A very productive day, and a very long post to go with it

The problem with getting rid of STUFF is that, for me at least, there is an intermediate stage during which the STUFF is just sort of lying around. Today I looked around and found a pile of items I put aside to think about and/or discuss with the Wizard, sitting on top of a box of cassettes that I am converting to mp3 format:

In the dining room, I found another pile of boxes holding photos (the ones I keep putting off dealing with), alongside a box of papers to file and the box of things to save for the next house:


In the kitchen, I found that the box of Things Looking for Other Things was getting a little full:

In the back hall, I found a pile of things that I have listed on Freecycle but no one has asked for. I was planning to offer them at least one more time before just tossing them in the trash:


On the kitchen counter, I found a pile of boxes containing crafts items like fabric markers and the ever-popular Sharpies:

Next to my desk, I found a box piled up with things that I plan to list on Freecycle in an attempt to get rid of them:


And on top of the filing cabinet, I found a pile of cat:

I think I'm going to have to have one day a week when I deal with the secondary piles. Since the goal is still to get rid of things, I think that will fit into the box, bag, shelf or pile a day structure.

But today wasn't the day to deal with all the piles I found. I went out to the garage to look for a box. Instead, I found these:


Not one, but TWO boxes clearly labeled "Photos." How many pictures have we taken over the last 31 years? How many more before we got married? Since I already have two boxes of photos I don't feel like dealing with just yet waiting in the dining room, I decided to skip over these two boxes.

Then I came upon these boxes:

Two boxes that are labeled "go through". How nice! Before I could get to either one, I had to move the black objects on the right. Those are a set of "risers" that you put under the legs of a bed or couch to raise it a little. We bought them for Grandmother. We must have bought 2 sets, because she definitely had one raising her couch and this one has never been used. I think I Freecycled the other set long, long ago.

And here is the Box of the Day:

With a quilting grid ruler on top of it, no less! At least I know where that goes -- upstairs with all the crafts stuff. And here's the inside view:


Wow, what a lot of interesting .... stuff. And so much of it I could identify. For example:


In 1963, my father spent some time working on the island of Kwajelein in the South Pacific. He took a side trip to Japan with some work buddies and brought back presents for all of us. Mine was this doll. As nice as the memory is, I am not going to keep this doll -- in fact, given that its hair fell off at some point and I glued it back on rather inexpertly, I have already tossed it.

Instead of this doll, I have something else to remember that particular episode in my life. My father was always fascinated by the world around him and brought back lots of shells from the beaches of Kwajelein. I have those in my bedroom in a wooden bowl made by my Grandpop and I look at them every day.

But enough of this mawkish sentimentality. What else is in that box?


Coins of Israel 1971? Definitely not something that I collected. Must be from the Wizard's trip to Israel around that time. Cool. Definitely a keeper.

As I looked further into the box, it became apparent that most of the STUFF was the Wizard's. This, however, was a puzzlement:


What in the world is it? I have no idea.

These I remember, though:

Stephanie Piro made the two with pictures. We used to see her at crafts shows before we moved. In fact, the entire family once showed up at her booth wearing the same style of one of her t-shirts. Now we have to order online instead of being able to chat with her.

I thought this item was mine at first:


But then I remembered that the slide rule I used during my brief foray into engineering was at least twice as long. It had been my father's, and I enjoyed watching the faces on those little boys studying engineering as I whipped out my slide rule and used it to solve problems. Ah, those were the days..... My father's slide rule is still somewhere in the family, but this one belonged to the Wizard.

Another trip down Memory Lane:

Do you have any idea how long it's been since the Wizard and I played racquetball? Let's see... the Drama Queen is 27 years old and I stopped playing when I got pregnant, so....

We tested the balls, though. They still bounce!

And a small framed photo of my first cats, Ragtime and Francesca, in their favorite pose:

Then there were the campaign flyers from my (successful) run for president of the Associated Women Students when I was in college:

Those were certainly entertaining. The next items were more in the line of What Were We Thinking?


