Clean Sweep
Monday December 8, 2003 – 10:19 amI really like the show Clean Sweep, have you seen it? You should check it out sometime if ya got nothin’ better to do. It’s one of those home-improvement shows, but the kicker is that they only feature the worst of the worst packrats and clutter-junkies (like me!). They take houses completely filled with clutter, and turn them into beautiful functional homes. It’s so funny, they round up all the shit and lay it in the yard and force the owners to sort it all out into "Keep", "Toss" and "Sell" piles. Then they throw a yard sale, it’s great fun.
I really really really wish they’d come to our apartment! But alas, they only work in California. Hell, I don’t even have a friend that’s any good at that sort of thing. The secret’s in the purging… usually I do my purging whenever I move to a new apartment, but we’ve been here five years and it’s a little out of control. It’s not quite as bad as what you’d see on Clean Sweep, but it’s gettin’ there! I have so many collectibles I need to put on eBay. Gotta sort through the boxes. Argh!!! Wanna procrastinate. No!! Must purge. No!! Well, I’ll just do it a little at a time. I’ll keep watching Clean Sweep for inspiration, and I’ll improve the area at a reasonable pace.
Lately I’ve been burning a lot of my old VHS tapes to DVD, that saves some space already. :-) We have walls and walls of CDs and records as well… it’s all pretty well organized but I need to go through it all and purge the stuff I don’t care about. Then there’s the office… I have a great big 4-drawer filing cabinet, but the problem is that it’s filled with shit I don’t need to keep! All my *really* important files are in boxes laying around the computer area. There are towers of boxes! All my archival press stuff, in boxes. And the computer crap — floppies, zip drives, cables, keyboards and mice, a CueCat and other assorted gadgetry, all in that tower of boxes. The music/guest room is also full of boxes of music-related crap, only half of which we may use. God, all the demo tapes, I can’t get rid of all that!! It’s a frickin’ museum in here! Blargh.
December 8th, 2003 at 6:24 pm
I’m absolutely hooked on Clean Sweep. My wife and I have a serious clutter problem, one that hasn’t really been rectified by our recent move into a house twice the size of our previous digs. My wife is worried that I’m going to hire Peter to come browbeat us into submission; she much prefers Shelley’s approach.
I’ve learned a lot by watching the show, although in a sense if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all; they all follow the same story arc. I’ve started to implement some of this in our new house, starting with the new closet I’ve created for my wife out of a former bedroom. But the heart of the show is the purge, and we just haven’t gotten to that stage yet.
Of the three home improvement shows on TLC, Trading Spouses, er, Spaces, While You Were Out, and Clean Sweep, I’d have to say that Clean Sweep is my favorite.
December 8th, 2003 at 9:58 pm
I’ve seen those other shows but they don’t do it for me. People don’t *cry* on those shows. Tee hee!! The Clean Sweep people are master psychologists. I like how they play good cop / bad cop with each other in order to harrass people into purging their crap. The only thing missing is that they don’t show any true *slobs*, people with old food under the bed and dirty cat boxes. They don’t have the CAT LADIES. Or people with piles of porno videos, collections of sex toys etc. But it’s always satisfying enough, ‘cuz the clutter is almost always worse that you have at your own house.
December 8th, 2003 at 10:36 pm
Aye…’tis true! Richard the Black hath cast his eyes ‘pon the Clean Sweep and found it to be rather adequate. Enow we are purging that which we no longer need, as we point our ship further out to the center of the Several Seas. Whilest we shall miss some things - already I miss the cook (mayhaps I was a wee hasty making him walk the plank before dinner) - other things are easily forgotten. What need have we of maps, compass and sextant where we be headin’? We be sailing straight to the land of eleven herbs and spices - and like ol’ Toucan Sam, all we needs doing is to follow my nose!
And speaking now of noses, the Blacks’ favorite home improvement show is, hands down, Whilest You Were Out. First season only! That lovely lass Theresa Strasser hath a beak more bountiful than the golden dawn, and a wit e’en sharper than ol’ Richards’ zipper. Zounds! If only they would come and bestow ‘pon my vessel a makeover on deck. Perhaps an homage to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is in order? Some flower arrangements in the cannons? Or maybe just glue some sea shells to mine Captain’s chair. Aye! Festive it would be, says I!
December 9th, 2003 at 9:40 pm
hmmm…we recently got a Braun electric toothbrush (model "3D Excel”), with four interchangeable brushes , each with a little color band so they’re color-coded for any family of four. And, I, too am in the midst of that major gums overhaul also do to a two year avoidance of the dentist. I’ve heard that Dentists have the highest suicide rate of any professional. They see people every day who’d rather be anywhere but in that chair. It takes a toll having to inflict all that pain on people’s mouths. Though I also think the younger and more enlightened of the profession realize that guilt trips don’t get the results they want. It just drives people away from seeing them at all. But the Braun is a fun brush for the whole fam. The cats can even have their own brushes! (imagine trying to brush cat’s teeth - it could be a bloodbath)
And, on the homefront - I’m the world’s worst, or maybe just most infamous packrat, or so I’m told, by those near and dear to me. I have this reputation to maintain, which I do easily, just by doing nothing to improve the clutter. And it’s worse when you have more square feet to clutter up. My office is pretty much olff limits because only I can navigate through the piles. I’m told that people like me keep things this way as a way to control things. Control through chaos. It keps me indispensible since only I have any notion as to the whereabouts of stuff. It’s not relly as choatic as it sonds. Obviously, or I wouldn’t be able to do business at all. I actually do keep the biz stuff relatively orderly (filed alphabetically, etc.)
BUT, my friend Debra, (also in Chicago) has just the skill she wants to put into a job. She’s a pro at getting peoples’ clutter into order. I only found this out when she wanted to have us print a brochure for this new biz she wants to start. She’s been doing this for awhile, without promoting it. But, as a U. of Chicago grad student, she’ll do better doing this than trying to actually find a job in her chosen obscure academic field. If she were on this side of the country, I could do a trade (fliers for an office overhaul). But I’m a little scared to actually let anyone else go in there with pitchforks and dumnpsters and just start to haul the piles away. The "Keep", "Sell", "Toss" strategy is so simple but one I’m very good at procrastinating about for years. I delude myself that I’m taking it on a little at a time. But it’s so little that it never looks like any progress is getting made.