Grammy Night and I'm catching up

First thing you need to know -- I never watch the Grammys, or usually any other award show, for that matter. But thanks to Media Guru, I am familiar with most of the music that has been nominated this year, and some of it I really, really like. I'm going to multitask -- catch up on this blog after 3 days of being busy, busy, busy. And listen to the music.

On Friday morning, it occurred to me that my method of going through STUFF was possibly not the most efficient way to do it. My tendency has always been to pile up the STUFF in an inconvenient place so that I would have no choice but to deal with it.


To understand that picture, you have to realize that the garage is on the other side of that door and that I created the pile by throwing things in from the garage. This picture was taken after I had cleared a path. The before picture was probably more interesting. It was certainly less navigable.

Besides being the only route to the garage, this location is right in front of the laundry area (to the right in the picture) and the Wizard and I were out of clean clothes. Access to the washing machine and dryer became a priority as well.

I quickly divided most of that STUFF up into piles. Three for Freecycle:


This third pile actually includes STUFF I had already planned to Freecycle:


(NOT the music stand. That belongs to Future Vet.) Obviously, I had let the Freecycle STUFF get away from me. So I Freecycled a lot of STUFF on Friday. I keep learning and forgetting that Freecycling a lot of STUFF takes more time than Freecycling a few items at a time.

I also managed to add a bunch of STUFF to the donation pile for the organization that is coming by on Thursday to pick up things.


And I found a couple of comforters that belong upstairs.


I have no idea why they were in the garage. Unless... maybe they got washed a while ago and people were coming over, so I tossed them into the garage "for now" (dangerous words, those) and then I just never got around to moving them.

I cleared out a big space in the garage, with a little help:


Before Malka and I started, there was a pile of STUFF between those two sets of shelves that was higher than the third shelf. Same old, same old -- trash, freecycling, and a few treasures. Including these:


A whole box of fabric markers! Bought for a family education workshop, used in the religious school, and left over. I'm sure I can find a good home for these.

Malka and I also uncovered this:


This cane rocker is from my Grandmother's house. It has been in the garage for 5 years, and the Wizard and I have come to the reluctant conclusion that we are probably never going to get that seat re-caned. Yet another thing for which to find a new home.

Grammy update: Interesting. I don't think I've ever heard or seen the Jonas Brothers before, though I have certainly heard of them. And Coldplay just won a second Grammy.

Okay, enough of that.

Yet another thing found in the garage over the weekend:


This is a bag of toys collected for Toys for Tots. The person who was going to drop them off at a collection point didn't make it there before the final pick-up. We drove and called all over Dodge trying to find someone to take them. Not even the Marines answered my calls. I'm sure I can find some charity who will take them, even at this late date.

I also got some other things done over the weekend. I wanted to bake cookies, so I asked Sports Nut what kind of cookies I should make. He wanted something with dried cranberries. I wanted something chocolate. Believe it or not, he immediately found a cookie recipe that met both our requirements. I'll admit I took one word out of the recipe to make it more palatable: the recipe called for white chocolate. Fortunately, the Sports Nut agrees with me that white chocolate isn't really chocolate.


I also spent more time making my iTunes files fit the categories I wanted them in. But then I tried to synch the iPod with iTunes:


This looks so promising. But right after this picture was taken -- nothing to do with my files and the way I set them up -- the iPod gave up the ghost. If it's plugged into the speakers, all is well. But the computer isn't recognizing it. At all. It's off to the Apple store early Monday morning to get them to restore the thing. Again -- this happened about this same time last year.

I still have a small pile of CDs to load onto the computer:


I only ripped one of those today. But I started on those boxes of cassette tapes. Not only did I sort through them and pull out the ones we had already bought again on CD, I already gave those cassettes away to a neo-Luddite. (He still owns an 8-track player and recorder!) He also took a bunch of other stuff that I was planning to post on Freecycle, saving me much time and effort.

Today I also started my one-cassette-a-day project with the original Broadway cast recording of "Kiss Me, Kate". And when I say "original", I mean "original" -- this was a recording from the 1948 production.

I feel pretty good about the de-crapification process after this weekend. I need to pick an easy task for tomorrow, however. I have a lot of family business to catch up on. For example, Future Vet keeps calling me from Israel to ask if I've gotten the official high school transcripts sent to the colleges he is applying to yet. Uh... no.

