Food allergy awareness week... Or lifetime

In case you missed it, today concludes Food Allergy Awareness Week in the US. I find this mostly a joke for me, as it's food allergy awareness day for me all day, every day. For my entire life! Can you feel the excitement!

It used to be simple for me. We figured out pretty darn early that I was allergic to nuts. But when I got to be an adult I slowly started getting strange rashes all over that wouldn't go away. We thought it was just eczema like I mentioned in my last post, but alas, that was wishful thinking. No, I'm mildly allergic to peanuts and severely allergic to...get this....cinnamon.

When I discovered the peanut allergy I purged all of the peanut products from the house, which pretty much amounted to peanut butter cups and a couple tubs of peanut butter. The cinnamon has been harder. Cinnamon doesn't have to be labeled in the US, it can fall under the generic term "spices" or "natural flavors."

Did you know that Coca-Cola has a cinnamon derivative in it? Apparently it does. Something called cinnamic aldehyde. I'm allergic to Coke. I'm allergic to Coke?! No wonder my stomach always got super upset when I drank that, but was okay with Pepsi.

What this has meant is that we've had to purge the kitchen of anything that has "natural flavorings" or "spices" in it. We finished that process right before I started this blog, but it's still a problem. Stuff sneaks into the house. Look, a new candy I want to try! Look, a baking mix that sounds tasty! Look, a can of iced tea mix that gives me rashes that last for half a week!

I bought this huge container (it was almost 16" tall) a few weeks ago because it looked like it would make good tea. "Natural flavors" it said. But did I listen to my gut and put it back? No. It was new and exciting, like many of the useless toys I buy in my life. 

I then realized that I was suddenly getting my characteristic cinnamon rash on the days when I drank it. I kept drinking it. I couldn't bear the idea of wasting $6 worth of tea. 

Apparently even when my knuckles, wrists, crooks of my arms, cheeks, and corners of my mouth are actually blistering and turning bright red, I'm still afraid of wasting anything. 

I finally convinced myself to heft the tub into the office. I left it on a counter with a "free" sign on it, and by lunch it had been taken. I felt a little better because it didn't go in the trash, but the urge to not waste anything is strong with this one!

How do all of you get rid of stuff that you're afraid will go to waste? 

Stockpiling: have I finally learned my lesson?

Stockpiling was something I learned at a very early age. My dad didn't buy months-long supplies of things, he bought decades-long supplies of things. I am not much better. But in one small area, I think I have finally learned my lesson. It only took a little external incentive from my doctor.

I've been over the "I have severe eczema, therefore I will try any cream that exists and will buy truckloads of anything that works for fear it will be discontinued" problem I have. Same went for foundation. I would buy multiple bottles of any foundation that worked. Problem was, I would end up throwing most of this stuff out in the end, either because it expired or because I would inevitably find out I was allergic to it, even if I thought I wasn't.

My dermatologist has finally put an end to my hand cream and foundation stockpiling habit. A little while ago I had patch testing done to evaluate my skin allergies. More or less, they glue blobs of 140 things to your back and leave them there for four days.

Before. From http://www.occderm.asn.au/services.html

In the end, you end up looking something like this: 

Positive reactions to a patch test. http://www.occderm.asn.au/services.html

Which mostly amounts to four days of being seriously itchy and smelly because you can't shower for four days! What did all of this unpleasantness amount to? I'm not allergic to much, but I'm allergic to some stuff that frequently finds its way into cosmetics and food. My doctor gave me a 10-page list of the only shampoos, toothpastes, hairsprays, cosmetics, creams, and lotions I could use without giving myself a reaction similar to the one above.

My list of hand creams, face creams, and foundations I can use now is very short. For hand and face creams I'm limited to Aquaphor, petroleum jelly, or mineral oil. For foundation I'm limited to Bare Minerals Matte. Not even the original, only the matte. This is not a bad thing.

Would you believe I'm
missing one bottle in this picture?

You see, I still have been using the stockpile of Eucerin products I bought on sale over a year ago, maybe even two years ago. This is only half of what I bought originally (12 in total), and now I finally realize that it's been contributing to my awful hand rashes. I can see that when I use it I get a rash within four days, and when I use petroleum jelly there's no rash even after a few days. Keeping the stuff around for so long also encouraged it to grow bacteria, which couldn't have helped. I should know better, I've dealt with the bacteria issue before!

