Break a Leg!

…well, break a chair in any case.

Dusty has… had a favourite chair. It was an old off-white tweed-like swivel rocker that Dusty had for over 15 years and had been in the family for perhaps 5 or 10 years before that. It had been the accent chair going with a full sized sofa in the family, family-room. The sofa was something Dusty had hated to get rid of a number of years ago when forced to downsize — from a nearly 900 sq foot — two-bedroom apartment suite with large closets and storage unit — to a 450 sq foot basement suite with one small closet… which Dusty could luckily add an 8×8 storage shed to.

…getting back to the story…

I did love that rocker. My Dad had fixed it once, welding a broken piece back onto the swivel base where it had broken off. It was an earlobe shaped loop used to fasten it to part of the base — one of 4 on the swivel rocker base. That repair worked for a dozen or so years until perhaps 6 years ago when the weld gave way. I had no way to weld it and Dad wasn’t in a position to be able to help. The head of the screw on the remaining lobe on that side had broken off and the screws in the supporting piece of wood loosened allowing the whole base to pivot… not good. Anyway, I fixed it by taking the good screw from the side with the broken lobe and fastening the swivel base with only 3 screws and lobes and taking extra wood screws and good white glue and reworking the wooden supports for the base.

Black recliner (arm chair) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

That worked for the 6 years… but bang! the chair broke a few weeks ago! This time, I figured I couldn’t fix the base again. I removed the base and put the chair on a board (to protect the carpet)  and sat on it (a lot lower to the floor) and pondered getting a replacement. I really used the chair more as a recliner than a rocker anyway so I started shopping for a recliner — even on my low budget.

I actually did my shopping online seeking out the best store to buy from. I looked for the greatest selection and best prices… good quality and a store with a decent name were important as well. I wanted a place that I could trust in case there were issues with the purchase like damaged merchandise. Actually the best place I could find was a chain called “The Brick“.

“The Brick” had a good selection and good prices even though their sales came and went like the tides. (regular and frequently) I went there and actually got a great deal on a very nice recliner… because it was a colour that most might not care for… but Dusty could live with.

Some call it “Spice”.

…most would call it “orange” or “pumpkin”.

That sounds pretty bad, but actually it goes well with warm wood grains and adds a splash of colour to an otherwise dark room. Besides it is high quality and very comfortable and I like it. (I might prefer brown or a dark colour but… the price was right.)

…getting on with the story.

English: art deco club chair (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The chair is a fair sight larger than the swivel rocker and it doesn’t swivel. It also needs room to recline even if it can be placed fairly close to a wall. I also wanted to place it in a different location… and there were boxes there.

clutter clutter clutter

It also meant that they had to deliver the chair which meant delivery men had to get in the door and move in Dusty’s rather cluttered nest. That meant one thing… some organization was needed. (Maybe even some de-cluttering?)

It took a lot, but I reduced one box, moved four more to a more convenient place and got rid of a bunch of long past due recycling. When the recliner finally came, it could go straight where it belonged. I placed a floor lamp where it belonged and two side tables et voila, I had a living-room!

I really hadn’t had a living-room since I moved here due to the clutter.

I have a bit of inspiration to do a bit more clean-up and de-cluttering as well.

The point?

It seems that one way to de-clutter is to make a change in your life. In mine it was the need to replace that old favoured chair. What might you change… or what change might be forced upon you? Can you deal with the change, or will it break you?

Bye for now,

Dusty
D. Cluttermouse.

Boxes Little Boxes

Hey!

I my quest to go through all my stored clutter “One box at a time” I have a new approach to try. I want to get away from the stacks of cardboard boxes. I would like to start using plastic bins and crates.

This idea is many-fold. One, cardboard deteriorates and gives off paper dust into the air which does not help for a healthy environment. This deterioration also means that the boxes collapse and do a poorer and poorer job at protecting their contents. The cardboard boxes also add to a more cluttered appearance. The plastic bins will also with luck protect what I value, but need still to store.

