Housecleaning
Our house is a mess! There's nothing new about that, but it's starting to make me a little crazy.

I've become less and less tolerant of a messy house over the years, but (1) Rich and I are both terrible housekeepers, (2) Rich is still more tolerant of mess than I am, which means he doesn't have the same emotional investment that I do in cleaning (that's not a slight on him!), and (3) Matthew adds an amount of mess completely disproportionate to his size. :-)

Of course, having a child around who can now WALK (!!!) means that we need to get serious about the clutter, because it can become dangerous. We've caught him reaching up to countertops and tables to pull things down, for instance. No disasters yet, but it's just a matter of time.

So we've kind of reached a crisis point. I've concluded that these are the factors that will help us reach a better state:

* Do a serious decluttering. I want to get rid of a lot of stuff, which may involve freecycle, ebay, the local PTO thrift shop, Goodwill, consignment stores, or the curb. For things we want to keep, I want to get yet more big plastic bins, bin stuff up, label it, and move it to the attic or basement. The problem? This takes time, and my time is worth MONEY these days! Literally, since I'm contracting by the hour!

* More storage space, and more intelligent use of the space we already have. We've built an immense bookshelf system -- already mostly full -- which we need to use better. Our closets are small, and we don't use them terribly well either (they need decluttering too). I'm convinced that we three messies can live in this small house -- we just need to be smarter about it.

* We need to get our daily "systems" working better. We tend to leave random stuff lying around, to leave laundry on the couch, to not move recycling out to the storage area, to not break down the boxes we get in the mail, to not clear off the kitchen counters... With enough self-discipline and better daily habits, we can keep the clutter down without having to explicitly "declutter" nearly so often. I'm working on that, habit by habit, but it's maddeningly slow work.

* Dirt! I'm actually not bad at getting rid of dirt -- the clutter is in the way, that's all. :-) When I get on a cleaning kick, Rich knows to stay out of my way, and not a cobweb or speck of food remains after I'm done. We have the tools: a nice new vacuum, a good rag mop, non-chemical cleaners (soap and vinegar), a Dustbuster, etc. But we need to keep the clutter down, and I need to find time to get rid of the dirt more frequently. Only the time issue would be solved with a maid service, not the clutter.

So recordersmith and I are going to keep each other accountable. :-) We'll both post weekly about progress we're making in our respective houses.