Seven tubes of cream/lotion at $7 each is $49. I wasted $49 because I got excited about a sale. Sales are a myth to get me to spend more money!! The unopened bottles I'll drop off in the ladies rooms at work for others to use. The two opened ones will get trashed.

I'm happy I have the external incentive to downsize the quantity of cosmetics and creams I use. I now have one large jar of aquaphor in the cabinet, which I dilute with mineral oil. I fill a small mason jar from this tub and keep that at work. I expect that this will last me 6 months. Since one tub costs $20, each year I will only spend now $40 on hand and face cream. Yay for saving money and minimizing my cream/lotion collection!

As for the foundation, one thing of Bare Minerals foundation will supposedly last about 2 months. That's $25 every two months, which is still an unpleasant $150/year. However, given that the last time I stockpiled foundation I threw out three bottles of $14 foundation. I now know that I can't stockpile makeup because it grows bacteria, so there will be no danger of me doing that!

So, I've gotten some extra space in my medicine cabinet and makeup box and saved myself some money over the coming year, and reduced the amount of unused makeup and cream ending up in landfills. Oh, and no more itchy hands and face! Not that I'd recommend having allergies as a way of permanently streamlining your personal care routine though. But hey, there's good in everything, right?

How do you keep your cosmetics and lotions from taking over your cabinet?  How do you keep from overbuying?

The Reckoning

What: Seven bottles of creams and lotions
Cost: $49
Fate: Opened ones went in the trash, unopened ones get dropped off in the ladies rooms at work.
Total money wasted on crap I never should've bought: $2019.00. I just hit $2000 wasted. Dammit. 

Medicine cabinet before the hand cream purge

Medicine cabinet after the hand cream purge. Nail polish is next!

Grief and clutter: Getting rid of an object doesn't mean you're getting rid of the memories

About 2 months ago my second grandmother passed away. I was not attached to her, and in many ways I still blame my eating disorder on her. Her incredibly critical attitude about weight fed into my lack of self-confidence and I went down a very unpleasant path.

The task of cleaning out her condo fell to my parents. Doesn't that sound like a great idea? Give my hoarder parents responsibility for emptying out a 1400-square foot condo loaded with stuff. Grandmom was the organized one in the family. Like, she gave Martha Stewart a run for her money.

Everything had a place and a label...problem was, there was an awful lot of stuff. 

Anyways, my mom called me and asked if I wanted anything. I asked for a TV. My aunt was apparently fighting over who got the TVs (and everything else), so my mom got snippy when I kept saying how much I really wanted the bigger TV of the two. Now, my grandmother is my father's mom, not my mom's mom and yet my mom got feisty and ended up saying, "you know, when someone dies, most people don't just care about getting a TV."

Well, she's right. Except most people's deceased loved ones didn't contribute to their eating disorder. So yeah, I'm in the anger stage of grief. If all grandmom gave me was an eating disorder, the least I could get from her was a single TV in exchange for my misery. It's not true, she did give me more than an eating disorder, we did have some good times, and maybe I'll get past it in a few more therapy sessions.

The Chief Engineer and I have a single TV (we're down from five, originally, all of which were hand-me-downs from family) is 25 years old and is a 28" CRT, box-style TV. I inherited it when Gram died. Gram was my other grandmother and she was sort of a mom/sister/best friend all wrapped into one for me, so I'm overly attached to her stuff because I was attached to her. I've mostly gotten past this, but I'm still a little touchy about the TV.

In the end my Aunt got the bigger TV and apparently most of the contents of the condo (hm, the attachments to stuff run deep in this family).  I didn't get the big TV I wanted but I did get one. It's actually a perfect fit, not too small and not too big so I guess I'm glad I didn't get the bigger one. It arrived last week and we decided to keep only one television in the house. Grandmom's TV would replace Gram's.

But every time I walk into the living room now all I can see is Grandmom, and how she's replaced Gram in what is front-and-center in our living room. *Ohh, irrational thoughts! Danger, Wil Robinson!*

Just because we get rid of an object someone had doesn't mean that we're getting rid of them, or our memories of them, or our feelings for them.

Now when I see the TV and have bad memories of Grandmom, I try to either think of good memories of Gram, or to sit down and enjoy watching Star Trek on the TV. It's hard to be angry when I'm watching Connor Trinneer being gorgeous and generally brilliant on-screen, now that I have a TV screen clear enough even to see the color of his eyes! (Amazingly blue, btw.) I did get something good from Grandmom after all, and I still have all the good memories of our time together too, even with the bad.