The very action of switching over a box at a time from cardboard to plastic gives me a chance to go through all of my possessions and hard as it is, perhaps get rid of some — whether by donation, selling, recycling, reusing… using or trashing. With luck I can reduce the space taken and number of containers. Optimistically perhaps by 2:1 cutting 2 cardboard boxes down to 1 plastic bin of comparable size — and perhaps the plastic bins will take less room. Pessimistically perhaps it will only be 1:1 meaning 1 cardboard box goes into 1 plastic bin. But I will have checked on what I own and things will be in better order.

I do believe it will be closer to 2:1 —  maybe 4:3? I hope that at least I’ll be able to control where things are and know where they are.

But it will have to be one box at a time… or two, hoping to cut them down to one.

Ahhh, but where can I get very inexpensive bins? They need to be sturdy, protective, and I need to be able to count on getting more of them as I progress because I want to be able to stack them. I rather like the sort with the interlocking lids which are hinged so that you open them without removing the lids. But I suspect they cost a lot. I am using a lot of bankers’ boxes… you know the folding file boxes that offices use as well as a certain number of moving boxes.

I want to make a start by collecting all of my tools into one bin. I want to put hobby supplies into another one or two. Then I want to keep those bins in an easily accessed location. Another bin or two will be used for storing out of season clothing, linens, and fabric.

So, do you have any ideas?

The Dust Lay Thick and Deep, Like Freshly Fallen Snow

Hi! It seems my last entry was about an extended absense…

Gee… and that was over just short of two years ago! Depression can be like that. To start off with you don’t have energy to keep up with things and so you begin to live by triage. You start doing only what is necessary. After a while you forget some of the things you only did infrequently that were not “necessary” to life.

That is what happened to “No A’s B’s or C’s”

The depression still lays heavy upon me. I’m not sad… I wonder what percentage of people with major depression actually are sad? In any case the depression mostly takes away my energies. I say “energies” because as well as emotional energy, there are physical energy issues and spiritual energy issues. Anxiety, one of the main issues in Chronic Hoarding, also plagues me more strongly — I think. I find it difficult to get out. That restricts what I can do in my quest to put order in my life — even the small amount of order that “I” desire… and in truth I do desire an ordered environment.

People who know me and the rare few who have seen my living space comment that it is very well ordered. I think that is true of certain types of hoarders. I’m not one to obsess on pictures that are hung slightly crooked. But, if someone were to put a glass on the wrong shelf or rearrange stuff in my bathroom… I will feel uneasy.

I must say that many things are more organized. I must say that my shed, while a success in giving me the storage space I needed, has become a black hole. I have not even looked into it for over a month except when some sneak thief opened to doors to check it out for valuables. I checked that nothing was missing… strangely I could tell what had been shifted even will all that is in there. But that is a sign of the order involved. I do still have a half dozen or so moving boxes in my living area in addition to the file boxes I have stored in my bedroom semi-permanently. It is difficult… I do need help to cope with the clutter and I am just barely coping.

Perhaps starting back in with my writing is a good sign? We shall see. You will probably be able to judge by the duration between this and whatever post will follow it.

For now, that is the ending of this entry.

~ Dusty

D Cluttermouse

Shock in a Box!

Eep!

I have been good and in keeping with trying to at least look in a box a day, I actually dealt with one box yesterday and then I opened a second! EEP! I realized that I hadn’t opened that box in 9 years! It had gotten packed at the place before the place I last lived at and wasn’t opened! Now it wasn’t that the stuff in the box wasn’t missed. I just made do without. But it is like you can make do eating French fries without ketchup or make do with eating fish without lemon or… well you get my drift.

Seeing some of the stuff was like getting reacquainted with old friends. Granted most of the box was filled with old paperwork and books, but they were manuscripts I had written and will now be able to make use of without having to write from scratch. Others will give me an indication of how my writing skill has progressed over the past decade – some of the articles and papers were from 3-5 years before that move.

