So our ocean shipment FINALLY arrived on Thursday. Air Tiger Express (aka Integrated Freight Solutions), my ass! Jesus fucking Christ! Those bastards– I’ve been wiping their butts from the beginning. Twice now, they’ve tried to overcharge me: once in Shanghai with the packers and now again in SF with who knows what kind of bogus fees. They have no idea who they’re dealing with. I mean, I record everything. I keep receipts, invoices, quotes for years. Needless to say, they tried but they failed. Not squeezing an extra dime out of me, especially with that level of incompetence.

The good news is, everything is intact, even my fragile pieces like my Chinese instrument and my beloved oil paintings. So the last two days, I’ve been in a zone. Serious, non-stop unpacking of 20 monster-sized boxes. Thank goodness for our storage room upstairs, man. What a lifesaver!

So things are looking good. During the process, I’ve sorted through everything again and managed to weed out a couple more boxes of stuff– books, more clothes, computer stuff. Craigslist, Ebay, Goodwill– it’s got to go.

I watched an episode of Neat on HGTV the other day. The featured woman was a total packrat. Majorly insane hoarder. The host made packrat chuck all this stuff, and then that night the cameras caught her rummaging through the garbage trying to recover a few pieces, including a stuffed bear. Very disturbing. After that, I went on an organizing frenzy. Moved shit off the kitchen bar countertop. Cleared out the bathroom shelves. Re-organized everything. Then after my shit came in, I put up the pictures… just had to get shit up on the walls. Didn’t want to wait for Bubbey. He’s super indecisive when it comes to picture placement anyway. So yeah, it’s been an intense two days. And I am sore as hell, because John’s been mostly MIA due to a super busy week at work.

But the place is shaping up. I’ve moved a few more notches toward the compulsive end of things (if you can believe that), which means I now believe in cleaning a little bit every day. I was skeptical at first, but what can I say, I’m a convert. Daily cleaning keeps the dirt under control. Dusting here, windows there, vaccuuming everywhere. The system works. Now I just have to figure out how to organize my cosmetics junk and office supplies. I’ve been using a lot of rinsed-out jars– for coins, pens, brushes… not sure if that’s the way to go. Takes up a lot of space. Any suggestions from my fellow organizing freaks?