We kept my old recliner when we got a new one. Probably a mistake, because we need space on the floor more than we need butt space.
My wife and I were talking about this in relation to the various searches for classified docs. A nightmare tp do in pour house, and no way I could stay focused on it.
I keep all my classified documents in the garage filing cabinet, above the potting soil.
I had a pretty good routing going a while back where I made it a point to throw away some significant item every week. Then I tapered off. But our basement and garage are bit less full of crap now. And getting 1-800-JUNK certainly helped (prompted by an old entertainment center, but became an impetus to find other stuff).
I have trouble throwing out stuff that belongs to the kids, even if it lives in the public space and is truly junk. I feel obligated to check with them, and then that triggers all their existential angst about change. The workbooks that the teacher offloaded on you on the last day of school last year? the plastic toys that do admittedly get played with occasionally, but as stand-in pieces in a bigger scene that could easily be stood in with plenty of other things?
We still have the toddler-sized violin we got to prove that he had ever even seen a violin.
Somehow* we ended up with three trombones in the house even though only one kid currently plays.
*The specific reason involves complications with the Spanish postal service.
We only have a 1,500 square foot house, with a very small basement and a garage that we use mostly for the car. I feel overwhelmed with clutter at times, but not enough to buy a bigger house. Moving is a pain.
Houses cost upwards of $30 per cubic foot of living space, so not a very cost-effective storage solution.
If someone offered me $30/cubic foot, I'm listening.
Apparently, there's some kind of legal or moral thing about selling a house without asking your spouse.
Can't be any worse than the commercials where a car with a bow on top appears in your driveway Christmas morning.
8: that's great! I was just thinking this morning that I want to learn to play the trombone. Can you send one to me?
Five Memphis PD officers charged with second-degree murder in the case of Tyre Nichols.
It's a relief they were charged quickly.
Twitter-word is that the streets of Memphis are poised to erupt when the video is made public, based on how bad the video is reputed to be (beating to death, basically), probably helping along both the firing and the charges.
Seattle's having a protest about a recent death by cop which stands out for its casualness -- collision with a pedestrian in a crosswalk and the police just drove off, didn't stop at all.
Memphis is still working on getting to casual indifference to human life.
Most depressing crime announced here was the "murder" of a 5 year old and 3 year old, likely strangled by their mother. The 7 month old was hospitalized, and she jumped out of a window but was taken to the hospital.
I bet that it's some kind of psychosis.
That's why small children need unconstrained access to guns.
Last month we replaced the carpet in three rooms, which should have forced some decluttering but what actually happened was everything moved to the previously-uncluttered basement.
My approach to clutter is to make the house bigger. We're talking to an architect and engineers. I'd like to also control clutter better but spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and upending our lives for at least half a year is easier.
Jokes aside, it's easy to nibble around the edges of clutter, but lots of the clutter belongs to the other people in the house and it's hard to make them throw stuff away. Making a big dent in the clutter that's properly mine is more work than nibbling around the edges, and for the past week or two I don't have the energy. We're always busy, it's January so working outside isn't fun, T. was sick with a cold/flu, and now I've got it... I'm going to really, really, really try to work on this stuff in the spring or summer when the kid is out of the house but not beat myself up about it too much before then.
The arrest of the ex-officers set the stage for the public release on Friday evening of surveillance and body-camera footage of their interaction with Nichols, which local officials have said could spark violence in Memphis. Mulroy said footage of the arrest would be released to the public on Friday evening, some time after 6 p.m. Central Time.
The children generate so much plastic. We have success with donating some things - early on Pebbles was enamored of the idea that "another baby would get to play with this toy" but now they're in elementary school, most of the baby stuff is gone and the rest is intermittently played with but not so rarely that we can pitch anything. We have now three and a half IKEA cube shelves with boxes for their stuff and shiv's boardgames. It is nuts.
