We’re starting on a new phase—cleanup. We’ve lived like campers for nearly 3 years, embarrassed even to open the door to callers, because the living room is awash in boxes and every room in the house is ‘temporarily’ stocked with stuff that doesn’t belong there.
Finishing up the house remodel
by CJ | Jun 14, 2020 | Journal | 33 comments
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And please remember the 10-line limit. I will edit ruthlessly. Please don’t make me have to do that.
Wow — I know that getting things properly put away so you don’t have to paw through rooms of cartons to find what you want is important (and gratifying!) We have a ‘lumber room’, aka the Captain’s Cabin aka the Cats’ Office (Bathroom), that has been a glorified storage unit practically since we moved in! Maybe after the cats kick it I will be able to empty it out; the main occupant currently is 40 boxes of Pergo to replace the exceptionally ratty carpet that the cats have barfed on repeatedly.
I’ve been in my house for over a year now but it’s only been during these covid months that I got all the moving boxes opened and sorted, closets properly repacked with shelving, and furniture assembled.
Waking up the next morning and leaving my bedroom I had a proper fright looking out into the living room seeing it so empty of clutter. I thought I had been robbed for a moment! Nope. I was just finally living like a normal person. LOL
I have had a stack of plastic drawer units sitting in my LR for about a month now waiting for the spirit to move me to sort out my yarn stash and UFO’s (UnFinished Objects). In addition to organizing my yarn, I need to go through all my UFOs and do a “finish or frog” — finish the ones I know I will finish, and rip out and recycle the yarn from the ones that are dead in the water. At the present I am prepping for a colonoscopy tomorrow . . . slosh! . . . slosh! I keep reminding myself I won’t have to do this for another five years. Helps some, but still, that prep stuff is just nasty.
After five year, we have mainly conquered fitting into our 1500 square feet. It did involve letting a lot of things go (including, sadly, lots of books), but the results are nice and relaxing. Good luck!
Ah, yes, the books. A small town where I lived (before moving to the “big city” where I’d have access to public transportation and a place without stairs, planning ahead) was hoping to start a public library. They got them all and had a good beginning, although rather idiosyncratic. I’ve been here for thirteen years and never went back to see how it turned out; I think I’d still feel sad to see the books and know they no longer belonged to me. I have over 1500 books in my Kindle library, but I can’t stand and look at them all together any more!
I am stuck in limbo with too many boxes and between the apt. and maybe-house. I’m having real trouble staying motivated, and need to clear out whatever I can. The “Little Nipper” shows no sign of learning not to nip / bite, and I worry that he’s learning all the wrong things instead of unlearning that one bad habit. I have things in boxes so long I don’t know what’s where anymore, and even less idea what’s in storage. Feeling very much an outsider, surrounded by other apt. dwellers. If my place were neat and uncluttered and clean, I’m not sure I’d know how to act. Heh. Good to know I’m not the only one with box / clutter issues.
Hello out there. Yes I am still among the living. Had surgery for bowel cancer in March just before the state went into complete lockdown, although the hospital was already in lockdown on its own. Fortunately everything was taken care of and I don’t need any follow up chemo or radiation therapy.
GET THOSE COLONOSCOPIES. THEY SAVE LIVES.
On other fronts we are redoing both pool and fish pond. And taking down dead trees and the gardens and……..
Even though I haven’t been posting I have been reading and enjoying all the conversation.
Ben you need to write some stories about the kitten sagas. Don’t give up on the house. Even without C19 there’s always something.
CJ really enjoying the ten line rule. Toes crossed I don’t go over.
I’m finding I don’t know exactly how many lines I have until I post; depending on whether I’m typing on my computer or smartphone, I have a different number of lines so until I make that final click it’s a guessing game! And I’m posting more on my various sites because I’m home almost all the time and missing socialization. I could easily slip into rambling and the “TMI” trap.
I am trying to count lines as I write my post.
