M. Suzanne Terry

I can do many things.  I’m not great at multitasking, but I am crazy efficient. I can get more things done – even doing them one at a time – in one hour than many people can get done all day. I take great pride in this ability. I am not a person who requires others telling me how awesome I am (because please – I already know), but I love it when people notice how much I can get done in a short amount of time.  Because I KNOW, right?!  Recognize.

I tell you this so that you can understand how much I do not want to admit that I cannot complete my Getting It Together project according to my original timeline.

But here I am.  Admitting it.

I could blame the sudden acquisition of a summer class that left me with two fewer evenings every week than I had budgeted.  Speaking of budgets, I could blame my lack of adequate funding for feeling like I am always waiting on the money to pour in before I can move forward.  I could even blame my writing schedule – which I’ve actually been following pretty well this summer – and the two writing classes I’m taking – which are kicking my ass in all the right ways.  There are a lot of things – many cases of “and then…” and “if only..” and “but when…” – lots of caveats, limitations, and warnings to others that I could set apart with dashes.  I could write a whole post on just these things.

But these things, factual as they may be, do not change the unfortunate truth that there are only so many hours in a week, and that’s not enough hours to do what I had planned to do. I can get into a weekly routine of cleaning (check), and I can get into the habit of cooking so that I have food at home and thus feel less compelled to drive through Whataburger every night (check), but I can’t do that and deep clean and shop and reorganize and write and work and see people occasionally and sleep.

So here’s what I AM going to do.

Step 1: Breathe. Just calm the hell down. Focus on finishing Fishbowl and reading and having a proper summer. Eat more snow cones. Paint my toenails.

Step 2: Recognize what I have accomplished (see: weekly routine and cooking habit). This is how my living room looked last night (filter applied because the sun was down and the filter brightened it up):

Not perfect, but not bad for just your average Sunday when no guests were expected. Behold, the power of routine.

Step 3: Revamp. Later this week, I will post my new plan.  There will be an ultimate (soft) deadline, because I can’t bring myself to let it drag on forever, but beyond that there are no time constraints. I have learned that some areas will take longer than others, and that’s okay. Each room will just take however long it takes. And I am happy to let it take its time, because I want to make the apartment home, not just the place where my stuff lives. Well, really I want to move.  But while I’m there, I want to be pleased with it instead of having my current reaction, which is something like, “Oh. That mess again,” every time I walk in. Ideally, my new projected deadline will coincide with my December cookie party, but we’ll see.

Step 4: Invite friends and readers (hey – that’s you!) to hold me to this.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some breathing to do.

I originally planned to call this week of Getting It Together Cleanse, but that reminds me too much of funky temporary diets that make my sweat smell odd. Renew is a better word for what I want to accomplish in the targeted spaces – the bathroom and the laundry closet – for this week. These two areas generally stay well-organized, but I still want to make some minor improvements.

I say “generally,” because they are a terrible mess right now.  The picture of the flower on the bathroom counter (which, in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit died weeks ago and thus is not even there anymore) is the only picture I’m willing to share with you right now.

In the laundry closet:

• I want to put up a bar where I can hang clothes straight from the dryer.
• I need to take the recycling that has taken over the top of the machines (where I usually stack clothes as I fold them) to the recycling center so that I have a place to fold (on top of dryer) and a place to store my ample collection of coolers (on top of the washer).

My original plan for the bathroom was a new color scheme.  It was going to be plum and silver, with varying shades of gray as a backdrop. Two problems arose:

• When at all possible, I like to make choices that exhibit ethical consumerism and good stewardship of resources. This isn’t always possible.  Sometimes, need + budget restrictions = compromise.  I can’t justify that excuse here, though.  I don’t need new towels.  I already have more towels than I have space to store them, and they’re in good shape.  Having matching bathroom linens and fixtures would be nice, but it’s unnecessary.  It would be frivolous spending.  Now, I’m a fan of frivolity, but I’m also working on becoming less of an asshole, so if I’m going to engage in rampant, needless consumerism, the very least I can do is engage in it ethically. After more hours than I care to admit of searching for four sets of bathroom linens that 1) are the color I want, 2) are ethically sourced (i.e., fairly traded, sweatshop-free, made from sustainable materials, etc.), and 3) are within even the most liberal stretches of my budget, I am sad to report that no such items exist IN THE WORLD.
• I don’t own the apartment I live in.  So even if I changed everything I could to make a new color scheme in the bathroom, I would still be stuck with cheap tan flooring, brass-colored doorknobs and light fixtures, and plain white walls. This would significantly diminish the effect, which gives me a big case of the why-bothers.

All of that to say…I won’t be buying new towels.

So let’s move on to what I will be doing:

• Cleaning and organizing the cabinet under the sink, the medicine cabinet, and the small storage buckets on the counter.  This includes getting rid of all expired items and making a list of what needs to be replaced.
• Finally putting up the towel rack that I bought the first month I moved in.
• Deep cleaning the whole room, especially the shower.  I need to clean up as much of the rust from the air conditioner overflow as possible (ongoing saga – the short version is that the cheap bastards refuse to fix it despite it being reported as a problem several times – one of which was a report from the outside contractor whom they had to call to completely replace it because, according to said HVAC professional, the same problem that causes the overflow/leak situation was what also caused the old unit to rust and fall apart) and try to figure out a way to channel the apparently inevitable leak in order to minimize the extent to which it compromises the structural integrity of the property, thus also hopefully minimizing the likelihood that someday I will fall, naked and wet, into the apartment below me.
• Replacing the plastic shower curtain liner with a new, rust-free one and dyeing the current shower curtain to mask the rust stain that appeared when the current liner tore. *sigh*

That’s a lot of work for such a small amount of square footage. I need a nap just thinking about it.