Housekeeping

Also known as: Cleaning up, in all ways

I need to do some housekeeping. Literally and figuratively.

Back in college, I was so proud to brag that I clean my room thrice a year. I had a schedule for that because my college school year was divided into three, so I usually just schedule a day in my term break to clean my room. When I started working, though, it became a different thing — I had no term break, ergo, no time to clean. That never really fared well with my mom, so I try to take a weekend to clean my room. Being the packrat that I am, it takes me a day to clean my room, usually involving getting rid of papers, pens and fixing and dusting my bookshelf. You know, just making sure there’s a semblance of sanity in my room.

Of course, when Ondoy came, I was forced to clean what was left in my room (which was still a lot). And then we moved to the apartment so our house can be renovated, and all my things were put in boxes and huge plastic bags. Then we moved back to the house, and it was a mess, until I got all my stuff up my room…and I sort of cleaned. I fixed my closet and my shelf and the rest, I put there. In the room. Since I was saving up for Europe, I didn’t really set aside  money to buy furniture for my room. Until now. Not that my room is still a mess — it’s an organized mess, if you’d allow me to use that. I did do some cleaning a few weeks back, but again, since I don’t have the containers and furniture, they all just got stacked back where they were, but with less of the junk.

The point is, I need to do some cleaning. Not just my room, but in other aspects as well. And this post is really for me to list them down so I would somehow remember (I’ll try, anyway), and maybe posting it here is some kind of accountability measure.

And maybe because I changed some typefaces on the blog yesterday, I just felt like blogging again.

Anyway. So, what kind of housekeeping do I need to do?

1. Delete old files in my work and personal laptops. I can’t remember the last time I deleted files in my computers, for both personal and office laptops. Since I have a pretty big hard drive and I have an external hard drive, I just tend to save. And save. And save. A few days ago, I had a meeting at work, and I realized that some of the files in my laptop were almost five years old. And I’m sure most of them aren’t relevant or needed anymore. Same goes for my personal laptop. And maybe even my hard drive. I need to delete files and organize the folders again so I won’t use the Find function more often (even if that is really the point of that function).
2. Organize my office cabinet. Or mobile pedestal, as we call it. Right now, I could fool myself into thinking that I have a nice, clean office cabinet since we got issued new ones after our nth move to another building in the last how many years. It barely contains anything — just some snacks, a notebook and my laptop when I go home after work ((I leave my laptop at work now instead of bringing it home all the time — my back is thankful)) — and I could think of so many ways to organize the things I can put in there…but alas. I can’t do that. Because I have an entire lateral cabinet-full of things that I have accumulated in the past four years I am in this company. And I need to clean that ((This may mean bringing home office junk to the house…which is very unfortunate, since I already have so much junk in the first place. Why am I such a pack rat?!)). Soon. Really soon. DONE!
3. Organize my music folder(s). In my external hard drive, I have a folder there for my music. It was only supposed to be named as “Music”, but I realized that I have music in my personal laptop and music from my work laptop. So I decided to name it that folder “ORGANIZE! Music” to remind myself that I need to fix that. I created that folder in 2009. It still has the same folder name. And I’m not even sure which folder has the most accurate music. And if ever my iPod crashes (knock on wood), I’m not sure if I can restore everything.
4. Organize my photos. I’m not even sure what the state of my photo library is. I need to check that. Can’t have computers crashing and me losing my photos again. :/
5. Weed out my bookshelf. Okay, I kinda do regular housekeeping for this, because every time I meet up with my book club, I bring some of the books that I’ve read that I know I would probably never read again. You know, those books that I don’t really like. I’ve been doing pretty good with that. Lately though, someone planted an idea in my head: letting go of books from my to-be-read pile that I will probably never read anyway. Without reading it first. I was flabbergasted. The pack-rat in me was thinking, “But what if you suddenly read a review about that book and it turns out to be really awesome and now that you want to read it, you don’t have it anymore? Better keep it!” But there is wisdom in that idea, because that would significantly reduce the amount of books on my unread pile. Some of those books are impulse buys on sales, and all that, but you know, I never got to read. I still don’t know if I will do that…maybe I will try. Maybe. At least I know I have friends who will eagerly get some of them.
6. Get some closet space. I really need to do that “give away what you haven’t worn in a year” type of things. I haven’t really done that regularly because I’m a pack rat I haven’t really done major shopping and I’m afraid that if I remove all the clothes that I haven’t worn in a year from my closet, it would be empty. :( Which comes the next note to self: go buy myself something nice to wear. Same goes for shoes. Ah, I want a shopping spree.
   
7. Go to confession. Because it’s been long overdue. And the soul needs some housekeeping, too.

So. I’m pretty sure there’s more, but let’s leave it at a manageable list of seven. Now I hope I can get to that soon sometime before 2012 ends within the first half within the first quarter of the year. I just really need to stop procrastinating and start making time for housekeeping. Maybe I can start small. With my photos, probably.

Let’s see. Oh, and finishing housekeeping stuff gives me something to post here, too. :p Hmm.