The Never Ending Trash Story

Well, I'm not feeling any better, but I am getting slightly more used to feeling like this so I'm able to do a few things now without falling down exhausted. Yesterday was my first trip out of the house (other than around the apartment complex) in at least a week. Our big trek was...to Wal-Mart! We bought a whole whack of groceries and took the opportunity to take out a bit more trash. We generate, as I've mentioned before, more garbage than anyone else I've ever known. We donate tons of stuff and eBay some stuff and do some recycling but still have load after load of crap to get out of this house. I've always been the very antithesis of a packrat, but since moving in with Paul I am even more so because he has SO MUCH STUFF! He's let me sell, so far, two big boxes of stuff and we've donated and trashed, honestly, probably 100 garbage bags of stuff (not including everyday garbage) in the past year. And there is still just always more and more. Our apartment is like a crack house now, Paul says, because whenever anyone comes over I badger them to take or buy stuff: 'Collectibles! Comic books! Entire sets of dishes! A Fender guitar, barely used! Vintage toys! Books, lots of books, great condition! Let me make you a deal!' Probably, Paul's friends don't like me very much.

Lately, I've become even more obsessed with paring down because, besides all the other reasons, we hope to move next year and Lord knows how hellish moving is, the least you can do is get rid of the extraneous. ALSO, I've become semi-convinced that whatever is wrong with me is due to 'bad air'. Its so damn hot here that we never, ever open the windows during the summer (which is six months long), plus we have two dogs who are constantly shedding and having accidents everywhere. Paul has lived here now for four years, with three different dogs and several roommates and the air ducts have never been cleaned so I cannot even FATHOM how bad the air in here must be. I've made a list (surprise!) entitled 'Detox This House' and I intend to follow through on all of it...but first I have to get better. In order to get better though, I may need to detox the house. Catch-22 you see.

Paul, lovely Paul, believes that this may be part of my health problems, so last week he had his truck owning friend come over and they took away an old couch and TV and a few other things that can't be trashed by hand. I was very touched that he set that up for me. My feeling is that first we get rid of all extraneous junk and then we can mega-clean what's next. I did a bit more work in the sunroom today, although I can only work for about a half hour at a time, but I still got some stuff done. The sunroom is the dog/have-to-take-to-the-trash room so it gets the worst of the worst. It would even be empty of trash now except in the last week our steam cleaner and best floor lamp both died (great timing!) so now they are in the land of the lost as well.

So, the plan is to continue getting rid of stuff in whatever manner we can, then have me do a major clean of windows, blinds, curtains, baseboards etc, then get the ducts force cleaned, then rent a steam cleaner and then done. And, I believe I will do all this, because I have good incentive, but so far, not much is getting done. The ironic thing is that our apartment looks cleaner/tidier than probably any other one in the complex, because I'm totally anal about cleaning...but I'm going to become even more vigilant! This house will have fresh, nice smelling air again if it kills me...no wait...