Need to de-clutter. May be evicted... *pics added post #85* - Page 5

[earthmama369]

Holy cow, you've gotten so much accomplished! I'm inspired to take a real crack at my house and get it shipshape.

[reducereuserecycle]

glad your friend helped you move the bookshelves. i was worried about you doing that on your own.

maybe you can make some tea, crack open some beer, or whatever you like to do to relax...then put your feet up and go through the papers. that sounds like a good task to do while you relax a little.

sounds like the rest of what you have left will be easy to accomplish by Tue. given everything you have done already in such a short amount of time.

about the landlord. i've never had a landlord that came and inspected. they just never even step foot in the whole time i'm at their property. good thing cause there have been many instances where i would have been in your postition.

[Usually Curious]

Sounds like you're doing a great job!

I had no idea you could be evicted for being messy?! I'm glad we own our home because I certainly wouldn't want a landlord snooping around 'white-gloving' my house, yk?

Sheesh!

[Pumpkin_Pie]

Garbage and recycling day is tomorrow!

I have a G-I-G-A-N-T-O pile of cardboard boxes already out by the curb (we aren't really supposed to put anything out until tomorrow morning, but the recycle guys get here at around 7:30am, so I don't want to miss them. I also have a table with chipping paint, a broken office chair, two upholstered bar stools, a rusty kids wagon, a huge broken bamboo window shade, about 8 extra large size garbage bags of trash and a few small bags of trash all ready to go out first thing in the morning.

I got so inspired that I took a crack at the pile of junk in the basement. That is going to take a few weeks to make a decent dent in it, but I pulled one large bag of trash, the table, bar stools and chair out to go tomorrow, so that was a pretty decent chunk.

Now if my camera will ever finish downloading, I will have some pics to share!!! I didn't take pics of everything, but I will eventually. I didn't want to share things that weren't completely done. I still haven't done the floors, but I figured I would do those this weekend. I am sooooooooo close!

[Pumpkin_Pie]

Ok, here goes nothing:

These are the before pictures of the book cases that were on my upstairs landing. Here is the pic looking up from the first floor and here is the pic looking down from the second floor. And here it is now!

These are the before pictures from the landing of my basement stairs. This is one side and this is the other. I moved these book cases into DS's room and the food into the basement. Here is the landing now!

Here is the "after" picture of the basement. (I am not ready to show anyone the before pics of the rest of the basement yet... ) These are the book cases from the upstairs landing with the canned/dry goods from the basement landing. Much more organized! You can actually see the stain on the floor from the laundry detergent spill in the after pic. It isn't quite so dark in real life. Not sure how to get the stain off, but the floor is clean and dry. It is an unfinished basement, so I don' think the landlord will freak out. At least the soap is all up.

Here are the before pics of DS's bedroom. Here is the bed (if you can believe one is under there). Here is the closet. Here is the area by the window. Here is the wall by the door. And here is the finished room with the bed and closet! And here is the part of the room by the window and the part by the door!!! The books on those smaller book cases (from the basement landing that had food on them) contain all of the books that I kept from the very large book cases on the upstairs landing. All of the other books in the pics above were donated to the Salvation Army.

I don't know if I should be ahamed that it got this bad, or proud that it is cleaned up, but I am so insanely happy that it is nearly done.

[Peacemamalove]

You are amazing mama that is such a transformation. You must feel so happy inside everytime you see it

My house gets like that sometimes and I have to heave stuff out . You did awesome!

[Pumpkin_Pie]

Originally Posted by Peacemamalove

You are amazing mama that is such a transformation. You must feel so happy inside everytime you see it

My house gets like that sometimes and I have to heave stuff out . You did awesome!

Yes, I do! I flipping LOVE DS's room. I want to work on it more eventually to make it look more like "his" room, but it is such a peaceful bedroom now that I just walk into it every time I go upstairs.

BTW, some of the pictures were wrong and I was in the middle of fixing them when you posted, so you might not have seen all of the correct ones. They are all fixed now though.

[MCatLvrMom2A&X]

Good job mama. You have every right to feel proud. I had no idea you could be evicted for clutter dirty yes but clutter no.

So glad my renting days are behind me and the only one I have to please with my house is myself.

