manic monday: cleaning out the clutter

first and foremost: today was the first day of what i'm deciding to call "white wine weather." which means it finally felt like spring! i obviously decided to celebrate and got carded buying my $10 of sauv blanc. so basically, today is the best day ever.

alright, here's the first installment of me trying to do things via manic mondays. oooooooooh, ahhhhhhhhh. 

clear out the clutter:
so originally, the first week's mini goal was to stop hitting my snooze button every morning. but that was thrown out the window when i snoozed not once, not twice, but FOUR times this morning. it felt fucking fantastic, people, so i figured, let's wait until i have some momentum to try and tackle that decades long habit. 

as i woke up from my haze and rushed around this morning, i realized what that this is finally the chance to do what i have been claiming to have done for weeks: clean up the clutter of my apartment and "get my life in order." 

i have NEVER been a good housekeeper. as a kid i had piles around my room that contained everything i owned. clothes, books, lots of backstreet boys cds. you know the essentials. i have sort of made my ways better when i had roommates, but moreso in a shared space like a kitchen or living room. my room has always been what has been so lovingly called a "disaster zone," and now that i live alone, the whole apartment is really fair game. and it's bad.

so while it's mostly okay with me, i recently acquired a new roommate that the clutter makes things difficult for: my new furry friend buddy.

he's basically the cutest thing that ever existed. he's also a typical, bad-behaving kitten, and i wouldn't have it any other way:

but, this means that anything left out, on the floor even on the counter is fair game to him. i found litter in my shoes that were left near the bathroom where his box is. he picked up my underwear personal clothing item that was on the floor and hid them under my bed. he ate the casings to turkey sausage out of the garbage. while he managed to come through that all unscathed, i figure it wouldn't hurt me to start taking care of my life.

the plan is to take an hour each day and tackle a room and get rid of all trash, put as much as i can away and throw away what i don't need.

the throwing away things will be hard. i'm a big fan of holding onto back issues of magazines in case i ever need a recipe for quinoa again. did i see a show with you and did we get playbills? i've kept it. did i wear that shirt once for a halloween costume? still in my drawer. so not only am i doing the easy cleans, but i'm also going to actually purge a lot of stuff that i don't use anymore or don't wear anymore. and guess what? i LOVE stuff. this stuff is not going to go quietly into that dark night.

how do we know i'm serious about this? well, i made a pretty cool purchase today, guys.

yep, i got myself a hand vacuum, so that i can like REALLY clean. my mother, who i know is reading this even though she will lie to me and tell me she isn't for the sake of "boundaries," is super proud of me.

i'm obviously going to start off by cleaning off my wine glass and then filling it up, before tackling the kitchen. because a glass in the hand is worth 2 in the bottle.