One last thing -- I got some major work done on Sports Nut's cat bed (or the bed for Sports Nuts' cats, if you prefer). I'm to the point of starting the decreases, which will form the sides.


All right, I realize that I didn't finish this in time to felt it over the weekend. But I've been feeling unwell. All of us have. Between my headache and stomach upset, the Wizard's cough, the Media Guy's stuffed-up nose, and Sports Nut's sore throat, we figure we have the flu. Or parts of it.

So I guess I am caught up and now I have to watch the Grammys with my full attention, except that which is focused on knitting.

And one last thing -- after a hard weekend of decluttering, Malka takes a well-deserved rest on top of the world:

Sharpies are probably like coat hangers

That is, I think they multiply in secret. Last night I would have been willing to bet that I knew where all the Sharpies in the house were located. This morning, I found this:


Or maybe, instead of multiplying, they secretly migrate from one house to another. Are you missing any Sharpies? Check your neighbor's house!

After that disconcerting discovery, I pulled some stuff out of the garage with the intention of going through all of it today:


Canti apparently thought maybe he would help. I also thought I would sort through the boxes of cassette tapes that I uncovered the other day. I did at least empty the boxes onto the dining room table:


And, speaking of cassettes, don't forget this case full of Broadway musical cast recordings:


But before I could get started on these worthy projects, Sports Nut and I had to go do a little shopping at one of our favorite stores:


Where we bought all kinds of STUFF to bring into the house:


Then, because it was right on the way home, we had to stop at our other favorite non-grocery store:


Where they had Rubbermaid storage bins on sale. Naturally, we had to buy a few to help hold the STUFF we are keeping:


But that wasn't the end of the new STUFF we brought into the house today. I bought yarn for a sweater a few months ago, then discovered that I had calculated wrong and didn't have enough. So I went online and bought some more yarn, which was just delivered:


And one of our favorite grocery stores, a Wild Oats which was bought out by Whole Foods, is closing and was having a 50% off sale. The Wizard and I headed over to stock up. You can never have enough HOT barbecue sauce. Fifteen jars ought to last us for a couple of months.


Finally, after all that, I got to those boxes that I had pulled out this morning. And that's when I discovered that sometimes it is hard to decide what to do with the STUFF in the boxes. What am I supposed to do with a few snapshots of my family?

Or, heaven forfend, a whole box of snapshots?


Or 2 out of the 12 or so little books of pictures we took on our family trip to Israel in 1998?


Or, worst of all, the slides of our wedding?


The wedding slides, at least, have been sitting around for 31 years, give or take a couple of weeks. They can be put off a little longer.

All in all, I decided that I was not equipped to deal with pictures at this time, so I put them back into a box. I think I'll talk to my oldest sister, who is the Keeper of the Family Photos (i.e., the boxes and boxes of pictures my very-talented-amateur photographer of a father took). She may have some ideas.

At this point, I have brought a lot of STUFF into the house today and haven't really gotten rid of anything.

Then, I found these:


Check registers from a bank account we closed over 5 years ago. Finally, something I can shred!

Since I hadn't listed anything on Freecycle yet this week, I decided it was time to do that. Besides the things I had been collecting for the past week, I ran through the garage and collected almost anything that caught my eye. Here is the final result:


The furniture is staying. The dog is negotiable, but either that dog bed or the one that is under the dining room table is up for grabs.

However, it occurred to me that I really need a holding area for items that I am planning to Freecycle. So far, I've been collecting them next to my desk or in the back hall. Unfortunately we had a little accident this week. There was a jar of aromatherapy oil in the Freecycle box. It got knocked over. It leaked. The living room is still quite fragrant.

The garage seems to be the obvious place. But the task is a little daunting. Looking from the door from the house to the garage and moving from left to right, here is what I see.

Along the left-hand wall of the garage, looking toward the front:


The middle of the garage:


The back wall of the garage, looking toward the right-hand side:


As Scarlett O'Hara used to say, "Tomorrow is another day." I will think about it then.

The pleasures of having company who cart things away when they leave

Today I had a friend and her children over for lunch. I really enjoy having them around. Her kids are bright and fun. It reminds me of the days when my own kids were running around, without the hassle of worrying about whether they are going to hurt themselves or break something.

