Sites I Like #8: Des meubles de cuisine à petits prix

Something I've noticed since spending lots of time in my new dream dorm is that, no matter how pretty and clean a place is when it's brand new, it takes a certain amount of effort to keep it looking nice and comfortable. Our kitchen is one place where our filthiness likes to manifest itself. Neither my roommate nor I do the dishes on a regular basis. Unless you could call "whenever we run out of dishes and decide to do them all in one fell swoop" regular. I'm kind of a hypocrite, because of my history with de-cluttering and my manic need for things to be organized in my California home but not in New York. But I feel like I'm allowed to be messy since I'm in college.

Whatever my excuse, our kitchen gets dirty. It's still pretty, but if you actually look at the floors and run a hand along the granite counter top, you might just recoil in disgust. And, instead of cleaning or doing the reading I need to do for Francophone Literature (in which I have an impossible-sounding midterm on Wednesday), I thought I would present you with this wonderful link to pictures of Low-Cost Kitchen Furniture. Enjoy! It's in French, but I mean... all you really need are the pictures. Maybe someday I will translate the blurbs as an exercise for myself, since I'm taking Translation now, but for now... I don't wanna learn. I do what I want! A lot like Mindy Kaling and Cartman.

Dorm Delightfulness on the Cheap

Katherine of BackGarage sent me this really cool article from the New York Times about the creative ingenuity of college students in their dorms. Some of the ideas these people dream up are amazing!

The only thing that makes me cluck a bit at the article is that a lot of the students showcased go to design schools! I mean, obviously they're going to be amazing and put all the rest of us to shame. I wish I had the cleverness they did. But I do think there's something to be said for discovering frugality during the college years.

Personally, I have been spending more money than I'd like to lately. But a lot of it is on necessities like food and shampoo, stuff like that. So I'm not really stretching my budget, per se. However, I can hardly dream of spending anything on design-ish things right now, because I'm all about function over fanciness haha. Make no mistake, though, I would love to have a more personalized dorm space. My current room, as you probably noticed in my post on Gramercy, features two measly posters and a lot of blank wall. I'm just cheap. Furthermore, NYU doesn't allow us (technically) to bring in outside furniture. Whatever, I'm making excuses for my lack of creativity.

For now it's nice to look at the pretty pictures in the article and be jealous of the creativity of others! Thanks so much for the link Katherine!

Garbage Disposal

My mother's wrist puncture wounds got infected, so that means she now has a huge splint on her left forearm and has to wear a sling. This also means that I have to do most of the housework. I just spent about 75 minutes doing dishes and I noticed, the same as I did a couple days ago when doing dishes, that the black rubber of our garbage disposal opening is a nasty yellow color. I Dawn'd it up and wiped off the crap with a wet paper towel. Much to my disgust, it was filthy!! Not just old (what kind of black fades to yellow anyway?). Feeling very un-green but determined to get the nastiness away from where we clean our dishes, I used many paper towels in the same way to get under the rubber surface, too.

You guys, it looked like FECES. :(

I looked online for ways to thoroughly clean garbage disposals and came upon AskTheBuilder.com. Tim Carter's article primarily offers solutions for smelly garbage disposals, but the ideas are great for everyday switch-flippin'-water-runnin'-food-crushin' fun. He says, in a nutshell:

Grind up the garbage with the water running into the disposal. Then, when it's finished, turn off disposal and stop it up. Fill the sink 2/3 of the way up with water, then add soap generously; finally, let the soapy water run into the disposal and turn the disposal on. The blades will swirl it around, effectively cleaning up that nasty poo-maker. (Ok those two are my words, not his.) There are many more great suggestions at Thrifty Fun.

Thanks to AboutAppliance for today's image.

Sites I Like #7: Children of Hoarders

I guess I never realized how ashamed I should have been (by society's standards) of the state of my house. I'm still not ashamed, because I know that it's not entirely my responsibility. But I found an interesting site for the community of children of hoarders.

Today's site: Children of Hoarders

The subtitle of the site says "for the adult children of compulsive hoarders," but I think it's useful for anyone connected to a compulsive hoarder. There are numerous videos on the site, including "Possessed," which I posted about before, showcasing the long-term emotional turmoil that clutter brings with it. The site is just full of resources, and I think it's great that this exists just like communities exist for children of Alzheimer's patients and alcoholics.

