Boxes: note to self/cattitude

[redbird]

In the course of a discussion on alt.polyamory, it occurred to me that if we actually went through those boxes we packed in New Haven and got rid of the stuff in them we don't need, which is probably most of us, there might be room to store more books in ways that made them accessible.

Failing that, we'd have more floor space, but that incentive has never seemed sufficient.

Comments

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Get rid of the stuff you don't need, put the books (those in the boxes and elsewhere) in more accessible places...looks like a win. The only problem would be the dust. How long have those boxes been stored? *hug* Better do it when you have good weather and can open windows.

[redbird]

Most if not all of those boxes have been sitting there since we moved in, which was January 1987. I think step one is to vacuum the outside of the boxes (not a bad idea even if we never get to step 2).

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

I'm boggling as to how this is related to poly... but then if alt.poly is anything like I remember it, a lot of the discussion there is poly-free...

[redbird]

People were discussing moving.

As you know, Bob, alt.poly is part discussions of things specific to polyamory, and partly poly and poly-friendly people just hanging out and talking. As someone (serenejournal, maybe?) put it, it's nice to have places where we can have ordinary conversations and not be stopped in mid-sentence by someone who is confused or upset by mentions of more than one partner.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling, though its a long time since I've used usenet at all, let alone read alt.poly.

I think of LJ as something like that (at least with friends locked posts), but I haven't really discussed poly stuff much. Maybe I should visit alt.poly again...

[redbird]

There are things that Usenet works better for (I'm not alone in thinking this), notably keeping discussions going. If you feel you need a friends-lock on a topic, you probably don't want to post about it under your real name on Usenet.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Oh, god, stuff. Later today, tamiam is coming over to help me go through the very last tiny bit of Anna's stuff and mail it off as appropriate. This stuff went from enough to fill a three-bedroom house with two-car garage and three storage lockers to two slightly-overfilled cartons in the corner of my office, containing just the things I can't figure out how to deal with or the things I don't want to deal with or the things I haven't gotten around to dealing with because I had already used up my emotional strength dealing with other things that were in fact much more difficult to deal with.

Okay, and then there's that tiny bit of irrational belief that if I don't deal with the last of Anna's things, she'll somehow not be dead. It would be difficult for me to overstate how tiny a share of that belief I have while still acknowledging that I do have a tiny bit of that irrational belief.

I have not historically been thing-impaired myself -- I owned only one chest of drawers, a small dining room table, a mattress, some kitchen stuff, and a very few boxes of books when I bought this house, 21 years ago -- and yet as I get older, things accumulate. Older relatives die, and their things are invested with emotional weight that my things lack, so that they're harder to throw out. I have married into a thing-impaired family as well, and it was a great shock to learn that once a grandchild's drawing has been displayed on the refrigerator for a respectable period, it can't just be recycled. It's supposed to be filed for eternity.

We've come up with workable compromises on most of the stuff. Only the coolest or most evocative of the grandchildren's art gets filed; the rest goes away. An additional challenge is introduced by Glenn's mother's habit of mailing us the grandchildren's art from thirty years ago -- that is, drawings Mary and Ruth made when they lived in Alaska, which Esther thoughtfully saved until now. We show these to the grown women, and if they don't take the drawings away with them, out they go.

So I'm just as glad that I couldn't afford to buy many books when I lived in New Haven, and that I lost several boxes I had stored one summer when I lived there. I'd like to have a few items from those boxes, but it's better to have the space they would fill, free.

[threeringedmoon.livejournal.com]

As a packrat who lives with another packrat, I try to look at it as "space reclamation" rather than "getting rid of stuff." Freecycle has been a big help: knowing that it might go to someone who can actually use it in an added incentive.