House Cleaning Tips: Operation Clearout

I have a lot of stuff.

Just...stuff. You never really realize how much crap you accumulate until something major happens...like, say, a flood in your basement. Suddenly the burst of activity required to salvage all that junk really drives home the point.

I have a lot of stuff.

But here's the weirdness of it: if I can clear out and move an entire house full of stuff in just two days, why does it take so long to sort through all that junk? 90% of it is just old papers anyway.

Well, to be perfectly frank, once it's in place and in piles it's basically taken care of. In other words, once you move it in and the pile is stable enough, there's little incentive to pick through it a sheet at a time.

Until now.

I'm sick of all that junk, and a lot of it is in my way. So it's time to forge ahead. I'm giving the green light to Operation Clearout.

This is the process: I'm going to take a weekend and tackle a major section of the house. Last weekend, my buddy Paul came over and we tackled the kitchen and the front entrance. That was an all-day event...certainly much longer than I expected. I had hoped we'd be able to at least do the entire main floor, but that didn't pan out. That's coming though. To do the living room and dining room shouldn't be too bad, actually, because there isn't much stuff in there apart from toys.

Oh yeah...and all the books and bins of music that got hauled up during the flood. Ugh.

There's a reno team set to come and deal with the basement shortly. That means a portion of Operation Clearout will have to take a hiatus. Most of the rec room will have to be moved out to somewhere else so they can do the work, which means the basement portion of the operation won't really get done until they're done. No problem...the office and the kid's room need to be tackled in a big way. My own bedroom mess is actually from the accumulation of my daughter's books on my dresser! We're going to solve that shortly too. No more baby stuff in Daddy's room.

Unless there are monsters, of course.

So, Operation Clearout is underway. After that, it'll be Operation Keep-Your-House-Clean. Much harder to do, now that super important mission critical Operation Yard Work is also underway. At least in the winter the only chore is shoveling the driveway.

Too bad the dandelions are so unforgiving this year.

Suggested Reading:


Jeff Campbell's Speed Cleaning is one of the coolest books on the subject of house cleaning I've ever read. It outlines how to basically clean any room in fifteen minutes using some simple efficiency strategies. And a tool belt!

If you feel like you're bogged down with spending hours and hours just keeping your house tidy and keeping up with the drudge of weekend cleaning, this is a book you have to check out. It's so simple you'll never go back to dragging your butt off the couch when it comes to cleaning.

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