I've had since I was in my last years in secondary school. I really like them, but I've worn them so much the heel has worn down to the point where it's dangerous to use them. They had to go. It's always hard to get rid of things that have seen you through a lot. You often don't realise you have an emotional attachment to something (why would you? It's a pair of shoes!) until you have to let it go. But it's necessary.

We've made good progress though. The room is looking much, much better than it did a few days ago, and it's making me feel better. It looks more home-y, I'm more able to find things, and it's generally just a nice room to be in! Actually getting the TV to work rather than using it as a noticeboard was a benefit I had no idea would be so great. I get to watch Harvey Specter on a screen easily three times bigger than my laptop screen. It's becoming more of a thing with every passing episode. If only I could get White Collar and Teen Wolf on there as well, I'd be a puddle of goo on the floor, and mess up all my efforts this weekend. Maybe it's a good thing we're limited to just this one show for the moment.

So what have we actually done? May I present...

Formerly-problem-area #1. It's not perfect as the dryer was commandeered before I could finish drying my duvet cover, but we're down to just reading material! And to prove that it's not all just been moved to the couch,

Ta-daa! Nothing there except for reading material either. And finally,

Formerly-problem-area #4. All nice and neat, and providing room for me to type this up in comfort, rather than hunched over a laptop sitting on a not-so-comfortable couch.

So there we have it. The room is almost complete. All that is left is the ever-looming problem area #3, which may have actually ever so slightly increased in size. But whilst I've not yet completed all that I set out to do, I have learnt something about deadlines and projects. I need to make sure my goals are realistic for the time that I have, and I probably need to procrastinate less. I have no doubt that I would have got everything finished today had I a) done something yesterday and b) not spent most all of this morning reading fanfiction and playing on empire building browser games. These projects take time, but they are doable. And they're really not as daunting as they first seem.

And tomorrow I'm going to kick problem area #3's behind.

The World (Is Going Up In Flames) [Part 2]

A good part of today was spent not tidying, but discovering that there are pelicans in St James' Park and trying to take photos of them. This was the best I could do:

What's that? You can't actually see any pelicans there? Well, yes. That's because by this point they'd swam behind that grassy bit, and were also too far away and so really tiny. The latter was the same problem for this heron:

I think it's a fairly nice picture anyway. Nothing like a good long walk in the park in the cold to start the day off right, hey?

Except that I originally planned to give myself until the end of today to get everything in my room finished, but a week of not sleeping very well has taken it's toll (a topic we will return to at a later date), and this afternoon was been mostly spent laying on my bed watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Very classy.

So we've not managed to get everything organised, but progress has certainly been made. May I present:

Area formerly known as Problem Area #2:

All the clothes were sorted in a keep pile or a donate pile. The donate pile went straight to Oxfam (up a much-steeper-than-planned hill), and the keep pile went straight in the wash basket. New home for my shoes as well.

This next area wasn't even a problem area.... it just didn't exist at all!

The television is the one that was on my desk yesterday, the first shelf of books are the cookbooks I mentioned, which had been living in a box underneath the desk for the last six months, and the books beneath that are various academic texts that have really been living on the floor for god knows how long. And the electronics (wireless router etc) are all nice and neat too. The table itself was 'borrowed' from the living room.

Also, yes, I did only just get instagram recently and am overusing the filters a bit. I'm late to the party. But you know what?

---

Things still left to do:

* Move desk to the left, swap boxes around different sides.
* Put the printer on the smaller box.
* Problem area #3
* Clothes recycling bag 2
* Actually clean (vacuum, dust etc)
* Change bedding. Do additional load of laundry to get to-wash pile down.

Smaller things (to buy):

40W 240V screw-in bulb
Over-door hooks

The World (Is Going Up In Flames) [Part 1]

Today is Saturday, and we're going to hit the ground running. A few days ago I signed up for Apartment Therapy's January Cure, and whilst we're not going to be doing the task they suggest for today (it's one of my flatmate's months to clean the kitchen), we are going to take a leaf out of their book and tackle my living space.

So what do we have to work with?

Problem area #1: All the stuff that gets moved from the bed to the couch and back again every single day.

Problem area #2: All the clothes that were in my suitcase from when I moved in 6 months ago but I have yet to do anything with, except dump on the floor when I needed to use said suitcase two weeks ago.

Problem area #3: I like to pretend this bit doesn't exist. It's all just a giant, horrible hallucination.

And finally, problem area #4. The box underneath the desk is full of cookbooks that I have no bookshelf space for. I'm not really sure what to do with them right now. I also want a bigger desk at some point, and to put the television (which doesn't work at the moment) on a coffee table. But all these things cost money, which, alas, I have none of right now.

It's a huge task, so I'm giving myself the whole weekend to do it. Or, I'm giving myself all of today and then a few hours tomorrow, since I'm museum/art gallery/walk-in-the-park -ing tomorrow. Whilst this isn't going to be a post-everyday blog, check in tomorrow to see how I did. I'll give you a hint... it's not looking too shabby!