Emergency cleaning: Unfuck your whole house in the shortest time possible

So, your landlord/parents/home inspector/favorite movie star is dropping by, and your place is a disaster. You don’t have much time to clean it up. You’re in emergency mode. Let’s get started.

Don’t panic. Panic leads to fear, fear leads to procrastination, procrastination leads to the dark side. You can do this, but you have to stay calm.
Unlike maintenance cleaning, we’re not looking to completely unfuck one space at a time. Instead, we want to decrease the overall mess in stages, spread evenly across the whole area that we’re concerned about. If you think your home is at Level 10 filth, we want to bring the whole thing down to a Level 9, and then down from there. One really clean spot in an otherwise messy home is not going to be helpful here.
Get prepared. You’ll want to shut the computer down (or turn the modem off if you need your computer to play music). Trust me. Get your music going. Gather up trash bags, your vacuum and mop, some rags or paper towel, sponges, and other cleaning supplies. Use what you have on hand. Don’t get distracted running to the store and spending an hour browsing cleaning supplies. A multi-purpose cleaning concentrate or a jug of vinegar will be just fine.
Breaks are very important. Depending on your time constraints, work in 20/10s (20 minutes working, 10-minute break) or 45/15s. But take breaks because otherwise you’re marathoning, and marathon cleaning is no one’s friend. Keep hydrated, don’t forget to eat, and check in with yourself frequently to make sure you’re physically doing OK.
Make your bed. This will be your home base if you get overwhelmed or need somewhere clear to take a break.
Start with the garbage. Going from room to room, throw out anything that is obvious trash. Once you fill a bag, take it out. Repeat as many times as necessary.
Move on to dishes. Gather the dishes from all over your house and bring them to the kitchen. If you can, start them soaking in a sink of hot, soapy water or start loading the dishwasher. After the dishes are all in one place, spend one 20/10 getting started getting them under control.
Now it’s time for your flat surfaces. Countertops, tables, dresser tops, etc. Clear them off and wipe them down. Don’t get distracted in too much sorting and organizing. We’re in crisis mode here. There will be time to get in-depth once this is all done. The same applies to cabinets and closets. Unless you have reason to believe people will be opening closed doors, leave these alone for now.
Attack the floordrobe and shoe pile. Get your clothes either put away or in the hamper. Start a load of laundry if you need to, but keep in mind that laundry and dishes have three steps: wash, dry, and put it away, goddammit!
Get random stuff up off the floors. If something is trash-worthy, throw it away now rather than just move it around a bunch of times. Otherwise, put stuff where it belongs.
Take another 20/10 or 45/15 to catch up on more dishes, if needed.
Head into the bathroom. Pour some cleaner in the toilet bowl, fill the sink with hot water and cleaner, and either spray the tub and shower with cleaner, or fill the tub up with some hot water and add cleaner and let it soak. Put everything away that’s out and shouldn’t be, clean the mirror, counters, and toilet seat. Sweep or dry mop the floor. Wipe down the sink and tub/shower, and give the toilet bowl a scrub. Mop the floor.
Sweep and mop the kitchen floor.
Vacuum everything you can, and sweep everything you can’t.
Walk outside of your house (don’t lock yourself out, please). Walk back in and see what catches your eye first. Go and deal with that.
If you’re being inspected or your landlord is coming in for repairs, spend time on whatever area they’ll be focusing on.
Give the whole place one more once-over and pay attention to anything you’ve missed so far.
It’s an old trick, but if your place is a little funky-smelling, put a pan of water on the stove on low heat and add some citrus or cinnamon or vanilla. Don’t leave it unattended or forget about it.
Take a shower, put on something clean, and eat something.

You can do this. It’s overwhelming, yes, but it is not impossible. You just need to do it. You have a list. You have directions. You have a whole bunch of Internet strangers who have been there before and who are cheering you on. You can do this, but you need to get started.

Why are you still here? GO. START. NOW.

river-b

the number of times in my past that I desperately wanted/needed someone to sit me down and tell me this stuff. I will never get back the hours and hours lost to headless-chicken mode, but it’s nice to know that in the last year I’ve learned so many coping mechanisms :D

dduane

Signal boost. 😀

#emergency cleaning #ufyh #useful #for future reference #life

perevision reblogged

keelywolfe

ao3commentoftheday

Anonymous asked:

hi! i need help. i've got an idea for a fic i've been sitting on for a while now, but it's a bit of an ambitious au that requires research and an actual plot that makes sense. i don't know where to start, and i'm the type of person who bases their worth on their productivity (something i need to work on, i know). i've had lots of free time, but even then i haven't written anything. any tips on where/how to start? or not feel shitty about this? thanks ✨✨

ao3commentoftheday answered:

Bear with me for a moment while I talk about something that might seem totally unrelated: project management methodology.

There are two major ways that I've encountered for managing a project. One way is called Waterfall and the other way is called Agile. In Waterfall project management, you basically build the whole thing and then release a finished product. This is useful in a situation like baking a cake. Giving people the uncooked batter probably won't go over well.