[LaLaLaLa]

I can't resist checking out pictures.

You did an amazing job of getting your place cleaned up! Congratulations on being able to tackle such a monumental task, and getting it done instead of breaking down. You should be totally proud of yourself for the effort you put in and the result you have!

[mum4boys]

Way to go cleaning it up.

Looking at the pictures, I highly doubt your book cases on the landing were a fire hazard.

[vivalamama]

just awesome! you know what I noticed-- in all the before pics, there was just 'stuff' and in all the after pics, there was a smiling DS.
way to go Pumpkin Pie!

(btw, love your user name cause it's my favorite food in the whole wide world )

[flowmom]

It's brutal to be under a deadline like that, but the blessing is that you've proven yourself up to the challenge!

[Biscuits & Gravy]

I have been following along, but have not posted yet. I am so proud of you!! I know how hard it is to declutter, it is a daily battle for me. You must feel so good right now. I'm sure this has made your home much more enjoyable, and I hope you feel inspired to keep it in this state because of how it makes you feel. And I can't resist telling you how adorable your DS is.

[lolar2]

Originally Posted by Usually Curious

Sounds like you're doing a great job!

I had no idea you could be evicted for being messy?! I'm glad we own our home because I certainly wouldn't want a landlord snooping around 'white-gloving' my house, yk?

Sheesh!

You can't, unless it's a fire hazard, and even then you have to have 30 days' notice etc. (specifics vary by state). Now, if the situation is kind of unofficial, like subletting or renting without a lease from a friend, the landlord might be able to get away with it. I don't know if that's the OP's situation.

ETA: Also in all the states that I am aware of, the landlord can't enter the property without permission except in very specific defined cases.

[lolar2]

By the way OP, you did an awesome job! And your DS is adorable of course. None of what I said means to imply that I'm anti-decluttering (obviously I'm all in favor of it, or I wouldn't even read in this forum), and everything you did looks really, really great. I just am a teensy bit worried that if your landlord is willing to, hm, bend the rules about your rights in this arena, you should be careful and not take everything he says about what you can and can't do at face value. If you see what I mean. But hopefully he'll leave you alone now!

You probably should come up with a regular system for managing your trash. It sounds like a lot of the problem was just that you don't have a big enough trash barrel available to you, and you weren't able to dispose of all your trash every week. I don't know what to suggest where you live, but your town might have some suggestions on its website or something. Even if you get stuck making a weekly trip to the dump, that's still better than having to live in chaos.

[heatherdeg]

Originally Posted by Pumpkin_Pie

I don't know if I should be ahamed that it got this bad, or proud that it is cleaned up, but I am so insanely happy that it is nearly done.

You should be incredibly happy and proud that you got it cleaned up. Some people CAN'T (or just WON'T). That's incredible...

And your ds looks very happy!

[Pumpkin_Pie]

I definitely plan to be careful with the landlord. I was very tempted to call the local tenents rights people to see if they could really only give me a week and a half to clean up my place to to see if they could actually ask me to do the things that they said to do. (sweep and mop the floors when they weren't that dirty at all, clean the bathroom which again wasn't that bad, etc) They did give me notice that they were coming to inspect on the day that they were here. It is a yearly thing for section 8 apartments to make sure that there are no repairs that need to be made.

As far as quantities of trash, I generally only put my barrel out every other week as I don't really generate much trash at all. I am only tossing tons of things right now to get the clutter under control. I will likely have a lot of trash again next week and maybe the week after just to get ahead of things, but once that is gone, it should go down to every other week again. I just need to get the majority of it out and then I should be good.

I am actually so glad that I did attend to everything on the landlord's list. It definitely made me feel crappy to have them say "clean your bedrooms!", but at least it is done. I have wanted to do everything on that list for about two years now but I just procrastinated. It does feel like they overstepped their bounds though... creepy.

[Satori]

Way to go! Thats the type of mess my kids LOVE to create and its just gets so overwhelming trying to clean it up. You did it though and thats fantastic!

[goobergrl6]

It looks GREAT! WTG momma!

[l_olive]

Wow! How great that must feel to look at! And what an adorable boy you have. What you've done is an incredible gift to both yourself and to him!