Here, it doesn't matter if anything gets broken. I figure that's just one less thing we have to give away, throw away, or move. Not that anything got broken today. I'm just saying.

Anyway, despite spending the afternoon sitting around and chatting, I still managed to get rid of STUFF. The kids and I went upstairs and dug around in boxes for a while. We found markers of all kinds, workbooks and mazes, an astounding assortment of stickers, various kinds of paper, bookmarks and cups to decorate, and snacks left over from my youth group days. I loaded them down with glee and waved happily as they drove off. And I didn't even feel particularly guilty about loading down another family with STUFF, as everything they took was basically consumable. Except maybe the toy mice and the silly putty.

There were so many unopened boxes of markers that I still have half a box to give to a Freecycle acquaintance:


Those should go out tomorrow along with a couple of other boxes of recyclable objects and crafts supplies that I bought for the youth group, my religious school class, or the family education series I tried to hold a few years ago.

This morning before my company arrived, I finished the three boxes that I had pulled out two days ago. (See? I am aware that I didn't post last night. I was planning to, but the dogs were causing a ruckus outside so I let them in. And once they were inside, they got antsy because I wanted to work at my desk rather than giving them their good-night treats and going to bed.)

As I believe I wrote the other day, one of the boxes was basically just STUFF that needed to be put away. Another one had a variety of things, many of them left behind by the Drama Queen, that had to be disposed of -- I gave a few things away, threw some things away, and left some for the DQ to deal with on her next visit (A trend develops.)

The last box, however, was full of papers that I had cleared out of the Drama Queen's room when she moved out last September. Quite a lot of it was papers that needed to be shredded, which is why I hadn't already thrown them away. But as I went through the box... wow... unopened bank statements, unopened credit card statements, Netflix envelopes, all kinds of communications from her university, tax returns for the past 3 years. Look at all this:


I understand that the DQ does most of her banking and bill-paying online, but why not at least open the statements?

Whatever.

Here's the final result. One empty box, except for a mysterious piece of wood that went in the trash. If it's a thing looking for another thing, it's out of luck:


And three pile of papers -- the ones on the left are to recycle, the ones on the right are to shred and the pile at the back are the ones I kept for the DQ to file. This is not the complete pile, of course. Some were already recycled, shredded, or moved to the box of things I'm saving for the DQ to go through. (I saved her tax returns, for example.)


I shredded and recycled (the recycling guys are probably speculating on what kind of evidence we are destroying by this point):


And today, the Wizard and I instituted a New Box! We already have the Things Looking for Other Things box:


The biggest thing in there is actually my purse. Sports Nut wanted to know what it was looking for, so I told him it was looking for money. Since he was looking for my purse to take money out of it, it seemed like a fair answer. To his credit, though, he was looking for money so he could go to the store and buy a crucial ingredient for the dinner he prepared tonight. It's hard to make lentils and rice without any rice.

But I digress. Our new box is the "Things to Save for the Next House" box.


As we get further along in this de-crapification quest, we are finding some items that we love and want to have around, but that we don't want to bother putting up in this house, since we want to get the hell out of Dodge. As of today, this new box contains 3 items:


Two, you will note, are dragons. The doorbell dragon isn't going up here because it would involve massive rewiring. The current doorbell, which rings at random intervals throughout the day and night and almost never when someone is actually at the front door, is wireless. We intended to put the green dragon up on a wall somewhere, but have decided to just wait for another house. And the bell with the hummingbird is a fond memory of when our kids were little. In our previous house, we rang that bell to call everybody to supper -- or occasionally, for other conferences.

On top of all that -- the three boxes I brought down two days ago, the stuff I unloaded on my friend's children, and the things that are going to be Freecycled, I also made some progress on the cat bed for Sports Nut's cats:


It should be done and ready to felt by the end of the week. And in a less visible area of clutter, I am continuing to whip my iTunes files into shape. All in all, I'm satisfied with the progress made over the last two days.

In sickness and in health

I wasn't sure I was going to make it through a box, a bag, a shelf or a pile today. Last night I learned what it means when someone says "the room is spinning". Believe me, this was knowledge I could have lived without. I managed to make it upstairs to the bedroom safely and, as the Wizard pointed out, when I shut my eyes the room stopped spinning. Having my eyes shut made it difficult to read my book, however.