There is a well-run forum, too, so you get the full experience of empathy and support. One board in the forum mentions P.I.S.S., which stands for Post-Intervention Stress Syndrome, an unofficial disorder discussed by the COH community. "P.I.S.S." was coined by a COH member and is brought on by the significant anti-climax that comes at the end of a de-cluttering undertaking. Interesting, and what a catchy acronym...

For me, the fact that I couldn't invite people over during my childhood wasn't embarrassing; it was just something that was. It was a fact of life: all my friends could have me over, but having people over at my apartment just wasn't done after about third grade. My friends were all polite about it, but I'm sure they sensed that something bad was the reason they never saw the inside of my home.

And now, the main trouble of having clutter is the tension between my mother and me. It's hard to actually de-clutter without having a fight most times. But now I know I'm not the only one who has had this experience!

Safeway is King

Yesterday, my mom and I did a buttload of errands. Some de-cluttering, some not. We were all over the place! The best part of the day was finding the recycling center back behind a nearby Safeway that recycles lots of stuff and offers CRV (California Refund Value). They even take #6 styrofoam (those huge annoying blocks)!!! It was a bit ironic that we found out about the styrofoam though, because we had just tossed a huge collection of styrofoam blocks, after coming up short on recycling resources. (Waste Management told us it counts as garbage in this area so we could throw it out. My mom says they were just trying to steer business their way, which sucks because throwing out styrofoam is SO BAD for the environment!)

Moral of the story: your city probably has some amazing resources that are hidden behind random grocery stores or other weird places! Do some hunting and find these great places.

Anyway, things are looking better every day! I drew up some ideas I had for floorplans when we're ready to move stuff around. I have one for my room and one for the living room. Maybe I'll post them tomorrow! In the meantime, my friend L and I are hosting a hillbilly hootenanny birthday party for ourselves tonight, so I might not post till late tomorrow. :P

Clutter Personality

I've noticed a pattern or two as I've been slogging through the living room. Today, as I was starting to clear off the third of three sitting spaces (1: couch, 2: love seat, and 3: big chair that goes with the couch), I thought to myself, "There is SO MUCH PAPER here." That reminded me of this article I read on clutter personalities.

I revisited the article today and decided that, out of the five personality types listed there, my mother must embody at least four, these being: the hoarder ("This might come in hand someday!"), the deferrer ("I'll think about that tomorrow!"), the perfectionist ("Next week, I'll organize everything--perfectly!"), and the sentimentalist ("Oh, the little darling!"). The fifth is the rebel, who's still bitter about mom's nagging to clean that room.

This melee of personality types may make it sound pretty bad, and it is, but I do acknowledge that it could be a lot worse, like those people in the video I posted a couple days ago. But I think the combination of all these deadly personality types makes me understand a bit better just how much my mom needs someone else to take initiative in de-cluttering.

The paper-pileup is definitely a byproduct of her hoarding personality. She brought me up to always consider that something might be useful later and to never get rid of anything if you can help it. But this is only sensible to a point. There were receipts up the wazoo on the chair I was cleaning today, from Jack-in-the-Box nine months ago (that depressed me a lot) to endless printouts from online. I really don't think proof of your Junior Bacon with Cheese is going to come in handy soon OR later. About.com has some nice tips on how to eliminate paper clutter.

Think carefully about what kind of clutter personality you have, then take the appropriate steps to de-clutter yourself! This is a very important step that I'm feeling the weight of right now.

Thank to this site for the image.

P.S. I hope the people who have found this blog with similar projects underway are finding my tips and progress helpful/inspiring in some way! Always feel welcome to post comments about your own progress and projects. :)

Do It Yourself

Well, it's been a busy past few days! Not only with de-cluttering, but with birthdays and hanging out with my best friends for summertime fun and trying to get myself a job. I did de-clutter one of our couches in the living room. However, I sat down on it today and realized it's a depressing spot! It receives almost no light, even though it is about five feet from the window. Of course, this is because one of our bookshelves is placed illogically and uglily between the two! Hmm. I can't wait to start the re-arranging part of our project. In the spirit of DIY thinking*, here's a fun link about how to fuse plastic bags to make stuff! Just don't inhale those hot plastic fumes, kids.