How can I be angry at anything when I'm watching Commander Tucker being cuddly?
What can I say, I have a thing for engineers.

I also had the opportunity to let Gram continue to help the needy. We dropped her TV off at A Wider Circle, a DC-area charity that takes furniture and uses it to furnish first apartments for homeless families. So Gram, I'm glad we were able to give a homeless family part of a cozy living room. You're gone, but we're still making memories. I don't need to keep your TV to keep my memories of you.

On the plus side, I no longer have the affluenza-influenced desire for a brand new TV and I get to hold on to my own personal record of never having purchased a TV for myself.

Gram's TV, upside down on our ottoman. Now in the home of a formerly homeless family, and we stay object-neutral with just one TV in the house. Everybody wins.

That was my conflicted mother's day. If that's how complicated things are with my grandmothers, you should see how my brain works when it thinks about my mom and my MIL.

How was your mother's day?

On my mental health soapbox

Unlike this guy*, I don't have an actual soapbox.

I know I can get up on a sopabox far too often, so forgive me for this post, and skip it if you don't like posts like this.

I got a comment from a reader on my previous post about trying (and mostly failing) to get rid of a large number of gift bags that I'd acquired from our previous apartment building's "free box."

The reader said,

"Going through your post I was constantly thinking "why does she need to keep old gift bags?". Sorry if i sound rude, but it´s so different from my culture that it took me by surprise the fact that you keep so much stuff and that you have such a hard time parting with it. I know you grew up in a hoarder´s home and i also get that stuff may have emotional meaning to people (myself included), but it seems that you are making excuses to keep it. You live in a country so rich that people can get all the furniture to their houses just looking for it on the garbage. That´s richness, alright! In our trashes you would only find real trash (old tomatoes, used toilet paper, etc.) and maybe old pieces of toys or broken stuff."

If there is only one thing that you learn from this blog, I want it to be that hoarding is not a normal behavior, it is a mental health problem that manifests itself as a completely *irrational* attachment to useless stuff. As a child of hoarders and someone who is working through anxiety, depression, and an eating disorder, I have many of the irrational attachments to stuff that are the hallmarks of the hoarding disorder. Feeling a need to keep a bunch of gift bags that may take two years to get used is an irrational feeling. Trust me, I don't want to be this way.
 
Yes, I am making excuses to keep things, and that is part of a disordered irrational behavior that I recognize and am trying to fix. The whole reason I have this blog and post about things like this -- to highlight how irrational the attachment is. And to get called on those irrational behaviors. So kudos to the author of the comment for calling me on an irrational behavior.

However, the author effectively makes the suggestion that I should be able to let go of the irrational desire to keep stuff by becoming more aware of how lucky I am that I have so much stuff because I live in a wealthy country. That would work if hoarding weren't a mental health problem. Until the underlying psychological issue is resolved, simply removing the behavior won't work. 

Perhaps I can put this another way -- asking me to wake up and stop being attached to stuff because there are people in the world so poor that they barely have a roof over their head is like asking someone with bulimia (me!) to just stop bingeing on food because there are kids in China who are starving. Sheer rationality isn't enough to solve the problem. This is why they're called disorders.

So now that I've gotten off my mental health soapbox, I can look at the comment in another way --the author makes a good point -- I am the personification of affluenza.

It's probably going to take me five years to get over an eating disorder I had for 12, and I'll still fight it the rest of my life. If I grew up in a hoarded home, and I've had affluenza all my life, it's going to take a long time to fix this. Suggestions, please!

One of the first questions I was asked when I started eating disorder treatment was, "why do you binge on any given day?" Being able to recognize that the desire to binge in any given moment was typically a reaction to stress, I slowly began to tackle each instance by figuring out what I could do to address the irrational feelings I had. Maybe now I need to ask myself, "why do I want things?" Why do I feel the need for a new TV?  Why do I want a new blouse every month? Why do I feel the need to hang on to the gift bags?

Maybe if I can figure out why I want to do these things, I can slowly get better. Thanks for reading.




*see more silliness on the Los Techies blog, www.lostechies.com

'Tisn't the season for giving

My dad can't turn down anything free, whether he needs it or not. Apparently, neither can I.

