Behold! Order Borne of Chaos!

Oy vey. Shoot me now. I'm taking a breather to watch the evils of invertabrates and anemones on Planet Earth before I return to the madness of removing the madness from my life. I'm on Day Three of The Great Purge... The Purge I've never had the courage to do full-on. I'm doin' it, man.

I've spent a mere $100 on the organization quest, with $20 of that being on the red wine I've needed to end the nights with. Ha. It's the 80-20 budgetting rule on smallscale home improvement. 80% spent on the shit you need to do the jobs ahead of you, and 20% spent on the booze you need for the groaning-stiff-god-that-was-hard-work (but thank god it's done!) bitchfest that comes at the end of each day of hard work. As the costs of your projects go up, of course, the ratio of actual costs versus booze costs should widen, too, naturally. We're not encouraging alcoholic bingefests here, people.

Save that for the summer concert series, man, which feels like it's right around the corner. Oooh hoo! Spring! Warmth... outdoors... cherry blossoms. Mm. And in anticipation of all that... spring cleaning like never before, baybee!

I'm going to be done my coffee soon, then that means figuring out where to go next with this task ahead of me. Today's getting down to the easier, more menial jobs. I've already gathered all the papers around my apartment and stuffed them in a bag. Tonight I'll sit on an area rug for the first time in 18 months, after I pull it out of storage later, and I'll sort my papers. Huge accomplishment in that alone.

Before that, it's finding homes for All the Little Things, and going through a few more drawers and one kitchen cupboard. I've already finally dealt with the horrible wrath of the Broken Dresser and organized my bedroom closet, and my hall closet, and my two storage units... and I've purged about 40 square feet of belongings so far, if not even more than that, not including all the books I've been selling.

It probably sounds like a decent amount to anyone, but when you're living in a 700 square foot apartment, it's a lot. I've been able to move a lot of things around, creating a little extra space everywhere. Most notably, though, is in my postage-stamp kitchen, where "space" sounds like some exotic ingredient too elusive for my capture. In the next hour or so, I'll discover something as exciting to the foodie in me as discovering a wholly new species might be to a biologist: Counter Space.

Holy shit, man. Counter space! Who knew! How exciting. It'll be nice to not have to use, oh, the ironing board or the stovetop for additional space anymore when preparing for parties and such. Believe me, the ironing board thing has happened. Fittingly, the board's cover is a Teflon-coated one. I don't think they intended "Counter space on the fly" as a bonus use, though.

Tomorrow I'll have to make my fourth donation drop since this began on Friday. I'm proud that, out of everything I've gotten rid of, there's only been one bag for the garbage. Everything else has been donated or recycled. Yay for me. And yay for Mother Earth. Any bonehead can purge and throw shit in a Dumpster. Takes a special knack to know all that can be relegated for "other uses". Like clothes you think no one will want will happily be turned into rags for cleaning uses by more charities than you might realize.

A special item left for purging now requires me to visit, I think, a police station. I have a can of bear spray in my possession, which I kept in my car in the Yukon. Duh, it's the Yukon. Bearspray's handy in them parts. I almost stepped in a pile of bearshit when I was camping once. Funny how seeing bearshit so close and fresh kinda inspires you to similarly wish to shit. And run.

So, I digress. Thing's an explosive. I pity the fucker who causes it to explode, too. Not what you wanna be doing with highly concentrated, pressurized pepper spray with yourself being in the vicinity of less than, oh, 250 yards. And it's in a bottle about six times larger than your average pressurized can of pepper spray, too. Like, a litre. Mm, bear spray! It might be useful to keep, but I doubt it. I can just wear a bell. That's pretty effective.

Well, back to the grind here. It's been an arduous weekend, but I'll be reaping the rewards of this for a very, very long time. Yay for me. And yay for Planet Steff.

(Ed. note: Forgot to publish, and have since completed the kitchen. Nothing --NOTHING-- is on the counter except my toaster oven, coffee grinder, and knife block. Before, I had tonnes of cannisters, boxes of tea, and other crazy shit everywhere in the kitchen. Half the counter top (literally) was obscured. Now, everything is put away. Pictures will come at the end of it all!)