Via Curbly.com

* Ok that's kind of a stretch, from my progress to "DIY" but I don't have much to write about...

"Possessed" Short Documentary

Here is a very emotionally charged video made by Martin Hampton about people and their clutter. I almost wish it were longer.


POSSESSED from Martin Hampton on Vimeo.

Via BackGarage

What are your reactions? For those of you not affected by such clutter in your own lives, what were your thoughts as you saw and then heard about these people's struggles (assuming you watched it :P)? For those of you with clutter, did it hit home at all?

Sites I Like #6: Freecycle.org

Ok I know I like JUST did a Site I Like, but this one is actually helping me in my progress! I'm giddy right now.

Today's site: FreeCycle.org



This is a .org site, but the part of it that I'm making the best use out of is the Yahoo group for my area. Basically, it's a very well-run organization of people pawning off the crap they don't want, and for free. There's no trading, no adult themes, and no money involved. Also, there's no worries about clogging those landfills or making some epic trek to a specialty recycling center. If you've got something that works but that you no longer want, you send an e-mail to the list serve (with title tags such as OFFER, WANTED [they prefer you don't use this one much], TAKEN [for completed "offer" transactions], and RECEIVED [for completed "wanted" transactions]) and interested parties e-mail you back.

Around 5 p.m. today, I put up two posts: one offering this stupid old floor ab machine (like the one at the bottom of this picture), and one offering two body pillows I don't want anymore. By the time I got home from a crepe outing tonight at 9:30, I had four replies - one for both posts, two more for the ab machine, and one for the pillows (it read: "i am interested in your pillows." Nothing more.). As I type here, I'm simultaneously making arrangements with the first woman who replied to have the items picked up. She's the one who wanted everything, and I suspect she is a compulsive/impulsive shopper, but that is fine with me, since it gets rid of my stuff for me haha.

We'll see how it goes! I'm excited to get rid of more crap and brighten somebody else's day. :)

Sites I Like #5: Seven Dumpsters and a Corpse

As with most of the links I absorb into my bookmarks, I can't remember how I found this one. But the URL (www.messiemother.com) is extremely endearing, it's relevant, and it has a flash game!

Today's site: Seven Dumpsters and a Corpse

So one of the things I like about this is that it's German. The end! No, I'm just kidding. :) But German things really do entice me. Anyway this is the site for a documentary made by Thomas Haemmerli about his mother's death and the clutter at her house that he and his brother had to wade through in the ensuing month.

There are several things I particularly enjoy about the site:

• The dumpster flash game (or muldenspiel)! I found it too hard because they make you take the wind direction into account! F that. But give it a try when you're taking a break from de-cluttering your own home. That guy down below makes a funny angry noise.


• The family history twist of the film. The brothers find so many amazing relics of their family's past throughout their project; it's inspiring. I'd really like to see the film, and this aspect is actually more intriguing to me than the de-cluttering. I love finding old photos of my mom's past when I'm cleaning. They're like decades-old Easter eggs that don't smell half bad.


• The film's relevance to my own fears. I sporadically get this feeling of dread that of my mother will let the clutter consume her again when I leave home for good and go make a life for myself. I don't want her to die alone in a sea of carelessness and disorder, despite how much I can dislike her (in times like this week, when she refuses to talk to me because of things I've said to her out of frustration and callousness brought on by the project).

As far as our own progress, we're a bit past the one-month mark and things are going ok, but not as good as those deutsche Brudern. We can actually sit (well, one of us can sit) on our couch in the living room! The ottoman has space to lie flat! WE USED THE CORNER OF THE COFFEE TABLE TO PLAY SCRABBLE (and I won 3/3). Contented sigh. Also, even in the face of our tiff (which is still going on because my mom is 5), my mother managed to cart off a carload of stuff to our standbys (Goodwill, Books for the Barrios, and her favorite used book store, Hooked on Books).

