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I've written in the past about the joy of stuff, the comfort of stuff, and the burden of stuff. This week I'm faced with the challenge of finding a place for stuff. A place other than "in boxes and bags piled up around the edges of my office." Those piles have been slowly (and not so slowly) accumulating for the last couple of years.
The usual motivation of cleaning and clearing before company comes didn't work before![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fmsv and cowfan visited in April of last year, nor did it work before I hosted a NESFA Other Meeting last June. Ditto that for Gavi's visits in November and March, the latter including three of her housemates, and her longer visit in May. All the while, and for the year before, there was a steady inflow of things that followed me home from Daddy's house in Battle Creek.
I've done the easy part of emptying five banker's boxes, one bheer case, three smaller boxes, and six or seven reusable shopping bags. Fanzines and convention publications are sorted into one box to be added to the chaos in the basement fan room. Another box is half full of work samples...this after recycling an equal amount of excess copies. A truly ridiculous number of to-do lists and notes is clipped together for further procrastination on the fanzine article or blog post(s) I keep thinking they might somehow make.
Part of the sorting task included rereading the birthday and Father's Day cards I sent Daddy in the last couple of decades of his life. Sue saved all those and handed them over to me during one of those Michigan trips. Most of them went into recycling. See? I don't actually save everything -- it just feels and looks like I do.
There are several bags of paper recycling awaiting my next trip to the transfer station, three of them filled with shredded matter. So, yes, progress.
Now comes the second, harder 90% of the work. What do I do with the remaining one foot stack of papers I want to save, but don't have an established place to save them? I don't want them to become the starter set of the next dozen boxes and bags that need sorting.
Not that I'm done with the current set. No, instead I'm down to the other hard stuff. The Squier family and Twinzy Toy files. The 8mm movies that I plan to have digitized when time, energy, and money coincide. The tax records requiring more space than is available in the file drawer. And so on.
Here's to more joy and comfort of stuff. Here's to less burden.
The usual motivation of cleaning and clearing before company comes didn't work before
fmsv and cowfan visited in April of last year, nor did it work before I hosted a NESFA Other Meeting last June. Ditto that for Gavi's visits in November and March, the latter including three of her housemates, and her longer visit in May. All the while, and for the year before, there was a steady inflow of things that followed me home from Daddy's house in Battle Creek.I've done the easy part of emptying five banker's boxes, one bheer case, three smaller boxes, and six or seven reusable shopping bags. Fanzines and convention publications are sorted into one box to be added to the chaos in the basement fan room. Another box is half full of work samples...this after recycling an equal amount of excess copies. A truly ridiculous number of to-do lists and notes is clipped together for further procrastination on the fanzine article or blog post(s) I keep thinking they might somehow make.
Part of the sorting task included rereading the birthday and Father's Day cards I sent Daddy in the last couple of decades of his life. Sue saved all those and handed them over to me during one of those Michigan trips. Most of them went into recycling. See? I don't actually save everything -- it just feels and looks like I do.
There are several bags of paper recycling awaiting my next trip to the transfer station, three of them filled with shredded matter. So, yes, progress.
Now comes the second, harder 90% of the work. What do I do with the remaining one foot stack of papers I want to save, but don't have an established place to save them? I don't want them to become the starter set of the next dozen boxes and bags that need sorting.
Not that I'm done with the current set. No, instead I'm down to the other hard stuff. The Squier family and Twinzy Toy files. The 8mm movies that I plan to have digitized when time, energy, and money coincide. The tax records requiring more space than is available in the file drawer. And so on.
Here's to more joy and comfort of stuff. Here's to less burden.
