Baby Steps (Or How an ADHD Mom Cleans Up)

I don't know about you, but when I look at a task as large as cleaning out my office, I get scared.

Curl up in a ball ... sucking my thumb (ok, maybe a margarita, not my thumb) ... tapping my heels together, wishing to go back to Kansas scared.

I'm a self-diagnosed, unmedicated ADD Mom (but with none of that cool "H").  "Focus...Focus...Focus...Look, there's a birdie!" is my modus operandi. So if I'm going to do something big .... like cleaning my office (click here for the "before" post so you'll know exactly what I'm talking about) ... I have to break it up into bite-sized pieces. And I have to have goals I care about. The combination of relatively small tasks and goals that matter to me are invaluable.

It Is Finished: Hours 15-0

OK, so my plan to blog daily about cleaning up my office didn't happen.

But the clean office did!

Here's some before photos, just to remind you from whence I came...

Ugh. That hurts just to look at. And to think I lived this way on and off for years! Yeah, I'd clean it up every now and again, but it was never really down to the roots clean. It was more flat-ironing the top layer while leaving all the kinky curly stuff hidden underneath.

But here's the reveal....

Lost and Found: Hours 18 to 15

OK. The great office clean-up started today. You saw the before pictures yesterday. If you missed them, click here to see my gosh-awful mess.

But wait! I still have before and after picture for you, so hold onto your knickers.

Just in case you have your own little shop of horrors in your house, each day I'm going to go over what I did, step by step. Today's tasks, in order:

1. Take all baskets, boxes, and other containers of "stuff" out of my room and into the dining room.
2. Remove all random piles of paper from the floor and move them into the dining room. Return things to their homes on the bookshelves if they have migrated to the floor. 
3. Remove everything else from the floor that isn't nailed down or a major piece of furniture. Put it in the dining room.
4. Clear off all horizontal surfaces and put the papers, etc., in plastic bins to sort through later. Put bins in the dining room. (Yes, I know this is how I've gotten off-track in the past. But this time I'm actually going to sort through the bins, laundry baskets, and other boxes. None of them may re-enter the office.)
5. Thoroughly clean the desk area. Vacuum, then mop the floor. (Note: Even though Izabel comes and cleans our house once every two weeks, it's been literally months since my office has been cleaned. I banned her from the room ages ago because there was nothing ... literally nothing ... she could do.)
6. Choose a new rug for my newly cleaned floor from the lovely ones donated to the cause by my friends. Thank you Gina and Jackie!
7. Sit back and bask in the glow.

Do you notice a theme here? Everything moved out of my office and into the dining room. So here are my before and after pictures for the day.

T Minus 18 Hours

18 hours.

Three hours a day for six days.

That's how much time I have set aside over the next week to clean my office. Seems like a lot, doesn't it? Well, if it does, then you haven't seen my office.

Lest you think I'm exaggerating, here are some "before" photos...

This is what you see when you first enter my office. That pink thing all covered with stuff is a large chair. I bought this chair when my 14yo Sandy was a toddler, and it used to reside in my bedroom back when I was a single mom and it was just the two of us. It's where I would sit and do my quiet times in the evening after he went to bed. It is where we'd snuggle and read. It's the chair we would sit and watch VeggieTales when he woke during the night with a fever of 103, waiting for the Motrin to kick in.

Ur Gramr Sux

OK, so this has nothing to do with Finishing anything, but I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal about how we are becoming a nation of grammatical slackers. Maybe it's just because I was an English minor...maybe it's just because I planned to be a journalist when I grew up...or maybe it's just because my parents were a teacher (Mom) and a journalist then lawyer (Dad), but I grew up not only knowing good grammar, but also knowing the importance of it.

Let me say this once and loudly: Most prospective employers, particularly of professional or service-oriented businesses, will not take you seriously if you cannot write a respectful, grammatically correct cover letter and resume. 

Or at least that's what I used to think.