Anyhow, who knows what other buried treasures there are out there.

~ Dusty
D Cluttermouse

Clutter here Clutter there, Clutter can accumulate Everywhere!

Here is a question for you fellow clutterers… when was the last time you sorted through your bookmarks, favourites, or whatever you call the address of your favourite places on the Internet?

Do you go through them:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• Seasonally
• Yearly
• Every once in a while you get a new computer and the browser is empty
• You can delete bookmarks?

I have to admit that I just never get rid of mine and in fact, I don’t even get a clear out when I change computers or browsers because I am computer savvy enough to be able to migrate my bookmarks.
I’d love to put up a poll of readers, but really don’t have any to speak of yet — however, I suspect a lot of people with cluttered homes would likely have cluttered bookmark lists as well as hard drives. Of course at the same time I know sometimes these organizational-emotional things don’t cross such boundaries, but I bet for many they do.

I know I bookmark many things just because they are just so very interesting and I want to be able to come back to them when I have time to really take a good look at them — others I want to share — others I just want to prove they exist — and being a writer, some I just want to be able to call on as a reference. Mind you for the last category I will most often cache the page on my own drive in case it might disappear into the ether on me.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get to really Spring Clean on my bookmark list, but… I do hope some day to put them into better order so I can find them more simply and also will have places for the new pages to roost.

~ Dusty
D Cluttermouse

Hard Drive

I am considering my next computer moves…

I need more hard drive space somehow. I also need to get some sort of way to work with Windows. I have moved onto an Apple OS X system a year ago last December and that MacBook has a 120Gb hard drive. It is pretty much full. I also have a desktop PC that I was using regularly until I got the MacBook and it has a 5Gb hard drive and a 120Gb hard drive — both of which are filled-to-the-gills. That PC is running a Windows XP system. I still have the Windows 98 system I used before that which has 3Gb, 5Gb, and 30Gb hard drives in it… mostly full and a third desktop system which has no OS but does have a 10Gb or 20Gb SCSI hard drive in it. I mention the later because it is my intention to incorporate the SCSI storage system in with my Windows Desktop system somehow.

Of course being the cluttermouse I am, I do still have all three of those desktop computers as well as a box of hard drives between 500Mb and perhaps 50Gb in size in addition. I do have a hub networking my two desktop computers as well as using its wireless capability to network this MacBook to the network and hence the Internet.

I do still plan on getting an external hard drive for my network — either 500Gb or 1Tb in size. (for the less computer savvy they are reasonably large drives still.) I’d be able to install Windows onto the external drive to use with the MacBook whenever the MacBook is connected to the network — and I would want an external drive robust enough to take travelling with me.

Still… I would worry about just filling up the external drive unless I can learn to control my hoarding ways. I’ll have to work on just how to do that.

I think one of the first things I would have to do is work out a formal system of backing up my system, software, and work files. Right now I have no system and so I worry about what I have and have not got saved as backups. That means may redundancies as well as probably having missed backing up some important stuff.

The other thing is to ensure that I have figured out just what things I do not need to keep on any hard drive at all like music and videos. Really I only need to keep on hard drive what I am currently listening to or planning on listening to in the near future. It would also be important to have some sort of online catalogue of the off-machine files so that I can find them to put back onto the computer as needed. I would plan on storing music, movies, TV shows, audio books, and eBooks on DVD.

Storing things on CD or DVD also requires a person copy the files to fresh DVD or CD from time to time as the DVDs and CDs degrade over time even if not used. They can be backed up perfectly if you do so before the media degrades. That is the benefit of digital media.

Now I guess I do need to get the external hard drive as well as to make a few plans on how to use it effectively. I also have to plan how I will be networking my 2 or 3 desktop computers… perhaps I will coalesce my three computers into just one? (That also includes making sure I have legit system software for each machine.)

Now… how to plan without over-planning… how to do and actually get it done?

~ Dusty
D Cluttermouse