The apartment building that the Chief Engineer and I used to live in had a "free" space in the basement where people could leave things they didn't want, and other people could pick up things they did want. One day, I found this huge bag of empty gift bags. I hate wrapping things. I will never have a room in my home solely for wrapping gifts. Thus, I love gift bags and I was on cloud nine when I found them. I then added in leftover wrapping paper and some store bags of my own.

But whoever left them must've spent a fortune on them! Some bags were duplicates and they're all in pristine condition, which is how I know they were purchased and not simply reused. I've probably used about six of the bags since I got them two years ago. But of the ones that are left, the price markings on them range from $2.49 and $5.49. Let's average that out and say $4 a piece. That's $72 for 18 bags. Suddenly wrapping presents in newspaper like my sister-in-law does sounds like a brilliant idea.

Anyways, this gigantic bag of bags was my decluttering task for a lazy Sunday afternoon. I wanted to use the big bag itself for a craft project and I wanted to store everything in a smaller space.

But alas, I had an emotionally hard time getting rid of some things.

OMG, gift bag from my honeymoon in Williamsburg! Gift bag from a world-famous hotel and cake bakery that friends brought us from Austria! (we ate the cake). I can't get rid of it, it's nostalgic! It might be useful one day! Argh, back in the bag they go.

In the game of hoarding, Joanna: 0, Evil Disordered Hoarding Alter Ego: 1

Okay, crumpled up paper that would look shameful if I wrapped something with it. Out it goes.

In the game of hoarding, Joanna: 1: Evil Disordered Hoarding Alter Ego: 1

I got rid of some old tissue paper too, pulled out a couple bags to use for the craft project, and then stuffed pretty much everything right back in the bags. Albeit a little more neatly than before. And I can't get rid of the box, it's a souvenir from my Hawaii trip! Argh. This is ridiculous. A box from Hawaii and a bag from Brooks Brothers. My dad supported the four of us on $50,000 a year growing up. How did I get to be such a snob? No wonder my monthly expenditures are ridiculous. More to the point, what do I do about it?

In the game of hoarding, Joanna: 1: Evil Disordered Hoarding Alter Ego: 2

So I didn't come out evenly matched against my evil disordered hoarding habits today, but I made a little progress. The bags are more organized before and everything takes up a little less space. Now I just have to convince myself to use more of the bags. At least I'm not being attacked by gift bags every time I open the closet now.

There's just one little problem remaining: In the process of trying to become a relative minimalist I've stopped giving others physical gifts. I've done this partially in hope that they'll get the hint that I don't want physical gifts myself, and partially because I'd rather be eco-friendly and give meaningful experiences. Now there's much less to wrap at the holidays, and yet I have all of these gift bags! I hope to try to come up with other uses for them.

The 15-year supply of aluminum foil

Shortly after my folks got married in '73, my father went on one of his "OMG, there's a sale!!!" shopping binges. He bought aluminum foil. Lots and lots of aluminum foil.

Enough aluminum foil, in fact, that I was seven years old when we finally ran out.

Please note: my parents waited ten years to have me. If my dad bought the foil in '75 and I was seven in 1990, then my father purchased 15 years of aluminum foil. I might be able to justify that if it were canned food and we were expecting an apocalypse, but really? Aluminum foil?

My mother may be the hoarder, but my father is a compulsive saver, particularly when it comes to food.  He will drive to every. single. grocery store in town to save 50 cents on butter, $1.00 on eggs, and buy-one-get-one-free ice cream. It would be fine except that I figure 1/3 of what he purchases gets thrown out because it goes bad or no one likes it. The freezers (plural) in my parents' house are pretty good evidence of this.

My eating disorder has made me particularly dodgy about hoarding food. I feel a compulsion to save food and buy large quantities of it because I starved myself for so many years and my body and mind are quite honestly afraid that the food will go away. I've also probably acquired some of my dad's tendencies to hoard food that's on sale. I once broke my own granny cart trying to haul home 35 pounds of flour that was on sale. It's been a real challenge to start to break myself of this habit.

How can I avoid hoarding food?

Some of my food hoarding problems are being addressed as I work with my dietician and my psychologist. I've developed a mantra of, "I can always have more later," and have learned to give myself permission to go out and get specific foods when I really crave them instead of hoarding them in the house in case the urge strikes. Not keeping half the grocery store cookie aisle in my cupboard also makes me less likely to act on my bulimic habits.

Some of my food hoarding habits are a result of an occasionally obsessive desire to live in a more self-sufficient way. There's nothing wrong with this, but I tend to take it to an extreme. Do I need 75 pounds of flour? Good question.