We’ll see, grasshopper……
Nice to have you back, SmartCat! Glad that surgery was a success. My Mom, years ago, (and still very much around now) had bowel cancer surgery to remove a cancerous polyp, likewise with no chemo or radiation therapy needed afterwards. Somebody else was commenting yesterday(?) that they were glugging down the lovely, oh-so-tasty colonoscopy prep drink for a colonoscopy today. Thanks for showing us all why we do this! Separately, I hadn’t thought on screen size impacting the sense of how long “ten lines” is. I just use my iPad for looking at CJ’s blog and had been presuming/counting “10 lines” in it—oops!
Congratulations, Smartcat! I’m very happy to hear that the surgery took care of everything.
Last year in Holland they started a new “Bevolkingsonderzoek”, or “populace test”, for this, where everybody in the populace who is part of a vulnerable group gets offered a free test every few years.
There already were such tests for breast cancer and cervical cancer, offered to all women over fifty (IIRC, one may have started at 40-45), to be repeated for free every five years until you’re 75 years old (apparently the danger of dying from those two diminishes sharply after that).
Now they’ve added a poop test for colon cancer to the free populace-wide tests, offered yearly to everyone over fifty. For this one, they send you a letter with which you can request a sampling kit with instructions; you take a sample yourself, at home , send it in to the lab, and a few weeks later you’re either cleared or sent to your primary physician to schedule a follow-up. They test for traces of blood in the stool, so a positive result doesn’t indicate cancer, but it does indicate the need for a follow-up colonoscopy or some such test.
As these cancers occur fairly often and are hard to recognise in the early and better-treatable stages without testing, and often end badly if not caught early; it saves so many lives and so much costly care to catch these early that it’s economically feasible and worthwhile at the population level to provide the free tests.
(Nine sentences, but is it nine lines on a computer? On my phone it is hard to guess).
Congrats on a recovery in progress! Yep, I’ve got a towering stack of filter pads to wash. I got a power washer, we have a grid-floored cart that doesn’t mind water, so I am setting up to do some extensive filter-washing. Glug! But I am waiting until Jane finishes her morning scrub: taking the water pressure down without warning would be cruel. 😉
good to hear, smartcat!
I will second that. It may not be fun, but it does make a difference.
Yay, smartcat! It is very good to “hear” from you. Missed ya. Very glad you’re recovering with good signs ahead.
I’m waiting until after the lunchtime rush to call to start renewal of my apt. lease. :-/
Tries at writing have been slightly better this week, but I feel like I’m dog-paddling, not really swimming through the process. Just a couple of ideas in.
I had to reschedule the cats’ follow-up appt. to Monday, and hope they’ll be clear of (ugh) parasites. Still trying to get the kitten to quit nibbling / nipping. No luck yet.
smartcat — good to hear of such a positive result. My (third) colonoscopy was delayed due to Covid, but I’m going to call to find out what scheduling is looking like.
First of all, my wife is a collector, not a hoarder. It’s important to know the difference. She actually only collects stuff that she uses, but she has far more than she will ever use. We live in a 4 bedroom house, just the two of us now that the kids are grown. She took over one of the bedrooms for her sewing room. Then when the second bedroom became available, she filled it with her ceramic and wooden projects. When the last child moved out, I took the third room and moved the bookshelves from the living room into my new Library. This was fine but her collections kept growing and growing until the hallways and the living room were becoming cluttered. I have spent the entire lockdown removing no longer useful things. It’s been a lot of work, but my wife is now to the point that she sees she has too much stuff. Success! But I still have to share the library with the cat!
I still have books in boxes that were packed in 1980…. some year I’ll build shelves, yeah, that’s it!
I have boxes I packed when I moved from CA to TX in 1992, and boxes that were my mother stuff packed in 1997 when we moved back (separately) to CA, and boxes from 2005/2006 when she died and I moved (twice) within one city. Some I know what’s in them, and some are “good luck, the label may match”. (I need to go through the ones with books – I don’t need all of those.)
And in 1996, when we moved into town from way-out-in-the-country, my mother tossed boxes that had been packed in the mid-50s. (She said that if they hadn’t been needed in 40 years, they weren’t going to be needed.)
