A Tisket A Tasket: Week 6

The end is in sight!… Week 6 and Tisking and Tasking has reached a new height. Finally some others got the bug and we had a huge cleaning out frenzy this weekend.

As usual, here is a quick introduction to the project and a recap on the past few weeks of tossing and clearing out in our house: A Tisket a Tasket… What’s in My Basket… And project progress was reported here:

Tisk #1: Hood #2 was the first family member to join me in this project as he merrily decide to sort the kitchen drawers. Brilliant, often all I need is someone to get me started… as long as he does just one drawer at a time I don’t mind. Keep it small and we can do it.

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    Task #1: Once he had vacuumed and cleaned each drawer I packed back everything – less a few tisks, that are getting harder to find – at last!

Tisk #2: Hood #2 and Hood #7 Decided to help me tackle under the kitchen sink – yay I really needed to do that to! These cupboards have never been very full, stuff sort of wanders around in them. But there was a surprising amount of tisking – like more than a few hand brooms (the dustpans get destroyed in enthusiasm) and the brooms I discover linger on.

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    Task #2: Cleaned and tidy and organized, popped the plugs in a box, the extension leads in another. The toys remain in the same old spot – consistency is key, in the bread bin.

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Tisk #3: Let’s take a break from cupboards and back to the computer… I am down from a couple of thousand to just 300 emails. Still unsubscribing to newsletters as they arrive in my inbox. And now I just clear a bit more than comes into my inbox everyday and it will keep coming down. I had a horrific thought today – what about other mail folders – now that is a bit disheartening. But I am not wasting time on mail and unnecessary blogs each day and if I just keep doing a little bit every day it will eventually climb down.

    Task #3: I am spending fifteen minutes twice a day – just deleting stuff – ancient emails, bookmarks from before time and so on – and I am loving knowing where everything is… Really my computor was just like a drawer stuffed with so much stuff that I couldn’t enjoy it. I have found all sorts of gems I had forgotten. And I am enjoying podcasts again, I have a couple to listen to daily while I do kitchen clean-up – really its lovely!

Tisk #4: Right back into cupboards: I have a huge shelf where I keep hand me down clothes and just store anything that isn’t being worn at the time. This shelf gets out of hand quickly as there are always little people checking out the store to see if there is anything new that fits them. I tisked hugely and kept only the clothes that I really really intend to use as hand me downs… I tend to put everything there and have a big sort from time to time…this is time consuming and the mess just puts me off approaching it!

    Task #4: I store the clothes in gift bags (recycling!) per size. So I folded and packed back into the right bags. I also popped a bag in for tisk items that I can toss in as we go along – no huge sort later – hopefully!

Tisk #5: The father person got in on the project! He defines hoarder! He has a desk in our lounge that we couldn’t open on account of the rubble – well he had a serious tisk session and wow I am so impressed, kind of wish I could let that energy loose everywhere!

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    Task #5: There are a couple of drawers under his desk where I keep potential presents for upcoming birthdays, well I did a quick clean up, and sort out… just to get an inventory in my head so that I don’t buy gifts for people that I already have an appropriate gift for. And to clear some space for the inevitable build up before Christmas.

Tisk #6: The desk wasn’t enough for the father person, we have a small room in our house called the lab – it is home to school books and all things computer-like. Basically the father person’s junk drop… he has a penchant for wires (let’s call them cables) and boxes. Here we go: I will try to contain an anti-packaging rant… If something comes in a box, then he keeps the box – we have boxes for products we no longer have, we have useful looking boxes, we have useless boxes… we have heaps of boxes…

    Task #6: So I set him the task to just tisk out boxes and cables we didn’t need anymore – three trash bags later I was thrilled!

Tisk #7: Finally I got Hood #1, Hood #2 and Hood #3 to do a tisk session with their treasures – they weren’t impressed with me! But I threatened to do it for them if they couldn’t manage – amazingly they discovered that they had the strength after all! And the promise of an ice-lolly was carrot enough to get the job done. Now it is neat enough for me to sneak in on the sly and whip out some actual junk amongst their stuff – before it was just too messy and I couldn’t figure out junk from treasure ( very rude of me to assume that it is all junk!). The younger hoods don’t have drawers of stuff like this, just a small box or basket of their stuff, keep the container small and they cannot gather an overwhelming amount of stuff.

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    Task #7:Finally we have run out of tisk space… and we still have a week to go on this project. So I loaded up the car – there wasn’t any room for children (I left them with a friend) and delivered everything to a local clinic – AAAHHHH the joy of getting rid of so much junk. Luckily in South Africa there are always people very nearby who are so grateful for anything you donate that I don’t have to worry about where to donate it!.

That’s it – it certainly just gets easier, really I am running out of corners of our house to sort out – now that is a great feeling. And yet I know if I started at the beginning again I would be able to just keep on tisking – surely one must get to a complete end – sometime?

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