Anyway, I had this major dizzy spell or whatever it was last night and when I woke up this morning, I really wasn't sure how I felt. I decided to take it easy and clean up my iTunes files instead of tackling any number of other de-crapification tasks that were awaiting.

Most people probably don't ever bother with looking at how their music files are actually saved, but despite the chaos in my house, I truly like order and simplicity. When iTunes takes a 3-disc classical music set and stores it in 3 different locations (one disc under the conductor's name, one disc under the composer's name, and the third disc under the performing group's name), it really bugs me. I spent several hours whipping iTunes music files into shape. They aren't perfect now, but they aren't bothering me quite so much.

I felt a little better this evening, so I found 3 boxes and assorted other items on the shelves in my bedroom and brought them down to take a look:


The first box (the one in the middle) was a snap. It had some computer cables and extension cords, pieces of an intercom system that never really worked right, stuff like that. The papers and things on top of the box on the left were pretty easy as well -- they were mostly things that the Drama Queen left behind.

The rest of the left-hand box was a little more difficult. It seemed to be mostly stuff that was on the shelves in my bedroom that got thrown into a box at some point. As much as possible, I returned things to their proper locations or set them aside to discuss with the Wizard, who is out honing his card sharping skills tonight. I also have a pile of books and puzzles that I am saving for a friend with young children.

But this was by far the most interesting object I came across tonight:

That envelope contains, if you can believe it, grade reports for my senior year in high school. Before anyone asks, I graduated high school in 1970, which means that I have been carrying these grades around for nearly 40 years. And I probably will continue to haul them around, if only because my mother's signatures were something of a private joke between the two of us. (And it's going to stay private.)

For the record, I got Bs in Driver Education, Physics, and P.E., and As in English, Creative Writing, and Advanced Math. I probably deserved a C or a D in that Physics class. I remember that I tried really hard to make the teacher fail me altogether for at least 2 grading periods that year. But that's a long story, and best left in the past with the rest of my high school career.

Excuses, excuses

Tonight, instead of a fascinating travelog of my decrapification adventures, I have a variety of excuses to offer for why I didn't really do a bag, a box, a shelf or a pile today.

First of all, look at what I did on Friday!


And another look at a room that was full of papers, boxes, recycling, leftover snacks, and other STUFF:


Plus, we cleared trash and STUFF out of this room as well:


Okay, so that room still looks full of STUFF, but it belongs to other organizations. Before we got in there on Friday, you couldn't walk through the room without stepping on STUFF.

(We are going to avoid all mention, for the time being, of the fact that -- apart from the recycling and trash -- the STUFF that had been in those two rooms is now in the Drama Queen's empty bedroom.)

So that was the "distract them with details" excuse. How did that go over?

Next is the "I finished the shredding from that box of receipts" excuse. Look at this:


SIX!! That's SIX bags of shred! That's got to count for something, right?

No?

Well, how about the Knitting Excuse? Sports Nut wants me to knit a cat bed for his cats. Here's how far I've come on that project:


Not a knitter, huh? Hmm.... I've been gathering together things to give to one of those organizations who come by your house and pick up items -- in this case, bed linens and clothes nobody is going to wear again. Here's my progress so far:


Not very impressive yet. So how about the Cat Excuse?


Cats need to be petted. That takes up a lot of time.

Most of those excuses didn't work all that well for me, either. So I found a box:


But I couldn't really ignore that the only things IN the box were some papers to recycle and a bag of plastic bags. Not a very impressive decluttering chore. So I cleared off the kitchen counters as well. (And even wiped them clean afterwards!)


The Wizard washed the dishes, so I can't take credit for that. And there is a smallish pile of papers to deal with. Tomorrow. But you have to admit that's a big improvement.

Feeling somewhat virtuous, I came to my desk and found, well... not a mess exactly, but certainly a small pile of things that didn't belong where they were:


Clearing off the desk is surely as good as going through a box, etc. -- especially when added to clearing the kitchen counters.


I even did the other part of my work area:


Now I can go to bed with a mostly-clear conscience. The wolves may not be howling at the door, but the dogs are certainly whining out there. They think it's time to close down operations for the evening and let them in. Who am I to argue?