To get through the compulsive saver tendencies I've inherited from dad, I have to ask myself these two things:

1. Am I likely to use it before it goes bad? It won't be saving any money if I waste any!
2. How long will it take me to go through this? 6 months is my limit. I won't keep more than a six-month supply of anything.

I've tried adding up the cost of wasted food and that has helped me see that I'm not saving any money by buying large packages. I clean out the fridge each week to keep better track of what we're using and how much we actually need to buy when we shop. I'm slowly learning to buy normal packages of fruit and veg instead of the costco-sized boxes which invariably end up going bad.

Food gone bad this week: alioli leftover from takeout (pennies), bean soup ($1),  rice-corn-and-bean taco filling ($2),  rice and haddock dinner leftovers ($7 of the $15 filet we bought.) Total: $10! In a week!

For pantry items I do have to think about how frequently we go through those items, which are tempting to buy in large quantities because they take a long time to go bad. And yet we bought 75 pounds of flour at costco last week.

a mere 25 pounds. each of those containers holds five.

This stuff we use and we go through 75 pounds in about 4 months. We make all our own bread, baked goods, and even our own bisquick. In the spirit of blogging more about eco-friendly and sustainable living, I'll post the recipe for that tomorrow as this post is already too long!

So how do you balance saving money / being frugal / living more sustainably with overbuying or hoarding food?


Ps.
For those of you who were wondering, the first phase of the kitchen semi-remodel finished up on Thursday.

Next we'll be putting in a cabinet and counter where the table currently is and replacing the floor. That will probably happen in June/July as we do not plan to use loans to complete the project. If we don't have enough money, we'll wait. 

The countertop and the sink in the existing area are in pretty bad shape and need to be replaced along with the backsplash, so those we will have replaced in the Fall. The existing cabinets are brand new (2004...new to us!) and it didn't seem very eco-friendly or wallet-friendly to replace a bunch of cabinets that are in pretty good shape. Those and the appliances stay. 

It's been a relief already. We each have food allergies (different ones) so it's comforting that I can make my dairy meals far, far away from the Chief Engineer's food with no worries that anything will accidentally get cross-contaminated. No ER visits for us tonight!

Two-by-fours in front of the piano

The past seven days have been pretty momentous for me. On Thursday I graduated from seven weeks of intensive outpatient treatment for the eating disorder I've struggled with since 2001 (go me!). While I'm by no means fixed, and I'll fight this for the rest of my life, I'm much, much better than I was before I started treatment. It's nice to have 15 hours of my life back each week.

Also last week our contractors started work taking down the kitchen wall, I gave a well-received presentation in front of 200 people and started to possibly get over my phobia of public speaking, I played my guitar and sang in front of human beings other than the one I'm married to, and got psychologically ready to turn 30 tomorrow. Okay, there wasn't much work with that. I'm pretty excited about being 30.

I definitely wasn't sleeping much last week and I was really concerned that all of the disorganized patterns of life that I learned growing up would rear their ugly heads amidst the insanity. Funny thing was, the condo was more organized last week than it's been in ages. I couldn't afford not to be organized.

But the minute everything was over on Friday afternoon, this happened:

So I've kept the kitchen neat (AND THE WALL IS GONE!!)

There's only a small amount of clutter on the kitchen table...and a melon

Yes, I did leave a pillow on the table next to the front door

The gerbils, the contents of the kitchen and part of the dining room had to migrate
into the spare bedroom during construction

And this photo is just here to prove that the last one really isn't as bad as it looks

Ignore the floor...I kept my nightstand clear. I get points for that, right?

My bathroom has stayed organized--
I only had to pick two shirts, one jacket, and my sneakers off the floor to take this picture.
Thank heavens!

But this is my personal favorite...

The two-by-fours in front of the piano make me laugh every time. 

And they're not going anywhere for a while.

If I learned anything from my eating disorder treatment, it's that I need to have a little more compassion for myself. I was freakin' exhausted after the last seven weeks and I just didn't want to expend the energy to be neat this weekend -- and that's okay! It's just one weekend. And three weeks of construction. 

See you later this week for a return to our regularly scheduled decluttering. 

That's three hours of work completely undone

Long night of eating disorder treatment done. I come home, obsessively check Facebook, and read my baby sister's status:

"Things that are less than awesome: When you've thrown something away, because you don't use it, and you open up a cabinet and TADA there it is because someone fished it out of the trash like a crazy hobo."

