A Partial Update on Book Week

Tonight I realized that it's been nearly a month since I posted an update. And what have I been doing for the past three or four weeks? Uh .... books. As I suspected, Book Week turned into Book WeekS without giving me time to take a deep breath.

The piles I showed in my last update got further refined into piles for each letter of the alphabet.

The piles took up all the hallways, the floor in front of a wall of bookshelves, and the fireplace wall. The piles for some letters (L, M, R, S....) were truly impressive. Other letters had only a few representative authors. But eventually everything got sorted out, cataloged (on both Library Thing and in a local database) and shelved.

More on that later.

As usual, the kitties helped. They made sure that boxes of books were really empty:

Puck supervised the printing of the letters I used for sorting:

And Harley tried to stay out of the way.

Unfortunately, despite all this help, we became aware that either some boxes of books were missing or that we had lost quite a few books that we were sure that we owned. Last Sunday we finally had a little time and enough men around to do the heavy lifting, so we went exploring in the sheds. And what did we find?

Twenty-five more boxes of books!

The Arrival of Book Week (aka Week 4 of the 16-Week Plan)

The first three weeks of the 16-week plan have gone pretty well.The original schedule, as I'm sure you recall, was:

Week 1 -- 50 boxes
Week 2 -- 50 boxes
Week 3 -- rest of boxes


I got through 50 boxes the first week, 53 boxes the second week, and 57 boxes the third week. Unfortunately,  in some cases "going through" meant opening the box, finding it was full of books, and setting the box aside for Book Week. If I recall correctly, there were about 80 boxes of books, not to mention all the books already on bookshelves.

And now Book Week has arrived. Due to the lack of distractions (we lost our satellite dish, so no TV) -- and the desire to stay indoors (it stayed below freezing all week) -- I did a rough sort of the non-fiction books last week. This week, I am going through the sorted piles and doing yet another sort. This is a three-part sort -- books I definitely want to keep at least for the present, books I can live without, and books I can't decide about. The "definitely keep" books are going back onto shelves, which is freeing up some space in the hallway.

If you don't believe me about the free space, check out the previous picture of the books in the hallway. The trash bag in this picture, by the way, is one of five trash bags full of clothes and bedding that is going to be donated tomorrow. It's just there so I won't forget about them in the morning.

Unfortunately, the pile of books that we will not be keeping is growing and I haven't quite figured out where all these books are going to go. We considered selling some of them online, but I'm not impressed by the prices other sellers are asking for the same books.

And all those boxes full of fiction are there in the background, mocking me. I have to admit that I have my doubts about getting through all of the books in one week. But I'm about halfway through the non-fiction, so maybe I can finish that up tomorrow. Then on Wednesday, I can sort the fiction alphabetically by author. And On Thursday, I can sort through the A-M piles and on Friday I can sort throug the N-Z piles.

Yeah, right.

I may have to reassess that plan toward the end of the week.

And even so, that plan doesn't take into account the fact that the living room has piles of children's books and homeschooling books that will need to be dealt with at some point.

But look at the shelves in the background! Those books neatly stacked on the shelves are the results of the culling I have done over the past two days. That's progress of a sort.

In other news, the kittens are growing. Sophie, our first kitten of 2010 fills the box.

And Parker curls up with a surprising cuddle buddy:

And last, but not least, Kaylee:

That is a very popular box.

Week 3 -- Boxes and Books

While I have been going through the last few boxes of assorted items from the garage, I also decided to get a jump on Book Week(s) by sorting through all those boxes of books. We started with a very rough sort -- fiction/non-fiction -- but ended up with a couple of extra categories like homeschooling materials and children's books.

The coffee table is piled up with curricular materials and books bought while we were homeschooling. The boxes and books on the floor are children's books, all the way from picture books up.

Non-fiction seemed like an easier sort than fiction, partly because we have (slightly) less of it, especially if you don't count all the Jewish books filling about half the shelves in the living room. The rough sort of non-fiction was done using the Dewey Decimal system rather loosely. I made up 10 signs with the most general categories, along with a list of what types of subjects are included in each category.

