I entered the room. I wasn't very excited to be sleeping in my sister's room. It's scary in there. But I told my dad that I'd watch the house while he and my step-mom took a vacation in Disney World.
Normally my sister Emily would watch the house but she's off on vacation in Texas with our aunts.
Obviously I'm the responsible one in the family.
I opened my Emily's bedroom door and cautiously entered. The first thing I noticed were all of the soda cans. They were strewn over her dresser, the floor, and her night stand. 8 total.
The second thing I noticed was all the shredded paper on the floor by her doorway. I guess the cat got angry one day and decided to take it out on old sheets of homework she had lying on the floor. Either that or he wanted to party by making his own confetti.
I looked for a safe place to put my bag of stuff I brought but found it hard to find the floor in general. Her entire closet floor was flooded with socks, shirts, jeans... which was weird because she was traveling. She had even more clothes than what was piled all around.
I made my way over to the bed to see what I'd be resting in. I saw the crumbs and decided pretty quickly to sleep on the couch upstairs. It was then that I felt a spark of inspiration and came to the conclusion that I needed to organize my sister's entire bedroom. I envisioned myself decluttering like the experts I'd seen on the show Hoarders. That room needed and intervention.
Step 1: Clean her dresser.
The top of the dresser was buried under random crap like food snacks, wrappers, MY magazine that somehow made it to HER room, and a lot of dust. After I cleared that space I found an entire box of papers and unopened mail. I went through what I could and deleted what I knew to be trash. I then noticed a strange pattern emerging with some of the mail content.
60% of the nail she received was from the SPCA and other animal groups. Once, 3 years ago, my sister made a donation to the SPCA and since then has been receiving letters in the mail. These letters contain a small package of mailing address labels with her mailbox information on it and a picture of a dog or cat. Good to know all that money being donated to the puppies and kitties is being put to good use creating mailing labels for people who no longer donate to the cause.
The next thing I decided to do was check the drawers in her dresser. I honestly assumed between the clothes on the floor and the clothes in the closet that the dresser itself would be empty. WRONG. My sister has wayyyy too many clothes.
I decided to re-organize the drawers so they were cohesive and made sense. Sock drawer. Athletic wear drawer. Pajama drawer. Nice clothes drawer. Everyday wearable shirts drawer. Another random collection of items drawer."Shirts you have that you like but will never actually wear" drawer. That drawer of course included: 2 Pokemon shirts, 1 L&L Hawaiian BBQ shirt, Stanford, Brown, and Harvard colleges that my sister doesn't go to shirts, and my favorite shirt: Twilight. Apparently my sister is on Team Jacob.
Step 2: Clean off the Desk she never uses.
On top of the small desk my sister has in her room is a computer screen and a keyboard. Seems normal until you realize it's buried under a pile of papers and other stuff because 99.9% of the time she uses her laptop.
I decided to put the stuff on top of the desk into the desk drawers only to find that half of them were dedicated to holding random items and oddball objects. One of the items in question was an EMF detector she bought but has never used to prove the existence of ghosts she and I have both experienced throughout our lives.
At some point I just reminded myself: "I'm here to clean -not to judge".
Step 3: Clean the Closet
My sister is weird. She's into Anime and "Cos-play". She has a lot of random costumes. I had to keep reminding myself: "I'm here to clean -not to judge". So I took the 6 vibrant-colored, creepy wigs she owns and put them up in the closet. I also started working my way through the pile of clothes on the floor. Among the clothes I found about 5 shirts I'd given her. I also found 3 shirts I decided to steal from her. It seemed only fair...
I decided the reason my sister's closet and floor were overflowing with clothes was because of 3 contributing factors:
1. She doesn't have a hamper/laundry basket.
2. She has very few hangers for her closet.
3. She has wayyyyy to many clothes -specifically jackets.
She had a grand total of 25 jackets (3 that she unknowingly then donated to the Salvation Army while she was away). As far as shoes were concerned -she had 22 pairs. One for every year of her life. She also had 14 belts -which would have been good to know sooner because mine broke and I had to go all the way to Target to buy a new one. When I mentioned this fact upon her return she gave me 2 of her belts!!!
As far as hats go I'm pretty sure she had about 7. Not including 2 beanies. At some point I was just thankful I didn't find any dead animals. I did find a light saber, a tomahawk, and some nunchucks. I was hoping to find some cash at some point because my sister tends to store gift cards and money away like a squirrel hoarding nuts, but alas all I managed to find was her odd, obsessive collection of pennies...
After: Improvements I made to the Room
After I put things away and cleared enough space I vacuumed the floor -which was there the whole time as it turns out!
I also created a "Hobby Section" in my sister's room for her sewing machine, scrap book materials, and baking supplies.
I wanted everything to be intuitively organized enough that should she go looking for something in her room the day she arrived back, she could find it relatively easily. 2 days after she returned I came by to visit to hear what her experience wandering into her newly discovered room was.
She said she was impressed. She had moments where she was worried she wouldn't be able to find something, but those only lasted a couple of seconds because the locations of things were pretty easy to figure out. In fact, she had found some stuff that she had been looking for for months that was nicely laid out in plain sight.
As a round-about form of compensation for my efforts, by sister had bought me things during her travels. She got me a necklace, a bracelet, a book, and a dress. Karma is awesome!
The downside to karma of course is that in the end she stopped by and visited my apartment and after walking in through the door said to me, "Well I guess I need to return the favor and clean up this place..."
Before/After Pictures from Emily's Room:
No comments:
Post a Comment