Cleaning Up Is Hard To Do

This weekend I spent a lot of time cleaning up after myself.  I've never been good at putting things away. I usually convince myself that I'm going to need that "whateveritis" soon enough so why bother putting it back where it belongs.  I should just keep it within reach.

That kind of thinking catches up with you after a while.  Soon you've got everything within reach and can't find anything.

One problem of course is having more stuff than you have space for.  Many of us are afflicted with the "I know this will come in handy some day so I'm not going to throw it out" sickness.  Again, the problem with this thinking is that soon you have so many things that might come in handy that you can't remember what they are or where they might be when you want to get your hands on them.

So for all of us pack rats and dis-organizers, there eventually comes the day when we must clean up and clean out.

(I'm only sharing "before" pictures because I haven't quite reached the after stage yet--really, I'm going to throw a lot of this stuff out.)

Most of what I was faced with was organizing my tools and left-over materials from several of the tasks I've been working on. Professionals know that cleaning up at the end of the day is as much a part of the job as any, but for some of us DIYers, cleaning up just seems like a chore that's tacked onto the end of the day, and if we want, we can choose to put it off until tomorrow.  This is an easy trap to fall into when you're working on a task right up until bedtime.

It often happens, though, that the task you were working on the night before is not the one that demands your attention the following day.  Without having set aside cleanup time the night before, your tools are still at that work site (say the upstairs bedroom) and you need them at the new site (maybe the basement).  So you go grab a few of the tools from the first place to use in the second place, and before you know it your tools are in one of three places: the first place (upstairs), the second place (basement), or the place where you're supposed to keep them when they're not in use.

Does this all sound like I know what I'm talking about?

Maybe I can make an early New Years resolution and start putting things away in their proper place every time after using them, and more importantly, giving myself permission to stop work early enough to clean up.

handyman