Getting Cleaned Up
It has been weeks since I’ve been back in my apartment, and everything has felt like a struggle. I have been working up to 10 hours a day and have really just been running around with my head cut off (figuratively). On Monday, I sat down on my couch and finally took a breath. It was terrifying because I was forced to finally look at what I was doing and how my body, my dogs, and my apartment have all suffered in the last few weeks.
So, putting on a playlist of pumped-up songs, I forced myself to clean. I gave myself no excuses, I didn’t let myself procrastinate any further, and just got down and dirty with my apartment. On Monday, I spent about 5 hours cleaning. On Tuesday, I cleaned for another 3 hours. I’m not done; I haven’t touched my bedroom yet. Still, having my living space, my kitchen, and my workspace clean of clutter and garbage and everything else that had built up, has been blissful in comparison to how it was before.
I feel like I can actually relax in my own space, though I’m still struggling to actually breathe and just ‘be' with myself. My dogs have also loved having the floor plan open up since now they can run around and play with each other more throughout the day. I’ve been putting their toys away in baskets, and they think it’s the best game in the world to spread every single one back over the floor in the morning. However annoying it is, I can’t complain since they’re having such a good time with the apartment being cleaner. The challenge will be making sure that I actually take the time to put all the toys back every night. So far I’ve been successful, but it’s only been a few days.
Cleaning also allowed me to look a little more aggressively at some of the things that I own. I’ve known since committing to this journey that I was going to sell much of what’s in my apartment; still, I hadn’t sold anything so it was a ‘someday’ rather than a ‘today’ thought.
This morning, I made the shift into the present with my mindset and decided to ‘Just Do It’ as Nike would tell you. So, I logged into Facebook, navigated to the Marketplace, and posted about 15 items to be sold. I grant you, 13 of the 15 items are mugs (I have a pretty large collection), so not a lot of big items yet. Having them on the Marketplace with photos and a price tag has helped a lot since now they are ‘officially’ going to be sold and I can already feel some of my mental clutter flowing away at that thought.
I did have to buy some shipping boxes so that I can get them out of the apartment; almost everyone who has contacted me so far (yes, people are fast on Marketplace) would require shipping rather than pickup. But, those are temporary space fillers and it makes me feel excited that I might soon have all of these items sold and gone. Hopefully, I can also keep this momentum going and just continue working through the other items around my apartment, without letting myself think too much about why I’ve kept them so long in the first place.