A Reason, or: Clear Reasoning

Our apartment becomes its messiest in the winter. We live on the third floor, so after walking into a pretty warm building and treading up two flights of stairs, we are really hot by the time we step into a toasty apartment. Therefore, everything gets dumped onto the floor.

Thus, the picture below. Everything on the floor is behind the breadth of the open door way and you can't see the line of pathway we've created in order to reach the living room and kitchen. There are things situated in this area that is meant for easy reach in order to get out of the house and go somewhere (one of three bookbags, art supplies for class, and the jackets) while the other things are meant to be visual reminders of chores we must do while we are out (the bags of donation items).



In this picture the keys are on the keyring, but most often they don't make it there nor are the cell phones even near the loading dock. This is because we can't reach it. I stopped using the closet to hang things, like my expensive red jacket, because I just can't reach it.

There are other things that are "off" about this picture.

• Ipod - broken and has been since generation 2
  
• Stereo - since we moved here 6 months ago, it has been used once
• Empty shoerack - a "gift" from Tim's mother. Has been standing there for a month
• Filing cabinet - with Files on top
• Gloves - on top the filing cabinet
• Shoes - the ones without shoelaces I've owned since I was 18 and probably never wore more than 6 times unless I go running
  
• X-mas bag with trash - has been sitting there since Xmas (I've felt too guilty to toss it out) because it was only used once
• 6 concert badges - Which is actually just 3 doubles for the same concerts
  
• Brownie Mix - it's been there since we shopped last week. A jacket fell on it and I didn't realize it was there until I took this picture.
  

Gross. The worst thing is that we had honestly cleaned the entire living room/entrance way just before the brownies were dropped there. The area clutters up so quickly because there is no room to hang anything since the closet is full of stored items.

So this is what we did.

• FINALLY went to donation and dropped off the three bags (and more)
• Donated 3 of the six glasses
• Donated one duffle bag
• Cleaned out the closet and donated any article not worn so far this winter
• Hung up the jackets in our new-found closet space
  
• Put the shoes I need right now (winter shoes) in the shoerack
  
• Combined 3 concert badges onto one necklace instead of each individual
• Tossed ALL the trash and did not look back
• Tossed out the metal shoerack and extra set of keys (we don't even know what they open)
• Tossed out the ipod and donated the stereo
• Put the brownie mix away
  

It looks a lot better now.

However, I haven't had a chance to sit down with my filing cabinet (it only has two files in it) nor did I do the upper levels of closet because it is too time consuming to do EVERYTHING at once. I've adopted the philosophy of achieving little victories to encourage more, and since then the bathroom, walk-in closet, and the kitchen has been done. More pictures to follow.