(There were things that got tossed that I would cheerfully have kept. Mom had about zero sentimentality. at that point, and she couldn’t find her way to asking us if we wanted to keep things like my father’s college transcript.)
We have reached a stage where even books and furniture are going bye-bye. If we had someone local who wanted them it would be happier, but we are trying not to have to toss them in the trash. Covid has limited charity pickups, and we are drowning in displaced stuff that has no place left.
I am sorry to hear that. When I moved in with Mama, I got rid of about 2/3 of my possessions. The spousal unit was pretty helpless about sorting out what he wanted to keep of the rest of our things when he moved in with his father.
Well, we knew early on in our marriage that this time would come. In my family, the eldest daughter is responsible for elder care. In his family, it is the eldest son. Mama is only 85 in August. Her family lives to about 100. My father-in-law has already outlived all expectations. His family usually makes late 80s. He is in his mid 90s. We hope that he will get to meet his great grandies.
Do you have PODS in your area? PODS is an outfit that will drop off a shipping container on your property for a monthly fee, and take it away when you are finished using it. I believe they also have smaller-than-shipping-container containers available. Not a bad option for anything that doesn’t need to be stored in a climate controlled area.
Everything is stored, and has been gone through. It is simply that some of it need not come in to the house. Its in my third of the ‘old shed’. Spousal has his in his Dad’s garage.
I had been keeping an eye on Uncle Hugo’s in MN (bookstore trying to recover from the fire) to see if they’d be looking to be sent books to get restarted because I had some duplicates I could part with… only to have my sister text me that her old hs friend lost her book collection in a fire and now that’s where mine is going. Fortunately I don’t have to handle the shipping myself or it’d be a no-go. It does feel better knowing my books are going to a good home, but the darn things are heavy. Ideally someone nearby with a truck and a good back would magically show up to deal with these things.
sweetbo, I’ve been looking for a place to donate my books too. (SOB) My issue is that I have a collection of SFF by women, and I’d really like to donate it to a library that would use or curate it. I started the collection in the 70’s. (I have other books too, lots of non-fiction, history etc., easier to donate or sell.)
Plus, almost 6 years after I moved in, we still have most of our possession in boxes. Or worse, piles. My lovely wife refuses to get rid of any piece of paper that MIGHT have sentimental, financial or legal value. (I.e. all paper.) I’m working from home and my office is overflowing with client paper (scanning takes time!) and aforesaid books.
Some days I just want to dump it all. So I take a nap.
Sweetbro, I second WoW’s suggestion to contact local universitys’ special collections departments, especially any University that has a Women’s Studies or Lit speciality (or SCiFi).
Funny thing is I worked in that part of a university’s library in a past life. It was a lot of fun. I have managed to offload my duplicates to a friend in need because someone else is dealing with the shipping this time. I moved into my first house last year so all of my out-of-sight-out-of-mind books are finally out in the open and wanting me to make a decision about them. I’m tired of having things boxed in closets and only want things that are out on the shelves, but I also don’t want my whole house to smell like a library. LOL
What I remember learning from my mother was tax-related, 10 years; real estate, while you own it, then a couple of years for tax purposes. Other stuff, like old bills, a year should be enough. Medical records – those you keep.
Several years ago I donated pristine scifi novels to my local library which had a worn out scifi section thinking they’d use them to freshen up the shelves only to see them show up in their next book yard sale. Ugh.
In college I was a student worker in the library’s Special Collections section so I’m familiar with author collections/research materials. If you know an author you collected had a relationship with a university or she had donated her manuscripts or there was a doctor/literary program dedicated to the author/genre they might have need of vintage or out of print books to provide students and researchers. I used to process that kind of stuff. Nerded out nearly every day.
wow — try checking with some Universities. I donated a huge collection of sci-fi magazines (Astounding/Analog, F&SF, Galaxy, …) to our local’s Special Collections. The collections are available to be used by all students. Hopefully a good home.
Wondering what kind of books you have C.J.