I went, one spring morning, to clean out one of those downstairs half-closets, which began as very practical affairs, meant to be the resting place for wet boots and umbrellas and end up as containers for ice skates and then hockey sticks and then tennis rackets and then, by the most logical of extensions, baseball gloves and football helmets and basketballs and riding boots and jackets left behind by visiting children. I had picked up a big cardboard carton at the grocery, and into it I put the baseball gloves and the football helmets and the riding boots and the tennis rackets and the basketball. I put the carton at the foot of the back stairs, so I would remember to take it up the next time I went, and I put clean newspapers on the floor of the closet and went and got all the wet boots from the corner of the kitchen and the spot inside the front door and the back seat of the car, and I lined the boots up in the closet and derived an enormous satisfaction from closing the closet door tight for the first time in months.
Later when I went upstairs I took the carton with me. There was no room for it in the bedroom shared by my two daughters. There was no room for it in the bedroom of my older son, and certainly no room for it in the tiny room where the baby lived. There was no room for it in the attic where we kept sleds and garden rakes. There was no room for it in the attic where we kept trunks and boxes of things I meant to give away someday. I knew there was no room for it in the garage because I had tried a day or so before to put the snow tires in there and had finally to put them in the cellar, consequently there was no room in the cellar because I had barely been able to squeeze in the snow tires. I was not gonig to leave a carton of football helmets and a basketball in the bedroom which my husband and I shared, particularly since there were already sixteen cartons of books in the corner next to my closet, and I could not leave it in the upstairs hall because there were nine more cartons of books lined up against that wall. Anyway I knew if I left a carton of baseball gloves and a basketball right out in the front hall it would only be a day or so before I had to gather them all up again from the living room and the kitchen, and I would probably have to put them all back into the hall closet and then the door would not close again.
With a certain feeling of bewilderment, and a strong sense of the inevitability of fate, I took the carton back downstairs and put everything directly back into the hall closet, and of course the door would not close.
We weren't allowed to keep our football helmets after the season. Of course, my town grew corn without human sacrifice.
The stuff has become a millstone around my neck.
I throw out bags and bags of stuff and yet it feels like I am only making a dent.
I don't understand how this happened.
There's something tragic to me about getting rid of the kids' stuff. That's a big problem. More tragic was getting rid of the stuff of our dog that died. Even our dog had a lot of stuff! It was heart-wrenching to throw it away.
I used to be able to fit all my stuff in a Toyota hatchback. Absolutely every item I owned fit in that hatchback.
I keep trying though.
but now they're in elementary school, most of the baby stuff is gone and the rest is intermittently played with but not so rarely that we can pitch anything.
This exactly. Plus they keep being given stuff to play with intermittently.
Why are visiting children leaving their riding boots behind? Are they riding home barefoot?
Since we moved from my tiny flat to Huntingtower we've been in the delightful situation of having far more rooms than we have stuff to fill them, even after emptying the Selkie's ISO storage container of stuff. We could do with a few more chairs and so on, and a few more shelves as well, but we're not space-constrained (and a lot of expendable junk got water-damaged in the recent flood, so that all got chucked out too). In my tiny flat the question "where can we store the vacuum cleaner" was never satisfactorily answered. Now I periodically forget that we actually have a grand piano in the house.
30-31: It's from the early pages of Raising Demons, one of the three perfect books I have found. Mid-1950s and already too much stuff. But in a hilarious way.
I have one of those fifties homes with the small front closet and it's full of ski boots and gear.
Ours has Christmas decorations, for some reason.
I guess they can't go in the basement because the mice will use them.
Ours is a small, ill-designed 90s home where the front closet is not actually near the door. (It's not quite as small since we added on, though. 1900ish sq ft. Not giant but not tiny.)
Our main organizational issue is the detached garage, which is not for the car, but shiv's workshop, which periodically gets so disorganized because I am told that my bicycles make it impossible to work that there's no room for him to do things, so then he undertakes the project of organizing the workshop, which involves building e.g. vertical bike storage, which means that by the time it's finally organized and clean it's winter and too cold for projects.
