Home is Where the Junk Is

For those of you who may not already know, my post-college experience has been dominated by moving back in with my parents. When making the decision, I knew that the pros outweighed the cons, but there were two big cons that I had not anticipated. First, the amount of cleaning up and cleaning out I had ahead of me, and the lack of stress this environment allows.

I had either not thought about, or greatly underestimated, how much STUFF I had in my room at home. Most people probably move at least once during their childhood, but my family moved here before I was born and has been here ever since. Therefore, my room has been completely mine since the day I came home from the hospital. Great, right? Wrong.

When I moved home, there was a huge issue with space. My room has been chalk full of stuff since I moved out 4 years ago, and none of that had gone away between moving out and moving back. The only real clean-up job I'd done was to get rid of most of the stupid teen-angst-y posters on my walls to make my room seem bigger than it was. This lack of space resulted in putting a lot of stuff in my brother's room and leaving much of the bigger stuff in the garage. Now my walls are clean but everywhere else is completely covered with junk.

Now, the task has been assigned to sort through the 18 years of junk that have accumulated in my 12x10 ft. room. I thought that it would only take an afternoon: sort through things, get rid of things, and it would all be pretty much tamed. How wrong I was. I started this project in August with whatever spare time I had, and although over a month has gone by, the mess remains. Every time I attack one part of the room, it makes the other more messy. I've probably thrown out six little garbage bags full of stuff, recycled a couple bags of paper and cardboard, and donated three paper bags of clothes and other miscellaneous stuff. So, although I have "all this stuff" (as my Nana would say), I have about half of it in another room altogether.We will see how the next few weeks go. It's hard to concentrate on other goals of mine when I'm sitting in a cluttered room. 

Now, I said I had two big things I hadn't anticipated. The second thing is my ability to be relaxed at home. Some of you may be confused by this because, yes, relaxation can be a great thing. When I'm relaxed I don't gain weight as easily, my back never hurts from bad sleep, and I sleep REALLY well here in general. However, there are things worse than stress: sloth, idle hands, and lack of motivation. If I'm feeling so great, why do anything?? Therein the problem lies.

I need to psyche myself out everyday in order to do the simple things like shower and get out of my PJs. Of course, when I go to work it's another story... but when I get home at night and also during the weekends, I can never motivate myself to do anything. Trying to exercise has been the hardest thing (but it doesn't help that it's been 100F the past few days). I have to keep telling myself that I have long-term goals, that I only have 4 more months to get everything together for my graduate school applications. Then again, 4 months seems like forever to my relaxed, non-school mind.

I'm hoping that beginning a new work week will make everything change (as it usually does), but if not it's going to become a real problem. If anyone has any suggestions on how to make myself more productive at home, please tell me. I think I have the room cleaning under control for now, but my non-stress problem is I think the worst. They say stress takes years off your life, but I would rather do things during this time of my life than live longer.