Bedroom = Unfucked!

I started by pulling all of the clothes out of my organizer, refolding everything, and sorting both it and my fresh laundry in to piles. Then I tackled the chair and did the same thing. Once everything was sorted, it all went back into the organizer. The organizer is packed full, but I can see everything I have in there. I swept the floor and packed up all of our old pillows, which have been rendered obsolete by our fancy new My Pillows. Next, I moved an armchair from the living room into the bedroom in order to make a reading corner, while also making some room in the living room to do yoga. I wish I had taken some before pictures, but I’ll post some afters once I get batteries for the camera.

Now it’s easier to unfuck my morning, because I have all of my clean clothes in one place, plus a place to lay out my outfit for the next day. Putting the reading chair in there has given me a quiet place to read when D has the tv on in the living room. It’s so much easier to fall asleep because I’m not surrounded by a bunch of ufyh projects I’ve been meaning to do for months. My only question now is, does anyone have any ideas for disposing of or repurposing old pillows?

I hate to keep going on about the Pomodoro app, but it’s awesome. It’s turning me in to a productive human being again. Last semester pretty much broke my brain, but there’s still work to be done and one more semester and a thesis between me and graduation in May. Anyone desperately awaiting the android version of the UFYH app might want to look in to it in the meantime.

The Pomodoro App

Just downloaded and installed the pomodoro app on my computer, and so far I like it. I did 25 minutes of solid research on resources for my mentee, which is the first time since finals ended that I’ve spent 25 minutes at my computer doing something other than mindlessly bouncing between facebook and tumblr. The timer is always displayed on top of whatever window you happen to be working it, and it’s a great visual reminder to stay on task (homework, etc). It should also be useful for unfucking. I have yet to cave and buy a smartphone, so I’m using it as a makeshift ufyh app, too.

Two Weeks…Twoooo Weeeeeks

Title brought to you by Total Recall, which I heard quoted approximately 364 times by my boyfriend and his brother this past weekend.

It’s been a long couple of weeks, y’all.  Last weekend, my boyfriend’s brother and his girlfriend came to visit, and I’m not used to having house guests.  Fortunately, they’re delightful, and thanks to ufyh, I didn’t have to spend that much time cleaning before they got here, unlike the last time I had guests when I had a half day marathon and hid most of my crap in the bedroom. 

Between having visitors and going home to see my parents the week before, my routine has been thrown out of whack, I haven’t been in the most positive mindset, and I’m basically just maintaining a semi-fucked habitat.  I consider this progress, though, because in the past, this is usually right about when I would give up and let the army of dirty dishes pile up in the sink and take over the kitchen.  In the midst of all of this, I’ve done some small projects when I’ve had the time and felt up to it.  List time!

  • Moved our bed so that the light coming under the door doesn’t hit me right in the face when my boyfriend gets home from working the night shift.  I sleep so much better now.
  • Started setting up my office upstairs so that when the weather cools down, I have a designated workspace.
  • Moved some furniture to improve/increase kitchen storage.

I have a little over two weeks until classes start up for the fall, and I have a  bunch of stuff of accomplish between now and then.  I still need to register for classes, which means I need to email two professors and get waivers to take their classes, since they’re outside of my degree area and have prerequisites.  This is probably the only reason I haven’t already registered for classes.  I hate emailing random people and asking them for favors.  Most importantly of all, I’m practicing some serious self-care before this semester gets under way.  Based on the past two semesters and the level of anxiety I’m feeling right now, I don’t think it’s going to be pretty. 

Momentum

Having the holiday in the middle of the week seems to have thrown off my routine.  I feel kind of weird and out of sorts today, but that hasn’t stopped me from doing some unfucking.  I’m at a point where I’m maintaining the unfucking I’ve accomplished in my habitat while I continue unfucking some of my work habits.  20/10s have been helping me stay on task both in my office and when I work from home.  I’m watching significantly less tv in the evenings, and using that time to unfuck or work has made me feel as though I’m making progress on both fronts.  Here is what I accomplished on Sunday evening instead of watching reruns of embarrassing reality tv shows that I would never want to actually admit to watching:

Bathroom vanity before:

And after:

Kitchen counter before:

Kitchen counter after:

So far I’ve managed to make sure that these two areas are back in the “after” condition at the end of the day, and I try to spread the circle of unfucking outwards a little each day.  On the work front, I ordered a statistics book to help me untangle and interpret some of the more complicated tests that I have to run and have been avoiding, and until that arrives I’m reading and summarizing some theses related to my research and cleaning off my desk.  Some days I feel like I’m going about this whole unfucking thing excruciatingly slowly, but then I make a mental list of the small but significant changes I’ve made and remind myself that small changes are kind of the point. Thank you, UfYH!

Unfucking My Life

Unfuck Your Habitat has made me realize the importance of accountability, which is something I need a little more of in my life right now.  I’ve been following UfYH for a few months, and I’m now in the habit of cleaning up the kitchen every night and sweeping and swiffering a few times a week, and dealing with the clutter on most of the flat surfaces in my apartment before it threatens to take over a room.  My apartment isn’t perfect, but it’s better than it was and it gets a little better every week.  I’ve always been a big fan of making my bed, and I still do that everyday, although now I do it at night right before I climb into it because my boyfriend works nights and doesn’t appreciate me messing around with the sheets and blankets in the morning while he’s trying to sleep.  Can’t really blame him there.  The point is, I’ve started chipping away at unfucking my habitat, and am ready to start unfucking some of my habits.

Here’s where the accountability thing comes in to play.  I’m a grad student with an assistantship.  It’s summer, so the classes and thesis aspects of grad school are less stressful right now, but the assistantship part is in desperate need of management.  I’m supposed to be working 20 hours a week on my project(s), which doesn’t sound like a lot of time, except I’m chronically distracted by other things, which leads to procrastination, which leads to guilt, which leads to promising to work extra the next week to make up for it, which never happens, which leads to more guilt, etc.  My advisor is pretty much incommunicado until mid-late July for family stuff, which is fine.  Right now, the only person I have to answer to about my work is myself, and that doesn’t work so well for me.  There are currently no specific goals or outcomes I need to achieve, so I feel as though I’m poking at my data with with a stick for a few hours a week, and spending the rest of my time trying to justify what I’m doing and why I’m not getting anywhere to myself (and anyone else that’s willing to listen).  It’s a horrible guilt-procrastinate-guilt cycle, and it’s putting a damper on my summer and my personality.

Basically, I’m coming out of my tumblr lurker shell because I’m ready to step up my UfYH game and start applying it more, not only to my habitat, but to other areas of my life as well.  If any fellow UfYH followers have any suggestions for avoiding the couch/tv trap in the evenings, that would be awesome.  I don’t mind it occasionally, but the amount of time I spend watching tv has been beyond the point of ridiculous for a while now, and is firmly in the territory of sad and depressing.  The simple solution would be to turn off the tv and get off the couch, but those are two areas in which I apparently need some motivation.  Help!