I wonder if the San Francisco judge and the Memphis judge had a chat, because the former released the footage of the attack on the Pelosi home ahead of the MPD video coming at 6 Central today.
This thread totally calls for shelfies of the messes and storage areas involved. My basement is pretty suboptimal-- I take intermittent stuff from my ex that she wants out of her place and then put it there, as well as intermittent stuff from/for my kid whose college place is small, as well as some amount of my own excess. Definitely controlling the influx is key. There's pretty regularly nice wooden furniture 50-100 years old set out on the street in my walking/biking radius, requires real discipline not to be bringing beautiful orphans home every few months.
In my office (a downstairs bedroom of my 1946 frame place) there's an empty terrarium where the lizard made her home until last year. Part of not moving it is knowing that the table would just become a catchall if I did move it.
I'm personally curious about Marie Kondo's reading life, her opinions about memory. Oblivion awaits us all, regarding objects from the past (not too many but not zero) solely as burdens or unhealthy splints is, well, it's possible, but seems like the psychological equivalent of a permanent low sodium diet. The snow that will cover us all is coming sooner than we think, taking pleasure in memory is a way to be kind to the past.
I will (by the way) separately sincerely go on about how poisonous nostalgia is politically.
The idea that all nostalgia is pernicious was new to me, but I have been persuaded.
26 is great; I enjoyed Life Among The Savages, I will have to look for Raising Demons
43. Maybe a sincere discussion about death and utility is a bit much, but definitely part of my attitude to memory is recognizing a) that I'm the only one carrying some of what I remember about other people, b) that I'm likely going to be less useful when I stop working in the foreseeable future, c) having spent some time with a friend's mom who has pretty severe Alzheimers and seeing what that means for her and for him and his family.
Discarding the virtues of memory because it can be misused and is crudely and badly represented in popular culture seems like a mistake.
When I was growing up, nostalgia was better.
Who is out there saying memory is bad?
44: I thought Raising Demons was the better of the two. For instance, it was harder for me to see the seams where she stitched together the bits that were originally published in magazines. The extended intro about how they come to move house is lovely. I think the night everyone is sick and constantly moving from bed to bed is a classic, as is this:
...on Thursday my husband had received a letter from an old school friend of his named Sylvia, saying that she and another girl were driving through New England on a vacation and would just adore stopping by for the weekend to renew old friendships. My husband gave me the letter to read, and I held it very carefully by the edges and said that it was positively touching, the way he kept up with his old friends, and did Sylvia always use pale lavender paper with this kind of rosy ink and what was that I smelled--perfume? My husband said that Sylvia was a grand girl. I said I was sure of it. My husband said Sylvia had always been one of the nicest people he knew. I said I hadn't a doubt. My husband said that he was positive that I was going to love Sylvia on sight. I opened my mouth to speak but stopped myself in time.
I haven't actually read Marie Kondo, but my understanding was that she said to get rid of all the stuff you have that you don't use and that doesn't spark joy. To me that means you can hold on to some objects for purely sentimental reasons - if they spark joy.
47. 46 is a humorous version of one problem. I think maybe MK at least in her professional personality is not fond of memory. Many people who hoard have real problems with it. Preservationists in the US misuse the impulse.
It's a complex topic, I don't really have concise thoughts about it, and analogies are banned, so.
Oblivion awaits us all, regarding objects from the past (not too many but not zero) solely as burdens or unhealthy splints is, well, it's possible, but seems like the psychological equivalent of a permanent low sodium diet. The snow that will cover us all is coming sooner than we think, taking pleasure in memory is a way to be kind to the past.
I enjoyed reading this.
49. My grandmother had a room that was a shrine to her daughter who died young. Many of the things I keep and the memories they're associated with are not especially joyful. Perhaps a bad translation, but as written, that's a badly unbalanced criterion.