SIX cleaning cloths for CDs?

But then....

OMG! There are TWO of them!!

What are they? Where did they come from? And why did we cart them across the country?

Apart from a few small items that went to some obvious places or to piles that I have already mentioned today, the rest of the box was the Wizard's to go through. Which he has done. Some stuff he got rid of, like his Bar Mitzvah Certificate. Some he has filed or put on a shelf.

So that's another box done.

But the fun for the day was not over. The Drama Queen came over to do her laundry, and I made her go through the box of stuff I've been holding for her. She also had a few nostalgic moments:

I made that book cover for her when she was in third grade. It has a lot of personal and family significance for both of us, so it's kind of nice that she's keeping it. The cup was made for her by a family friend who was a potter for her Bat Mitzvah.

Though she did shred and throw away and recycle things from "her" box, she still has a pile of STUFF:


She says she will cart it all away when she moves to a new apartment in another week or two. We'll see about that.

Meanwhile, as I continued to whittle away at that enormous stash of cassette tapes, I finally finished the cat bed this morning:


I still need to felt it. I figure if the cats don't like it, I can keep on felting it until it works as a hat. Currently, it doesn't unless, of course, you have a really big head:

Sports Nut and I also tackled the empty bedroom upstairs where we had stashed all the stuff we took out of the youth lounge a few weeks ago. I had also moved all my boxes of fabric and yarn and other crafts-y STUFF into that room, but it was sort of haphazard:

And before we could even get into that room, we decided to deal with these crates that were sitting outside it:

Yarn, more yarn -- at least "dealing with it" just meant moving into the room we were about to organize.

Which we did. Not too bad, if I do say so myself:

What I had forgotten was that the Drama Queen was bringing her cat to stay here for a couple of weeks while she is moving out of her current apartment and into her new apartment. Her landlord wants to show the apartment and she doesn't want her cat to get out while he's doing that. So welcome, Telemain:

He's not actually all that happy about being here. He knows we won't pay much attention to him and that he'll be left all alone up in that room. On the other hand, when he is out and about, the other cats pick on him.

There was a bunch of snack food upstairs, which we brought down to give away. Media Guru snagged some of it for family use, but the majority is going to people who can use it:

The day's de-crapification was not yet done. When I took the plastic and glass recycling out to the garage, I happened to spot what I thought was going to be an empty box that I could recycle:

But no. This box holds an apparently never-used coffeemaker. I probably got it years ago when one of my coffee-drinking sisters was visiting. (I never drink the stuff.) The Wizard and I had obviously forgotten completely about its existence, because it we had remembered, we might not have acquired this:


No matter now. The Wizard's coffee maker makes 10 cups as opposed to 4 cups -- and given that those are 6-ounce "cups", that fills his coffee mug twice. And the smaller Mr. Coffee can go to the veteran's home where I am sure that someone drinks coffee.

This next picture was taken about the same time that I discovered that someone had peed in Hershey's bed again. It probably wasn't Sweet-pea, seen here enjoying the bed. I suspect one of the "boys" (Ashey, Toshie, or Dybbie). They have been known to express their displeasure over the new dog before.

In other news, my pile of converted-to-mp3-format cassettes continues to grow -- and I've taken out the 5 or 6 cassettes that were inflating the pile earlier, so this is an even greater accomplishment. Plus I've gotten to listen to some of my favorite musicals again:


I have unearthed two and a half wine glasses:


This is odder than you think. I'm pretty sure that the bowl for the second wizard wine glass is in another box somewhere. But I'm really kind of puzzled over where the other 4 pottery wine glasses have gone to. (Yes, there were originally 6, but one got broken long ago.)

And, last but not least. As we were catching up on Season 4 of Boston Legal, Sports Nut took a break and found that Canti was already using the cat bed I had made for him and his sister (the one who dumped water on my computer yesterday). And it's not even felted yet. How sweet.