Emergency Motivation?
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Yikes!
My aunt called me last night to ask if the family could get together at my place this coming Sunday for my Father in Law’s birthday! o_0
Now, she knows my place is a disaster (in fact, she’s one of the people who has volunteered to help me sort things out once the weather gets better for driving between cities), but my place happens to fall in the best location for most of the family to drive to. We’re rather in the middle of everyone, it seems, and since winter’s still in full swing here, it’s easier and safer for people to all drive here, than to someone else’s house that’s farther away.
Which means… I have only a week to get at least the living room cleaned up! Yikes!
My husband is working evenings this week, so I guess for once it’s a good thing that I’ll be trapped at home without a car after work.
Now, while have no doubts I can get the living room “presentable” by Sunday, I’m worried that a rush-job like this won’t let me do the sort of cleaning and more importantly purging that I really need to do. What’s likely to happen is that all the stuff in the living room will simply end up elsewhere, rather than being properly sorted through and disposed of. For example, the couches are currently home to part of my fabric stash, but I don’t yet have a functional fabric storage area. It’s fleece, so it doesn’t fold and fit neatly onto shelves like fat quarters or regular cotton does. As such, I can’t just remove it from the couch and put it “back where it belongs”, because it doesn’t have a place to belong to yet. That’s the reason it’s taking up space on my couch in the first place. 
I already know I have issues deciding what to keep and what to toss; I’m not sure rushing the process will help or hinder. Guess I’ll find out!
I’ll try to update throughout the week with progress reports, but I’m not sure I’ll have time to take photos as I go. We’ll see. 
Nothing like the threat of people visiting to get you motivated, eh?
*Eek!*
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I need some emergency motivation, but I guess asking everyone to drive to Arkansas is out of the question. Good luck!
I’m with ageekymom on this one: if we never had company, I’d most likely live in a total sty of creative clutter. I don’t suppose that stuffing everything under the bed would count as getting cleaned up?? Rats! I was afraid not…
Grab a drink. Turn on your favorite tunes and get purging! You already know if you move it to another area you are not likely to get rid of what needs to go, so don’t put it off!
What helped me to wrestle fleece and other bulky fabrics into submission, I cut cardboard boxes into rectangles to make “bolts” like at the fabric store. Once fabric is wrapped around the cardbord all the fabric is a uniform size which for some reason makes it look neat and tidy and not like clutter. You could stack it anywhere then until you find a proper home. I could be biased though, because I love spending time in fabric stores where there are stacks of fabric.
Oooh! I love emergency motivation. Sometimes it’s the only thing that gets my butt moving to do the things I needed to do anyway. 
I recently completed a full-on clutter purge in my house. The main living areas took the better part of 4 days, but it was worth it.
I recommend that you start by putting each and every thing - no matter how big or small - in a container by purpose or storage location (e.g., one for tools, one for screws and nails, one for sewing notions, one for personal items, etc.). Once you’ve sorted EVERYTHING, take the containers one by one and put the items where they belong. If you run out of time, you can simply take the containers to the place where they will be stored and leave them there (e.g., bedroom closet, bathroom cabinet, etc.) until you can get back to the task of unpacking them.
Do the same for papers, although I recommend that you do this AFTER you’ve sorted and put away all of the physical clutter. For papers, use the following categories: trash, shred, bills to pay, bills to file (or put them in the shred pile if you don’t hang on to them), keepsakes, etc. Again, once you’ve sorted everything, throw away the trash pile, shred the shred pile, and store what you’re going to keep in an appropriate place (file cabinet, boxes, etc.).
The key is to put things away immediately after you’ve finished sorting - if you wait to do it, everything will come undone after a few days and you’ll have wasted your time sorting. GOOD LUCK!
It’s always been my experience that it always turns out well. Perhaps I should rephrase that. It’s always been my wife’s experience…..;)
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Good luck! If I was a wee bit closer, I’d offer to help out.