49.last: You are probably right. I took it as a pot joke, but in retrospect, that seems less likely.
There's an amazing Marie Kondo headline today:
"Marie Kondo admits she's 'kind of given up' on tidying up after having 3 kids"
I feel like I've exhausted my thoughts on decluttering in this forum, but on a somewhat related topic I think that my maturation process has involved giving up on things that I like simply because they're beautiful. I just replaced my linoleum floors with tile. The old floors were bright green (like the green of a new leaf) and so beautiful, and for years they sparked joy (real joy!) on a daily basis. But linoleum scuffs and stains and requires maintenance, and after a dozen years it required replacing. I loved it so much that I thought about just replacing it with new linoleum, but tile is a lot more practical, so that's what I went for. The new floor is fine! It doesn't spark joy but it's easy to clean and will probably outlast me. Anyway what I'm saying is that now that I'm old ease is more satisfying than joy.
When childhood's art adorns the walls and shelves,
A parent's heart is filled with pride and love.
Each crayon scribble, finger paint and daub,
A memory of innocence thereof.
But as the years go by and walls are full,
The question rises: What to keep, what part?
For every painting, drawing, craft and scrawl,
A sentimental tug upon the heart.
The art of childhood is a fleeting thing,
A precious moment frozen in time.
To keep it all would be a treasure trove,
A visual diary of a child's mind.
But as we grow, we must let go of some,
To make room for the memories yet to come.
59: I asked ChatGPT to write me a sonnet about bromidrosis and got this back.
Bromidrosis, thy odor doth offend
The nose, and cause disgust to all around
Thy presence known by sweat that doth extend
A stench, both foul and profound
Thy cause unknown, yet oft associated
With poor hygiene, or diet unrefined
But science doth show, thy roots are complicated
And not so easily defined
Thy treatment sought by many in despair
Deodorants and soaps, all to no avail
But hope doth come in the form of rare
And specific topical gels
Bromidrosis, though thou doth repel
Thy cure may yet be found, and all shall smell.
Which to be honest, isn't half-bad. It's shit at limericks, though.
There once was a person with halitosis
Whose breath caused much social ostracism
They brushed and they flossed
To no real avail, alas
Till they tried a new toothpaste, with precision.
60: Good to know that humans are still supreme at limericks.
Really, halitosis and neurosis seems like a gimme there.
I will say that we are having a relatively positive experience re: our kids toys books retained lo these many years now that we have a grandchild. Said child was here for several weeks before Christmas and and a number of retained items became instant favorites of hers. The books were particularly satisfying. That said, I think we probably overdid it, and undoubtedly less is more to some extent on that front. I do recall as a kid being particularly fascinated with the limited books and toys my grandparents had retained (a few of which we still have).
63: no grandkids yet but that is one reason I keep old books, especially kids books. Not for me but for the next generation. I think that was probably a lot more practical when the modal age for attaining grandparenthood was 45 than 70, which might be what it is for some of my cohort.
I have a friend who's just a couple years older than I am who has too many GREAT grandkids for me to even comprehend (or keep track of from various post and photos). I am endlessly curious about the precise timing that led to this situation but I am not asking. I mean, at least 8 great-grands by the time she turned 60.
If we counted to 9, e would confuse you?
The comma is a typo. It's supposed to be on the other side of the e.
I tried to be judicious about what I kept from cleaning out my grandparents' house, though it's likely that I've erred on the side of keeping too much. It's been fun cataloging some of the highlights on FB, though.
I know I've absolutely kept too much of my childhood memorabilia that I dug out of same house, and will have to winnow it down eventually, but I'm taking an unseemly amount of joy from displaying my childhood soccer and debate trophies in the dining room right now. For someone who was objectively never very good at soccer, despite playing and loving it for 12 straight years, I have a surprising number of trophies. I really lucked out in the (almost entirely male at the time, aside from myself) rec league lottery for four straight years.