The Cluttering Blogosphere

So after a little jaunt to ProBlogger.com (which I believe I found through iCiNG, my newly budding obsession), I decided to take action in my blogging. ACTION! I gotta participate on other blogs, do some online bloggy networking and generally be a bit more awesomer. I warmed up by Googling "clutter blog" and found a slew of good stuff.

Here's what I noticed:

• There are a lot of blogs out there done by professional organizers. Remember when I insulted them unintentionally? Well it's really too bad that I'll be remembered for that thoughtless phrase of mine because I really do respect them (and I have respected them! I never meant to insult anyone! I can tell I'll be apologizing for this for a while), especially now that I've seen some of their sites. There are really good tips out there, and I also found out you have to be certified to be part of the NAPO. Dang. Anyway there are a lot of sites I like which I may profile in a future Sites I Like post but for now here's a teaser, from a woman who commented on my controversial post: Clutter Diet Blog. She looks like a friendly lady. Shoot now I feel even more horrible for offending people.


• There are, likewise, a lot of before and after photos online. But as I perused them, I found myself thinking many times, "Psh! They should see my apartment." And after a few instances of that, I realized, "Ferk I guess that's nothing to be proud of." But this means my before and after pictures will rock the internetzzz. Oh yeah. Expect it.


• They're good at blogging but they get no props! I see very few comments on these clutter-related blogs but next to no comments. It's lurkers Batman!! I myself am guilty so whateva, we be changing that soon/already.


• There are few (as in I haven't seen any yet but then again I'm only on the first page of Google results still so that doesn't really mean anything) blogs about people undertaking the de-cluttering process on their own. Maybe I win! Maybe people will discover me and someday I can make six figures blogging. Curse you Darren Rowse.

Sites I Like #4: FlyLady.net

I just thought about it, and the idea of self-help is kind of interesting, in a way I never thought about before. The idea is that you help yourself, but the term itself implies/connotes that you're getting help for that from someone else. It's ingenious, really; stubborn as we are, how would we humans ever get anywhere if we didn't have that extra nudge? I found a site that embodies the general self-help message in several ways, so it's today's site I like!

Today's site: FlyLady.net

This site has so many resources and tools that it's a little overwhelming at first! From what I understand, a main message throughout the site is "start by shining your sink." There is even a little motivational video about it here (it's a little touchy-feely for my taste at the end, but it sends a good basic message: if you can keep your sink clean every day, you're off to a good start with keeping your life in line).

Another interesting part of the site is the concept of "baby steps" for beginners. They have full months planned out for you and things you can try to start to become more organized and healthy. For example, day one is shine your sink (naturally), day 15 is make your bed, and day 30 is check your calendar for next month's events. The emphasis in this monthly plan is to establish a routine, doing a new thing every day plus the things that came before it. I like that idea a lot, and what makes it really helpful is that the tips themselves stress that you're taking baby steps. I.e. don't wash every single duvet in your home, just make your bed. Simple!

This is just my personal opinion, but because I am not an extremely emotional person and have unearthed a lot of internal negativity in my own "motivational" encounters, I find the positivity of the site a little distracting. But I understand that that helps a lot of people, my mom in particular, who has found a very helpful community on SparkPeople.com to get on track with her health. FlyLady is a very nice lady, of course, and joining the site is free. So every opportunity like this is left up to you, if you want to take it or not. "FLY" stands for Finally Loving Yourself, so check out the site to see if it might be just what you need or if it's too much gush for your jaded self (i.e. me).

P.S. I'm going out of town for a couple days so I probably won't post till Tuesday or Wednesday. In the meantime, I encourage bored people to go to JakeandAmir.com (ages 13+ for language I guess) because it is hilarious and I am obsessed with it. My favorite video on the site is New Apartment, but start with Cookies or Math and you'll probably be hooked. Ok this P.S. is like practically as long as the real entry, so I'm going to go pack.

Sites I Like #3: Apartment Therapy "Small is Cool"

For many eons (at least 24 months - hey, you gotta admit, that's a lot of months) I've been unearthing an interior design fetish of mine. I prowl the internets in search of what a friend of mine once accurately dubbed "real estate p." You can guess what the "p" means. Google cannot. Take that, dirty old men on the internet at work.

