Little by Little

One of my beliefs is that the environment in which we choose to live, and how that environment makes us feel, can influence our well being. Some people are quite content with a messy, cluttery house. I have very good friends who are quite happy that way, and more power to them. I'm just not one of those people. I may be lazy, but I do keep a pretty clean house. For me, there is something magickal about the feeling I get when I can sit down with a glass of cabernet, and look around at my neat and sparkling clean house. It's like the shackles fall away, and I'm free to do whatever I want to do. It makes me feel incredibly good and effective, hence it's become one of my magickal preparations.

But ... my basement has a closing door. And it's become the domain of a bunch of stuff I no longer want or need, as well as some stuff I do want but haven't found a place for yet (ie, some of the contents of my grandfather's condo, which I sold last November). And I can feel the icky juju creeping up the stairs.

When I first moved in, the basement was mostly clear. It wasn't a creepy basement at all, despite the octopus furnace that used to reside there. I didn't have a problem going down there, and I didn't look over my shoulder for the monsters to get me on my way up the stairs. But over the last 9 years, the mess has slowly been growing, and the gremlins have moved in. I will go weeks without doing laundry because I just hate going down there.

I would tell myself that I just needed to take a weekend and go through everything, toss stuff, donate stuff, and organize it. But the last thing I ever want to do is spend a whole weekend in my dark basement! Ugh!

Then I found a puddle of water, and figured out it forms when we turn the sprinkler system on in the front yard. That alone should have motivated me to spend a weekend in my basement, but not so fast, considering the easy fix is to just use a hose and not the sprinkler system. Have I mentioned I'm lazy? And it is summer ...

So instead I remembered the Fly Lady Way: a little bit every day gets the big jobs done. I decided to haul out a trash bag full of crap each Wednesday (garbage day is Thursday). I've got a notes app on my phone that reminds me as soon as I get home from work, and it takes me less than 10 minutes. This saves me a weekend, and also several trips to the transfer station. What you can't see in the above picture is that I've cleared out about 15 square feet inside of two Wednesdays.

I also have a large box and duffle bag full of decent, wearable clothes ready to be taken to Goodwill.