My parents both lived into their mid-80s and neither saw all of their grandchildren.
My dad's sister, who has descendants in numbers where you might need logarithms, had her first child while her husband was bombing Germany. Which seems just way risky.
I guess the 70s were a different time.
But not in a way we can understand anymore.
My mom kept an insane amount of childhood toys. My brothers had kids first and never, ever visited my parents. When Hawaii and Pokey were still very tiny, my mom started talking about purging all the kid toys because why hang on to them? and I got very mad, because we were visiting regularly with the small children who just weren't quite old enough to play with them yet. You hung onto these for 30 years and now you can't wait the last few years until the children who actually visit you are old enough to play with them?! She hung on to them and they got played with.
It's probably nothing. She just likes your brothers' kids more.
75: She probably just wanted to hear you say that you wanted her to keep them.
72, 73: Andreas Baader was your uncle?
Let's all post our parents' rankings of us vs our siblings and the last time a relative killed someone at a distance in Europe.
save close-in killings for another time.
It's just a different thing, psychologically.
I think Clue is probably Tim Curry's best movie.
86: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is best?
Yes. Unless you count music videos.
I'd forgotten that the movie ends with Lenny saying, "I'm going to go home and sleep with my wife."
81: My maternal grandfather was a violent antifa, though back then they called it US Army Artillery.
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Should we have a Florida school libraries thread or is it too hopeless and depressing?
My BiL's wife is working as a classroom assistant there, having retired, and she is 1. appalled and 2. out of ideas what to do about it beyond voting D at the next election and trying to organise her friends. But none of them have school age kids.
|>
I'm pretty sure Florida isn't real. It's just a story to scare kids into voting.
I wish. I've been there. It's a damn expensive way to scare kids into voting.
For years I thought I'd been there two, but I also thought that I saw Sinbad in a movie called "Shazaam".
You thought I typed "been there two" but really I typed "been there too".
I telework with a guy who lives in Florida, and every time something like this happens in his state I want to ask him why things are so crazy there, except I don't know him that well and I'm afraid he'll say "no I think what they're doing is great."
I'm pretty sure I grew up there, but I'm also pretty sure that I grew up in the movie Shazaam starring Sinbad.
In reality, it starred Nelson Mandela.
One of my students just started a TT job 30 mins south of my hometown in FL...and she somehow has to teach a course on Black feminist theory in this environment...
Win or lose, being the defendant in a case that goes to the Supreme Court is a shot at lasting fame.
I read an article arguing semi-convincingly that Florida is not abnormally weird. The reasons it seems weird are a) it has a larger population than people think, and certainly larger than its media profile suggests; so people underestimate the expected level of weirdness; and b) its laws are unusually liberal about the police releasing details of arrests, so a story that would elsewhere be "Local man arrested after noise complaint" would be "Toothless Florida drunk arrested in machete-swinging brawl with fifteen police officers on his bankrupt alligator ranch".
Right, but that was before they outlawed making a white people sad.
I take no position on the question of whether Florida is abnormally evil but I thought it worth pointing out that it may not be abnormally weird.
I notice with dismay that Rick Scott, who has long been my pick for the next Republican president (tall, white, male, Christian, ex Governor of a reasonably purple state, fraudster), has announced he will not be running in 2024.
Even without that, he's still doing his best for the impoverishment of Americans who work.
But sure: I'll post a dedicated Florida thread. Hang on.
Maybe we should do like with the quarters and cover all the states in order of admission to the Union.
Living by myself I found it is a lot easier to avoid clutter. I am the only one who is affected by the toss/keep decision so it is very low stress. The real problem with clutter is determining how everyone else feels about an item and worrying that they will want it later. You also know what is tossed so you don't go looking for stuff you don't have anymore which is a real possibility when there are more than one authorized discarders
It's happened to me when I lived alone.