We found that some categories were somewhat subjective, so we'll probably end up doing a more specific sort as the next step. I was also deeply disappointed that, despite our extensive science-fiction collection, we didn't seem to have a single book that fit into Dewey Decimal category 999 -- Geography and History of Extraterrestrial Worlds. Too bad.

The sorted books currently extend down the front hall.

And wrap around the corner into the kitchen. But I rather cleverly placed most of the cookbooks there, so who would know?

Tomorrow I plan to finish going through the last two non-book boxes. Both are full of papers, which tend to make for slow going. Then it's posting things to Freecycle and back to sorting books.

In other news:

Snow came to Dodge today. Nothing like what is happening in the Northeastern part of the US, but enough to bring Dodge to a dead stop due to lack of snow removal equipment. The forecast is for continued sub-freezing temperatures, so this may be around for a few days.

End of Week 2 Progress Report

I started out the week with 57 boxes, some of which were immediately sorted into certain piles like "books" or "kitchen stuff to ask young men about". Despite that, I did have somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 boxes to go through. One may have ended up in Media Guy's room, but the rest have been emptied and their contents are -- for the most part -- on their way out of the house.

Those 49 boxes of books in the front hall were getting to me, however, so I started a very rough sort on their contents. The rough sort seems to be fiction, non-fiction, books we won't keep under any circumstances, children's story books (our youngest child was 14 when we moved here, so please explain why we have multiple boxes of picture books....), homeschooling materials, and Jewish books. The cat room (aka living room) is doubling (or tripling) as a staging area.

About 39 of the 49 boxes got sorted in this manner yesterday. And then, of course, I needed a new challenge so I had Sports Nut haul the rest of the boxes out of the garage this morning.

There is lots of stuff still out in the middle of the garage, as well as all those things on the shelves that line 3 sides of the garage. But... it's progress! Just don't look at the interior of the house.

I was down to 12 boxes of books left to sort. Now there are 42, so that's 30 new boxes of books. (Don't do the math. 49+30=too many books.) I also have 12 new boxes of assorted STUFF to sort through for next week. And another 10 or 12 boxes were carried into bedrooms for the offspring to deal with.

The bottom line is, I am still on track with my 16-week plan.

Week 2 Begins -- Another 50+ Boxes?

Last week, I guesstimated that there were 150 boxes (banker's boxes full of stuff, that is) stacked in the middle of the garage. I went through about 50 of those boxes, then over the weekend we pulled out another 57 boxes. That number includes 29 boxes of books, which joined the 20 boxes of books already in the hall waiting for Book Week(s):

I may have to start sorting some of these boxes before Week 4 because I have a feeling that one week is not going to be enough.

We also brought out 25 boxes of assorted non-book things so that I could sort through and (I hope) empty them this week:

And three more boxes of kitchen items were carted off to Future Vet's bedroom for those who are moving into apartment to fight over in the spring. So 29+25+3=57! Fifty-seven more boxes moved out of the garage, which is now looking emptier if not neater:

And remember that 150-box guesstimate? There are 53 more banker's boxes piled up in the garage, so I was off a bit. About 160 boxes instead of 150. Considering that some piles of stuff got counted as "boxes", like the stuff below, I'm impressed.

I counted this as one "box". It's some rubber mats and storage boxes that are no longer in use. And some packing materials. I suspect most, if not all, of these items will be freecycled later this week.

Going through boxes is never quite as straightforward and opening a box and disposing of its contents. Way back in June of 2010, I found a box full of negatives and opined that perhaps we should invest in a scanner to convert the negatives into digital images. So the Wizard found one and I dutifully put it on a shelf and put the box of negatives out in the garage (where else?).

Well, the box of negatives made its way back into the house over the weekend, so I dug out the scanner and tried it out. Here is the first picture I scanned:

It took a while, but I finally figured out that this is a picture of some wallpaper repairs I did in a bedroom in the second house the Wizard and I owned. This was the Drama Queen's bedroom back when she was a mere Princess, and she did not choose that wallpaper. We only lived in that house for about 18 months, so never took the time to redo the rooms into something more .... modern.