And to think I just spent the past three hours finally coming to realize that I needed to stop blaming my parents for my problems.

Back room deals

Work on cleaning and organizing our spare bedroom continues, as I don't seem to have time for much else right now. At least this way I can watch the progress. I've always felt that being able to see your progress when you're decluttering is extremely important, especially when you're trying to clean/organize/downsize an entire condo or house. Otherwise it can be a daunting and honestly depressing job.

You can check out the previous posts for earlier pictures that you can compare to these.

I confess, I'm not good at making beds.

Look! The bags of clothes are gone!

Skis are still there though.

Most of the difference comes from having gotten rid of several bags of ill-fitting, disliked, or otherwise ED-inducing clothing.

Pants

More pants

Oh look, more pants. And shoes.

That's a lot of gloves! And mom's snow pants, turned inside out.  But those are a size six, and neither one of us has been that size for a while. Out they go.

In total it's 17 items. I'll skip adding them to the decluttered items list though because I really want to save that for the big stuff. Clothes come and go in my life especially now that my weight is all over the place with treatment. I may have gotten rid of 17 things, but I just bought 8 pairs of paints in two sizes, three shirts, and a pair of shoes to match the shirts and my new and improved mood. I'd grumble, but right now making myself feel good in clothing is extremely important. Whether or not my pants are loose and comfortable regardless of their size can literally be the difference between two days of bingeing followed by days of starvation, and "normal," relaxed days. But we'll discuss that later.

Forward momentum!

before and after: our spare room

I want to thank everyone, particularly EcoCatLady for your support as I navigate the craziness of my six-week stint in intensive outpatient treatment for my eating disorder. Normally it's three nights a week for six weeks but today most of D.C. shut down for the "Snowquester," or probably more aptly termed, the "No-quester." They predicted six-to-ten inches of snow. We got three and it all melted as soon as it the ground...but we did get a day off! I have time to blog and declutter and I haven't done either in a while so I thought I would reward everyone's patience with some before-and-after photos.

We have a two-bedroom condo and out back room has always confused us. It's a normal room, huge at a generous 11 x 16 feet. It'll eventually be our kid's room but for the moment we don't really know what to do with it.

What are we using the room for? What do we want to use it for? I want an entertainment room with a futon and a TV. The Chief Engineer wants a bedroom with a desk. He wants space to play with his k'nex. I want a place to curl up with my feet up and write or read or watch netflix. I don't want a lot of furniture. He wants to have a guest bed. Neither one of us is happy.

Check out the room back in the Fall.

Ginormous desk. Big enough for both of us to work.
It turned out that we didn't need that much work space.

The gigantic queen-sized bed competed for space with
my huge quilting hoop, my guitar, and a poang chair from Ikea.

See that huge square bag in the middle of the photo?
It's a bag full of pillows. Ten pillows, no kidding!

The closet. Not an inch of space to be found.

Then Snowquestration happens and we have free time to organize!

We got rid of quite a bit of stuff. The ikea chair got moved to my work office a while back. The quilting hoop found a home in the living room, the folding table found a home in the foyer, the guitar went into the living room, the cello has vanished, the lamp got donated a while back. Then the Chief Engineer added the k'nex set in the corner, but I'll live. Here's the room as it was this morning. It's got a long way to go and is very messy but I'm much happier with the new layout.

The pillows are now getting used as backrests for the bed. 

I get a couch and the Chief Engineer keeps the spare bed without having to buy a futon.

He keeps the bed -- I keep the bike.

The ironing I haven't done in weeks. And my skis needed a temporary home.
Still need to figure out where those will live permanently.
Hey, at least they're not in the bedroom!
(*cough* like the Chief Engineer's skis *cough*)

Our biggest achievement was breaking down the desk. Being an ikea desk, it was modular .
We took one of the smaller end pieces and re-attached the legs and made a desk small enough
to fit in the closet. There's much less surface area to dump junk and we can close the closet door on it when we're done. I still need to convince the Chief Engineer that we should donate larger top of the desk to a homeless family that can use it.  For now it lives in our free storage unit in the basement.

We have a long way to go but I'm pleased with the results and am lounging very comfortably on the couch/bed writing this post. Hopefully we'll make more improvement in the coming weeks.

So what do you think about what we did with the space? Any suggestions for what we could do with it?