It became clear to me over the past few days I’ll never get my flat cleaned up the way I want before the windowreplacement. With the amount of anxiety I had about it (and let’s face it, about anything) I have thought up a Plan B (and possibly C and D). Today or tomorrow I will take my little bike, cycle to GAMMA (a DIY-store nearby) and get myself a bunch of moving boxes, small size. After that, I have about two weeks to get my affairs in order and that gets easier when I can simple toss ‘everything’ in boxes and stack those.

I prefered not to do it that way and then stuff happend that got in the way. I don’t feel defeated. In fact, I feel pretty pleased about having thought this through beforehand which leads me to Plan B without stress and still confident I can do this. For me, this makes a huge difference with how I did things before. Instead of ‘fighting’ against my nature and trying ‘not to worry so much’ I took a few minutes to write down my plan and my backup-plan. This action alone gave me enough calmness to not have to spend much time thinking about it. Normally I’d keep it all active in my head, and this eats up a lot of backgroundprocess-energy.

I’ll still need some help with clearing the balcony, and even that doesn’t look as daunting as it did before.

I'm a bit of a compulsive spender. There, I said it.

Unlike others, I don't buy shoes or clothes. I buy boxes. And organising stuff. Sites like The daily planner and The container store make my heart beat faster. And Thinkgeek.

Oh, and pens.

And I buy a lot of food.

Only on occasion do I not use the things I purchase, this happens maybe a couple of times per year. I don't buy 50 pairs of shoes, new skirts because they're on sale etc.

But I am a compulsive spender and this has to stop. I have more pens than I could possible ever get empty (granted, drawing just goes a lot better with the right pen, but I have multiple so that shouldn't become a problem any time soon). I have a gazillion (lovely) boxes. No more buying food when I have plenty in my pantry. Make shopping lists and stick to them. Time to grow up ;)

On friday I purchased some rollerboxes for under my bed, but they wouldn't fit so I had to return them. I then found out my favourite storing boxes will be on sale (and actually purchasable) in a discount supermarket nearby on Monday and though I won't get out my sleepingbag and sleep in front of the store to get them, I will make sure to go there on Monday. As an extra I found out that a discount store for home-stuff sells them as well, and currently don't have any in stock because they were on sale there last week.

Yes, I have an obsession with plastic boxes and yes, I have a very specific obsession. When find ones I like I want to have just those for certain purposes. For food-storage I use Ikea's Pruta because they're small containers hold exactly the right amount of food for me.

I also label my boxes, so I know what I can find in there without having to turn them upside down. Even with the transparent boxes this helps a lot to quickly find what I need.

Now, on to declutter the cabinet under the sink. If I feel brave I'll post before and after photos later on.