Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

I had a good session with my therapist

I'd sent him the pictures I'd shown him before and in the e-mail told him about the upcoming inspection. He pointed out that they weren't inspecting my housekeeping, but rather checking to make sure the windows could be opened, there were no active leaks, changing the filters, that sort of thing. I feel a little better. The plan is still to clean tonight, but I'm not going to kill myself, but rather try to do what I can to make it look habitable and allow them full access to the apartment.

I had thought to rent a Rug Doctor machine, but I'm concerned that the leak may be ongoing. It had pretty much dried, but there was more last night. I'm going to call them tomorrow to check it out. I told my therapist that of course that would mean admitting that I didn't call before. He said to just tell them that I didn't think the leak was ongoing and I had thought I'd taken care of it (which is true).

He wants me to start the actual process of overcoming hoarding by beginning with my bedroom closets. Part of my problem is that I simply do not have the room to put things that should go into closets there, like clothes, because I have a bookshelf in one and a shelving unit full of things like cables and electronic stuff that I haven't used in years, waiting for that time when they 'might be useful', in the other. These need to be gone through and removed to make the closets useful again. He suggested this because he found that people who hoard generally have no place to move the truly useful things to, and then bog down and just rearrange it (as my friend calls it, the tidal method of cleaning).

It's going to be a busy night. Here's my plan of attack:

Begin in the bedroom. Put things that are on the bed in their places. Change the sheets and make the bed (all the bedclothes are on the floor, taking up space). Put all the clothes that are on the floor on the bed and in their hampers. Fold the clean ones; put the others aside for laundry. Put what I can away in drawers and in the small part of the closet that is free. Put the things to go up above in the closet there. Close the closets. Throw away any trash and recycle whatever I can. Neatly place things either in their place or at least temporarily have them out of the way of reaching the window.

Then I need to go back to the dining room. For that, I think it would be best to just dump things into paper boxes to be sorted later, and put them stacked up in the living room near a bookshelf or something. Once I get that free, it means later I can fill the aquarium (although not necessarily tonight).

Next is to finish the little bit of the living room and sweep/mop the linoleum and vacuum the carpet. I think the Rug Doctor would take too much time. If the leak is ongoing, it needs to be fixed first, anyway. I'm still owed a free carpet cleaning for continuing my lease. Maybe I'll just do that, as the cleaner and solution would be about $45 otherwise.

Okay, I know I'm better at planning with good intentions rather than doing. I definitely need to go ahead and start. It's nearly 7 pm now.

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