It's amazing how much of a mess was near my desk - a quick post.

 

If I'm guilty of vices other than gluttony, I'd say that my next one might be sloth.  Laziness is a hidden trait that can be attributed to me, as I don't like to work.  This doesn't mean that I won't work hard.  I just avoid hard work whenever I can.

Over the past few months, I have allowed messes to accumulate in the corners of my apartment, and I decided to attack one for a few hours (with a lot of breaks).  It's amazing what one can accomplish when one breaks work down into manageable chunks.  (I guess that my experience of being a project manager helps me in this regard.)

Sooner or later, I will get everything organized in my apartment.  Until then, expect me to talk about my mess now and then.

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This weekend, the weather is supposed to be bad.  So, when I go out as Marian, I'll be wearing a dress over leggings, mimicking the kind of garments a cisgender woman would be wearing in inclement weather.  I've found that the leggings I've bought from Universal Standard are of a much higher quality than what I have bought from Woman Within.  So, I'll try to up my garment game in the future by buying garments from brands I know have the quality level I want.

Why do I mention garment quality?   Simple.  I'm finding that well made athleisure garments tend to be more forgiving of odd shaped people when they are worn.  Not once did I have to pull up Universal's leggings during a day of wearing (except when taking bio-breaks, of course).  I can't say this about the leggings I have bought from WW or Walmart.

There will always be some garments I'll buy at cheaper outlets.  But now that I have developed a sense of my own feminine style, I can afford to buy clothes that I expect will last, instead of clothes I know will end up in a donation bag after a few wearings.

My Pooka was at it again!

 

I just spent $20 to replace a souvenir button that cost me $2.50.  And that wasn't a bad deal, except that I found the button two days after its replacement.

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A couple of weeks ago, RQS and I went to the Norman Rockwell Museum to see an exhibit for the Art of Mad Magazine.  Somehow, I had misplaced the sweater that had this souvenir button on it. After searching everywhere for it, I gave up hope of finding it and ordered a replacement.  Today, I found that sweater and button.

Misplacing items like this has always been a common occurrence for me.  I have learned to have two of everything important, as I never know when one of these things will go missing.  (I'm still looking for a pendant I bought while in Hawaii - it was one of my favorites!)  I even have duplicates of all of my portable electronic stuff (wires, adapters, etc.), as I tend to misplace or lose them while in transit.  (I lost a cell phone charger on a flight back from London this year, and just replaced it.)

If you were to see a picture of my desk, you'd understand why I misplace things so often.  A cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind.  Boy, this is an understatement in my case!  But it does allow for the random mutations of ideas which allow me to have insights that most people aren't lucky enough to have.  (Could you imagine how much more boring I would have been if my brain hadn't been able to make its random connections?)  

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One of these days, I'll be able to straighten out the mess on my desk, in my bedroom, and throughout the apartment.  Until then, I expect to keep misplacing many more things and replacing them prematurely.

I'm preparing to travel, and I'm missing things

 

Since I started to clean out the clutter in my apartment, I kept stumbling into the compression bags that I use for travel.  Today, I looked for these bags and couldn't find them.  AARGH!  I knew where things were in the old clutter.  But I don't know where things are in the new mess.

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Right now, my apartment has a vacant space where a sofa used to be.  Things which would normally be near the sofa have been pushed away, so that the new sofa can be put in place.  But this gets in the way of me accessing those compression bags.  In the game of Jenga, I'm caught between a rock place.  No matter what I move, I lose.  In the case of my apartment, if I move something, I will lose track of where it is.  And I am already upset that I can't find the costume jewelry I had in the bedroom that I moved as part of the electrical work done over a month ago.

Luckily, I sorted much of what I need for travel into two easy to find bags, and much of the stuff I will need for the trip is already in my "Go Bag".  But I think I will repack things when I get back from RQS's place, as I know that my backpack should be treated as a personal item.  This way, I can stash my pocketbook in the backpack (or in my carry-on) and retrieve it when I land in Chicago (or when I return to New York).  

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My upcoming trip will be the first one I take with RQS as Marian.  This will be a very interesting trip, as the women we're meeting in Chicago only know me as Marian, but know of Mario's existence.  Let's hope it all goes well.

Now to clean up the mess in my apartment

 

I only wish my dining room table was still this "uncluttered".  Right now, the whole apartment (including the table) is filled with clutter.  But how did it happen? And, how can I eliminate the clutter?

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Before Covid, the clutter in my apartment was being kept to a manageable level.  The bi-weekly (then monthly) visit by my cleaning lady gave me the incentive to keep this place neat enough for her to come in on a regular basis.  However, the pandemic got in the way of everything, and I no longer bothered trying to keep the place "neat".  (With what was going on in my life then, as mentioned in my former blog, I was too depressed to bother keeping the place neat.)  Now that I am feeling much better about life, and have a solid relationship with a new girlfriend, it's still hard to get this place in order.  I no longer have the energy to do much of anything without some assistance.

Over the past year or so, I have been donating bags of clothes I no longer wear to charity.  God knows how many bags I've already donated.  But now, things have slowed down a bit.  Yet, I have much more to get rid of, and RQS will help me prune things some more.  I'm a bit embarrassed to have people come into this place, and I will have to make room for an electrician to work on every outlet.  We have aluminum wiring on our 15a circuits, and they need to make sure that the proper connectors are being used, so that we don't have an electrical fire.  I'm going to be quite busy soon!

With all the effort I'm likely to make, I expect one important thing to come of all of this - a less cluttered apartment.  Let's hope that I can keep it that way.

Slowly eliminating clutter from an apartment

 

Over the past year, RQS and I have been clearing out a lot of clutter from my apartment.  It has been like playing a hybrid game of Jenga and Tetris, as I've had to find room for things I want to keep while both adding and purging things from the apartment.

One of the things many M2F transgender people do is to learn what clothes work (or don't work) on their bodies.  They also learn what clothes they should wear for all occasions, and make a lot of mistakes along the way.  But the thing we don't learn easily is how to purge clothes we no longer wear or no longer look good in from our closets, so that we look good and appear appropriate for all occasions in the clothes we have left in our closets.  Lately, I have purged half of my feminine wardrobe with the help of RQS, and donated what I had to charity.  Now, I have room to back fill a small number of missing items into my wardrobe.  And I present a much better appearance to the world, now that I have a better focus on what I can wear.

But this is not the only clutter that I've been sorting through.  The other day, I started sorting through all my kitchen utensils, and found a few that I will either give away or toss in the trash.  This is typical of what I've been doing lately.  I find a place where I've stored way too many things, and sort through them when I find the time and the energy to take care of a certain amount of work in one area of my apartment.  The other day, it was an area of the kitchen.  Before that, it was cleaning out corners of my bedroom. And even before that, was an area near my dining room table.  I've gotten used to taking two steps forward, just to take one step back in this long term project of removing clutter from my abode.

I am hoping that I will rid the apartment of enough of my clutter before some required electrical work must take place.  When it does, I'll have to move furniture (or have it moved for me) so that an electrician can do work in my place.  So I'm working on the clutter now, so that I won't be overwhelmed by it later on....