Anyway, I somehow came across this gem, our Site I Like #3.

Today's site: Apartment Therapy's "Small is Cool" Contest 2008

All my obsessing is a little on the easy-to-decipher side if we're talking Freudian: clearly, these spaces inspire me and my grand plans for the day that I am rich enough to move out and live in a real-estate-candy big city like San Francisco (home to the insane kitchen at right, here) or New York. Ok, maybe I'm just biased in favor of those two cities. But to be fair, Apartment Therapy's contest site has some great entries from all across the nation, all respectable and even drool-worthy.

The main idea of the site's contest was to show just how much you can do with a small place. It gives me hope, because our apartment is definitely the definition of that. And some of these people have risen to the challenge of such small quarters in ridiculous, awesome ways. Look at this incredibly ace loft from Seattle. I don't know about you guys, but I've wanted a loft ever since I knew what it was. Maybe I'm naive, but I think it would be so fun.

I do understand that it takes patience and a plan to decorate and design the way these people do, but I'm hoping to steal some inspiration from their lovely, Internet-published homes and make ours just as great. It's certainly going to be a lot of work, since my mom hasn't done a whole lot of her own part around her for several days. Guys, you should all understand that this is a very difficult task. It's easy enough to start a blog and say that, but to look around at your messy digs every day and know that you and one other person have to undo all the years of laziness you put on yourself... that is tough.

Luckily, I spend all my time gazing at photos of beautiful homes for inspiration. Shoot. Back to work...

Sites I Like #2: Green Upgrader

Something I've been thinking about lately is the recycling chain. We've recycled a lot of things in our project, and it's felt really good. But that twingey guilt still sets in occasionally. Why? I think it's because I realized that, to actually be green, we need to complete the circle - not only should we recycle, but we should, as consumers, buy green materials. For example, we're doing ok (but not awesome) if we recycle our old paper and then buy new paper that was created from recently killed trees. Buying recycled paper is really the way to go, even if it's a little more expensive.

Being green is a big part of our changing lifestyle here at the house of declutter-in-progress. A great site that's green is today's Site I Like!

Today's site: greenUPGRADER

This site is amazing. They post helpful links about everything environmental, ranging from "return to waster" junk mail stamps (I never realized just how much paper those stupid companies are wasting!) to scientific articles on global warming and green inventions. This graphic about the world "greendex" shows the alarmingly bad habits of the U.S. in comparison to 13 other countries. It's pretty much horrifying.

The site has a great organization and navigation, with sections from DIY Green projects to a fun and games section with comics and videos. From the DIY section, I love this idea of an invisible book shelf! That might segue nicely into a post I'll do later on book storage. :)

Credit to today's picture, oddly enough, to Alternativechannel.tv, not our featured site.

Sites I Like #1: Clutter Busting

The Internet is a big place. Surprise! Haha, I'm sure you knew that. But it hit me the other day when I installed the StumbleUpon add-on for my browser that there are so many things out on the interwebs that I've never even dreamed of. Cheesy, yeah, I know. But I also discovered that there are a lot of sites relevant to my own blog project. So I'll introduce you to my favorites by blogging about them!

Today's site: Betty Kramer's Clutter Busting column

Perfect relevance, right? This woman lost everything she owned in a fire and started her life anew sans clutter. She's a professional organizer, too, with a business called Professional Organizing Services. If my mom and I had the money, I think she would be perfect for cleaning up our place. At this point, though, I think we're invested in this as a DIY project. :)

Kramer's main column has lots of neat little how-to articles, including a recent one that I think has worked well for my mom and me: using a timer (image thanks to Kramer's site) to make sure you get in some time every day to work on the de-cluttering process. In fact, my mom came up with pretty much the same idea (and even a little better) on her own without the Kramer lady's help!

Tip: My mom's suggestion is even green-minded: take at least one waking hour out of your day to not use electricity. Naturally, for us, that hour is what we spend to work on de-cluttering. Generally, we take it during the afternoon, when we can get good light from the now unblocked balcony window area. This time period is also good because it's peak time, when electricity costs are high and everyone is using their computers, etc.