Despite the rather pedestrian nature of this photo, I was impressed that the scanner worked so well at turning negatives into positive digital images. Now I can scan in all the rest of the negatives in my (copious) spare time. I doubt that I will be able to empty that particular box within the coming week.

Nor this "box", for that matter:

More cassette tapes that need to be turned into mp3s so that we can load them onto our iPods. Another project to fill in the spare moments of my days.

Not only is emptying boxes not always a simple task, sometimes clearing an area creates new tasks. For example, here's a view of the back wall of our garage now that we've emptied out boxes and other detritus:

It struck me that, now that there is room to move around in the garage, I should move the dog-feeding table that is out in the middle of the garage, over to this area. But first, there's some cleaning up and consolidating to do and that set of shelves needs to move over to the right about 2 feet so that the table will fit. I don't know whether I want to leave that task for Week 5 (Garage shelves, games and puzzles). If the weather cooperates and I won't freeze my fingers off working out there, I may try to get that done this week.

I have momentum. Better to strike while the iron is hot. Or at least before I run out of steam and decide to go catch up on all the TV shows recorded on the DVR.

Phew! 50 Boxes Down

I spent quite a lot of time today writing offers for the items in the 9 or 10 boxes for Freecycle. I tried to group similar items together -- like "various electronic gadgets and accessories", a group that included iPod cases, a GameCube memory card, and three hand-held Sudoku games. All told, I wrote 13 posts offering 160 items or groups of items. I'm not counting 10 binders or 20 spiral notebooks as individual items, for example.

And, by the by, 2 of those 22 boxes of books set aside for Book Week(s) were added to the Freecycle mix. The World Book encyclopedia that we used for reference during our homeschooling days and some other reference books that we don't intend to keep had been placed with the books to sort through.

Any way you look at it, that's a significant amount of STUFF that will be leaving the house one way or another -- i.e., via Freecyclers coming and carting it off, or me dumping it into the trashcan on Sunday night.

The up side of Freecycling  is that many of these things will be used. Plus I get them out of the house. The down side is that I end up spending a lot of time on the details -- sorting things out, writing the offers so that people know what is up for grabs, and then sorting through the requests and matching items with people.

Tuesday's Box Count -- 26 (and only 2 to go!)

Since I went through 22 boxes yesterday, I figured I could come close to that number again today even though Sports Nut and I had to run a bunch of errands. Would you believe that the  book for Sports Nut's one class this semester costs a little more than twice the tuition for the class? On the other hand, considering that we are paying $64 for tuition by having him take it at the community college, rather than the $687 (plus fees) he would pay to take the same class at UNM, I figure we are still ahead of the game.

Back to boxes.

This morning, I started by pulling 18 boxes out of the garage. With the 22 boxes I went through yesterday, that would make an even 40 boxes. I also figured that I could find another 10 boxes of books to set aside for Book Week, which would bring me to 50 boxes, which is my quota for the week.

I almost made it. The box count stands at 48 gone through, with 2 more (see below) that I will sort through in the morning. The 50 boxes break down as follows:

22 boxes of books set aside for Book Week (maybe that should be Book Weeks?)
1 box of kitchen stuff set aside for Future Vet and Media Guy
3 boxes taken up to the Wizard's office (1 box each of papers to file, cords and electronic things, and office supplies)
10 boxes of stuff to either Freecyle or throw away
1 box of things that I want some friends of ours to look at before disposing of
2 boxes of sheet music and music books to go through in the morning

That's a total of 39 boxes, meaning that 11 boxes have been emptied!

And the garage looks a little less crowded this evening. It looks less crowded to those in the know, that is.

I really wanted to get through all 50 boxes by today so that I could spend tomorrow writing up the offers I plan to post on Freecycle. Let's see, there are 10 boxes with Freecycle stuff and I plan to get all of their contents out of the house by the weekend. That will be 21 emptied boxes out of 50. Not too bad.

In other news, kittens are good recyclers.