Make room for a new you

Problem Areas

The rest of this I did on the couch while watching junky reality shows. I want to share with you a few more details of my junk… the confessional is good for me and will hold me accountable. Maybe some of you will recognize yourself in my “problem areas.”

1. Underwear Drawer:

I need to declutter my underwear drawer. I firmly believe that all women should do this on a regular basis. No granny panties allowed.. If you are over 40, then maybe it is time to get rid of your maternity underwear. If you do get pregnant again, you can always buy new ones. Ditto for anything with a rip or stain.  As an artist, you know that the first layers may not be seen but you know they are there. Those first layers should make you feel good and happy. The first thing you put on during the day should bring a smile to your face.

2. Under the bathroom sinks:

This is a problem area in both of our bathrooms. I started doing this yesterday in my kids’ bathroom and there were over seven tubes of toothpaste, and multiples of things like bug spray, soap, half used sunscreen, bug bite cream. We keep buying more because no one seems to know how much we have. Under my own sink is the worst as there are expensive facial masks that I bought and never used. I should just dump them so I won’t feel guilty every time I see them. The other confession I have is that I keep tossing my “hand wash” only shirts under my sink too. I think I should just send these to my mother… she’ll know what to do with them.

3. Craft Closet:

I am proud to say that I did clean out my craft closet a week ago and now it is functional once again… Of course, it took 8 hours and the help of a professional organizer to get it that way…

4. Behind Piano:

So in my living room, we have an upright piano. It is angled in a corner to make it seem more like a grand piano. The front of the piano is literally covered with a foot high stack of piano music. That is the visible problem. The worst of it is BEHIND the piano. You can only see it if you peer over the piano to look in the corner. I have no idea what is in that foot high pile… and I just can’t toss it because it is intermingled with photographs.

5. Garage:

The problem with my garage is slightly different than you might think. I actually park my car in this one car garage so there is minimal clutter. The problem is that my cat recently decided that she prefers peeing in the garage. It is a constant battle and I have to fix the door from the basement to the garage to cut off her access. There is nothing that annoys me more than making “service appointments” for people who never show up when they say they will and you end up waiting around all day for someone who finally shows up in the minute you are leaving to pick up your kids from someplace. So that is why I procrastinate service appointments the most.

6. Dining Room:

Sometimes I treat the dining room as the “kitchen’s closet.” Whenever I have something in the kitchen that I don’t know what to do with I just stick it on my dining room table….problem.

7. Basement:

The recycling area… yikes… plus there are the hundreds of boxes in various sizes I bought in bulk from uline that I spent a lot of money on and are taking up way too much room. After I bought them, my art sales slowed and now I have shelves full of empty cardboard boxes mocking me.

8. Kitchen Sink:

see bathroom sink.

9. Car:

I did take mine to the car wash and got a good vacuum.. Right now the problem is that “storage” space they give you between the driver and passenger seats.. A sampling of what you will find in that space: one hand warmer, lipstick with no top, tweezers for emergency plucking in parking lots, nail polish, a few raisins stuck to the bottom, water bottle caps and gum wrappers.

10. Gift Closet:

It is getting dangerous to open the closet where I stuff, I mean store, wrapping paper and other stuff having nothing to do with wrapping gifts. I believe my mother’s preserved wedding dress is also in that closet.