Another Pink World

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August 08, 2007

it's all about stuff

low hanging fruit

not one of my favorite phrases (always reminds me of the song "strange fruit"), but appropriate. i've got cleaning out, cleaning up, and organizing on the brain. progress at the house seems slow, but i am blowing through seventeen years of detritus in my office like it's nothing.

the course notes from the first programming course i ever took? uh, no i don't need those. handwritten notes from every meeting i attended in the 90's? no. and so on.

my manager is not only supportive of this effort, he's arranged to get a trash cart brought to the hall on Monday so he can get everyone else to clean up and clean out.

my new crack

my new crack is blogs about organizing. some of it is entirely laughable. "Every minute counts! Clean out your medicine cabinet while you brush your teeth!" A lot of it is useful. How to approach-- mentally-- the task of dealing with the belongings of someone who has passed away. This is helpful to me even in dealing with the things from my grandparents' houses that came my way years ago.

Every time I think i've made a step forward in the back bedroom, I wind up with boxes of stuff from someone's house-- last time, it was my stuff, from my mom's attic. I can't complain, of course, but reading these sites has helped me realize it's no damn wonder i can't get anywhere with that room. receiving, for whatever reason, a load of stuff, really puts a monkey wrench in your organizational plans.

i have the smallest closet in america

okay, i know this is not actually true, and those of you who live in manhattan can calm down now because i know you don't even have a closet, and i was just using a hyperbole for effect.

but my closet is damn small. my other crack is "house hunters", the tv show. i love the real estate pr0n. it slays me every time i watch that show and a woman walks into a closet twice the size of mine and complains, "it's a little small. my stuff probably won't fit in here." and then she walks into a vast walk-in closet and she, her husband, and the realtor all have a chuckle when she says, "okay, this is good for my stuff, but where will you put yours, honey? tee hee!"

i'll admit that a) i'm proud of making my closet work (i've been working on it lately) and b) i've been shopping for a piece of furniture that will give me more hanging space (like a wardrobe sort of thing). my lack of clothing storage has forced me to form a good habit of culling my clothes and, yes, shoes twice a year as i move the out of season items up to the attic, so i'm hopeful that having more hanging space will simply mean that i store my clothes in a better way, not that i'll accumulate more clothes.

shock! surprise! startlementiness!

i've been surprised at how satisfying it is to find a good, new home for an item. like, giving records to friends who are excited about them, and may even play them on the air.

i was startled to see a "star trek barbie and ken" set on the company bulletin board. seriously, if no one buys that thing soon, i am going to cave. but it will live in my office at work where i can see it every day, and laugh.

i think next i am going to bring together all the cameras and film projectors in the house, and photograph them all together (of course), and decide what to do with them. i started making a mental list of them and was shocked at how many i own. in fact, i believe i have a matching set of cool looking 8mm projectors that i may make into table lamps.

Posted by lisa at August 08, 2007 06:24 PM

Comments

I imagine this clever saying is only new to me, but: "If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?"

Posted by: Joseph H. Vilas on August 9, 2007 10:30 PM

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