Much to-do about clutter

  As usual I'm engaged in the never ending task of de-cluttering our apartment.  It's basically a ritual now in our house.  When I buy a box of diapers (which happens often because Lily is a pooping machine), I empty the cardboard box and put it on our kitchen table.  This signals right away to Dave, the cat and Lily that stuff will go missing-it's time for a Salvation Army/Dump run. Sometimes they fight it and I will make my own choices on what stays or goes but if they humor me and sacrifice a few items on the altar of cleanliness I generally will leave their stuff alone.
      It is all about the input/output.  A house is like an  person: you can eat all you want but if you don't *ehem* evacuate your bowels once in a while you're going to get pretty backed up and things are going to get messy.  So I guess I'm giving our house a cleanse because there is a clog in the pipe.  Okay, I'm going to stop it right here before this blog entry goes any more downhill and turns into a bunch of poop jokes (to the delight of my husband).  Like a person, a house has problem areas-certain areas that seem to attract junk and remain messy no matter how many dust bunnies you attempt to slay.  They are just attractors of bulk.  Clutter is like fat cells and I'm like "Trimspa baby!".  Yes it's hard work now but our dwelling will be thanking me at swimsuit season when its not bulging at the seams.
I've identified my house's problem areas that tend to attract the extra "junk".  Sort of like its hips and thighs area:

1. Dave:  Between him and Lily, he is the main source of our clutter issue.  Lily didn't make this list-yes she has a lot of toys and trashes the house daily but at least she doesn't bring anything new into the house and when it's time to get rid of some of her toys she doesn't complain (read: realize).  Dave on the other hand will bring junk into the house and sometimes remove things from the Salvation army box.  While I'm trying to trim down the house, Dave is force feeding it doughnuts!  Dave thinks every piece of garbage is sentimental or worth something and hence won't give it up.  He'll be that 70 year old who has a can collection insisting they are antiques and worth money (yes I've been watching Canadian Pickers on TV).  I've made a little bit of progress with him lately:  I got him to put two baseball hats in our Salvation Army pile without having to nag him within an inch of his life.  This is the most he's gotten rid of in a while!  So what does a girl do?  Obviously I can't throw him out or kick him to the curb-I'd need a bigger box at the very least if I were to attempt to take him to the Salvation Army.  On the plus side he keeps my need to throw out everything in check.  Without him and left to my own devices we'd be sitting on the floor or eating over the sink because I've decided that furniture is a waste of space and dishes take up precious cabinet space.
2. Mount. Recycling:  All our recycling gets put into the laundry room and is quickly forgotten-well until I need to do laundry or get something out of our deep freeze.  Half the problem is that you have to take it down to the parkcade and I don't pass that area often since I don't have a car and don't break into cars looking for loose change (a favorite pastime for residents in this building).  Don't look at Dave to take it down, he hasn't (not without me force feeding it to him first) since we've been married.  Usually I let the recycling pile up until I can barely open the laundry room door.  Quite often I will have to carry 6 or more bags down at once and it often involves having to use the stroller as a garbage barge.  I also have become slightly immune to neighbors' snide comments or dirty looks.  No I am not moving, doing spring cleaning or featured on hoarders! It was funny the first 5 times you asked me that....and BTW I'm not over my bag limit, I have 6 bags of junk yes, but it's six weeks worth thankyouverymuch!
3. Tupperware Drawer:  No matter how many times I organize or throw out random pieces, this cupboard never seems to remain clean.  I'm always finding random lids or pieces that don't fit together.  I'll empty out the cupboard and the next day I'll find that all the Tupperware has multiplied! I have no idea what's going on when I close THAT door.  It doesn't help that children are naturally attracted to Tupperware.  Usually I'll hear crashing and Lily will be destroying the nice piles I have grouped everything in and our kitchen floor will be littered with Tupperware.
4. Shredding Pile:  Until two days ago we had a huge garbage bag of bills and documents that needed to be shredded.  In the last 2.5 years, we've only tackled the pile three times.  Usually we won't bother until the bag starts overflowing.  Even then we shred enough to get rid of the overfill and then promptly deny its existence.  6months ago I took an honest stab at trying to shred our pile and after the second garbage bag of paper our shredder promptly committed suicide.  It tried to take me down with it by trying to set me on fire by overheating.  I felt bad for the poor little thing, it was only a mini.  I started dividing the pile into smaller bags and shredding it at my parent's house.  I ended up shredding 7 bags worth of paper but I finally did it! Our pile is gone.  Let me say Dave and I will be having a discussion about what counts as shredable-the guy is way to paranoid about identify theft, half the stuff I shredded can be found on my Facebook page.  Also I was shredding phone bills from 2001.  I have promised never to let things get that bad but I have just started a new shredding bag...oh dear....
5. Friends list on Facebook:  Everything is going cyber.  Even clutter.  Clutter has a cyber footprint.  I mean my hotmail inbox is jamed full with emails and I have to clean that up daily otherwise I have 600 notifications and trust me I'm not that popular.  The other day I started going through my friends list on Facebook.  I had 250 friends which is weird because I spent Saturday night watching the original Batman in my PJs and went to bed at 9-you'd think with 250 friends I'd out and socializing.  Anyways when I actually looked at my list I had people I haven't talked to in over a year, people I met just once or people who never commented or contributed any juicy gossip to my newsfeed.  I finally got rid of "Mrs. It's mmmooonnndddaay"..trust me I have Rebecca Black if I need help remembering the days of the week.  I'm always worried about the backlash thought.  99% of people won't notice but there is always one person who acts like defriending is a form of is a huge insult.  It's like you peed in their coffee, but then again if you remove someone from Facebook they no longer exist in real life....
6. Dave's Desk:  Here there be dragons.  Seriously, I can't even go there.  I think the only way to clean that mess up is to dump lighter fluid and take a match to it.  Even then I'd have to vacuum the mess it left behind.  Come to think about it, I do have lighter fluid, it's in the bathroom under the sink cabinet right next to the 2 10 gallon jugs of u-brew wine (mental note: baby proof that cabinet..)
7. Hall Closet:  What's even worse is the closet door doesn't close so all our shame is out in the open for everyone to see. Both Dave and I wear the same DC shoes everyday (well different pairs each) but for some reason our closet is full of shoes.  They're not even *nice* shoes.  I mean they were at some point but a lot of them are worn out or half broken.  It's more of a shoe graveyard.

So there you have it.  I'm almost done cleaning out those problem areas but still have a lot of work to do.  Plus now I got to get Dave and the BAT to haul our junk away...before December...

Oh Marge, you get it don't you?