Excuses, excuses

Tonight, instead of a fascinating travelog of my decrapification adventures, I have a variety of excuses to offer for why I didn't really do a bag, a box, a shelf or a pile today.

First of all, look at what I did on Friday!


And another look at a room that was full of papers, boxes, recycling, leftover snacks, and other STUFF:


Plus, we cleared trash and STUFF out of this room as well:


Okay, so that room still looks full of STUFF, but it belongs to other organizations. Before we got in there on Friday, you couldn't walk through the room without stepping on STUFF.

(We are going to avoid all mention, for the time being, of the fact that -- apart from the recycling and trash -- the STUFF that had been in those two rooms is now in the Drama Queen's empty bedroom.)

So that was the "distract them with details" excuse. How did that go over?

Next is the "I finished the shredding from that box of receipts" excuse. Look at this:


SIX!! That's SIX bags of shred! That's got to count for something, right?

No?

Well, how about the Knitting Excuse? Sports Nut wants me to knit a cat bed for his cats. Here's how far I've come on that project:


Not a knitter, huh? Hmm.... I've been gathering together things to give to one of those organizations who come by your house and pick up items -- in this case, bed linens and clothes nobody is going to wear again. Here's my progress so far:


Not very impressive yet. So how about the Cat Excuse?


Cats need to be petted. That takes up a lot of time.

Most of those excuses didn't work all that well for me, either. So I found a box:


But I couldn't really ignore that the only things IN the box were some papers to recycle and a bag of plastic bags. Not a very impressive decluttering chore. So I cleared off the kitchen counters as well. (And even wiped them clean afterwards!)


The Wizard washed the dishes, so I can't take credit for that. And there is a smallish pile of papers to deal with. Tomorrow. But you have to admit that's a big improvement.

Feeling somewhat virtuous, I came to my desk and found, well... not a mess exactly, but certainly a small pile of things that didn't belong where they were:


Clearing off the desk is surely as good as going through a box, etc. -- especially when added to clearing the kitchen counters.


I even did the other part of my work area:


Now I can go to bed with a mostly-clear conscience. The wolves may not be howling at the door, but the dogs are certainly whining out there. They think it's time to close down operations for the evening and let them in. Who am I to argue?