In Agile project management, you build something that's referred to as the minimum viable product. This is a sort of stripped down version of the final product. It still does whatever it's meant to do, but it doesn't have all of the bells and whistles on it. If you play video games, you'll be familiar with this. They release the base game and then add more functionalities and levels over time, but meanwhile people are buying and playing the game and those sales help to finance further development.

So what does this have to do with writing a big fic? Well, writing longfic is its own kind of project management. Depending on your own personality, either a Waterfall or an Agile approach could work for you.

Based on this ask, I think you might want to take an Agile approach. Look at the overall story and think: what's the core story I'm trying to tell? That's the minimum viable product. You can add in all of the world building and the subplots etc. after you've got the main thread figured out, but that main thread is what you should focus on first. Any research on the main thread gets priority. Any research on the side stuff can wait for later.

And this can also be a way for you to get feedback as you write. That's another core of Agile development - getting feedback from the stakeholders (in this case your audience) throughout the development process so that the final product fits the need. You can do this with a beta reader or by participating in things like Six Sentence Sunday.

You can also break your huge story down into a series of smaller stories that can be posted separately and grouped together in a series on ao3.

Decide what the most important part of the story is that you really want to tell and start there. Once you've got that part, you can build on it.

How do the rest of you figure out a huge story like this one? Can you offer anon any advice?

westerngayfairytales

For a long project, so that I’m sure that I’m gonna finish it, I need to have it all written down before I start posting, otherwise the pressure of having to write it down combined with the pressure of having readers waiting for an update will scare me into never looking at that project again. I will certainly still edit it and maybe even add some scenes as I proof pread for posting day, but most of it needs to be written down.

Long fics scare the hell out of me, so what I do is focus on it one scene at a time, cause I will get overwhelmed if I know I have 5, 10, 20, 40 more scenes to write.

Just write the scene you have on your mind now - or do it chronologically, whatever works best for you - as if it is your only worry.

I, particularly, go back and forth a lot, though I leave all the scenes in their respective “space”, leaving little notes to myself so that I know that I need to add another scene in a certain place, a transition paragraph, anything like that.

I know a lot of people make a plan for the fic, and that sounds really smart, but it doesn’t really work for me. I go with the flow, always rereading what is already written so that I can have a feel for what needs to come next. This approach also makes me end up with quite a few discarded scenes, but it is what it is 🤷‍♀️

scarlet-curls

While pantsing is valid, I think that it's worth giving a shot at planning in Anon's case. I too am writing a super ambitious au, and it took me 9 months to thought-dump on-and-off, and another three to plan out the plot, characters, and world in detail. Yes, I am on the extreme side of things, but here's some wisdom I can share.

First of all, I feel like planning gets a bad rap for being "homework". Like I've heard "Oh, it stifles creativity" or "It feels like the story has already been told so why write it?" and I just... don't get that at all?

Sometimes planning doesn't work for you, and that's okay, but planning is an intensely creative process! This is where you lay the skeleton of your story down, and then actually writing it is where you lay on the flesh. Along the way, you may have to rearrange a few bones here and there, but you see a finishing point ahead.

Having a general path to follow is what gets be through longfics. I can't stand to run in blind. I need to see the gist of what's ahead of me. To some people, they feel outlining the story means there's no point in telling it because it's "already been told" but to me it's like inhaling a binge-worthy book at lightning speed and then writing the fic is like rereading the story to pick up on countless details, clues, and foreshadowing that flew over my head the first time. Even with my meticulous planning, the drafting process continues to delight and surprise all the time. It just comes from the details rather than the trajectory of the story.

When it comes to planning a large fic, though, it helps to get visual. Go beyond the typical Word or notes document. I am once again quite extreme because I pay like $12 a month for Milanote, but I use it because it allows me to easily navigate between my notes, colour code them, add visuals, as well as put in a ton of detail while also being able to see the bigger picture. Look into using a free program that allows you to do the same thing, or spice up your document with bookmark links, coloured text, and pictures.

When it comes to the actual content, these are the three places to focus on:

Plot
Characters
Worldbuilding

Plotting is about ensuring that you have a strong throughline. You don't want to get side-tracked and you want to keep the pace. Where does the tension peak and rest? Planning will help you find that balance early on without having to do a ton of deleting or rewriting.

Character profiles will help you nail down how they've been shaped by this world, as well as consistency. The thing to focus on here are goals, motivations, values, and development. That's the real meat and potatoes. If you know that deeply, then it'll be easy to keep your characters in-character.

Worldbuilding isn't my favourite thing (and I like that fanfic lets me gloss over it most of the time) but this is where you focus on plot-relevant regions, magic systems, cultures, and political systems. This is also where pictures come in handy. Instead of writing tons of notes, just get some inspo pics, add a few sentences below it for context, and vola! Worldbuilding!

After you've finished your planning, read through all your notes again. See if there are any changes, big or small, that you want to make before you start. It'll save you a ton of hassle.

And after all that planning, your longfic should hopefully look a lot less intimidating because you know exactly what you're getting into. There's no running in blind because the path is clear and now you only have to pave it.

Hope that helped!

perevision

Wow, lots of amazing advice in here for comics creators too 🥰

#fanfic #writing #worldbuilding #projects #useful