Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Second-order decluttering

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 21:12:12 GMT

We have a filing cabinet that my mother passed on to us when she moved to England (more than 20 years ago). I've been going through, and mostly discarding, the old papers in their.

Today, under a spiral notebook that I think I used to do tax calculations sometime in the 1990s, I found an envelope from Chemical Bank (which merged with something else ages ago). Addressed to my father (my parents separated in 1985, and my father died several years ago). At the address we moved out of in late 1981.

I decided that could go in the recycling bin without being shredded.

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Four Scrabble sets?

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 03:22:33 GMT

I've been doing some decluttering lately, while I'm in an appropriate frame of mind. Some of it is clothing that either doesn't fit anymore, or that I realized I don't like. I've also culled some of the old apas and fanzines (this is the part that surprises me) along with tossing things like the manual for a fax machine we replaced a year ago, years-old hotel receipts, and the like.

This afternoon, I was doing some stretches, and realized I could see three Scrabble^TM sets from where I was standing. None of them was the set we regularly use. Realistically, I think we need two: the regular set, and one of the travel sets. But this bit of the culling can wait: part of why this is emotionally reasonable is that I'm skipping anything that feels difficult.

I may address the difficult parts if and when I answer all the easy questions, like "why do I have an old takeout menu for a restaurant we never even ordered from?" Or not: this is a process which really is worth doing in part, because having more space in the sock drawer is worthwhile even if I have more socks than I in some sense need.

Is it worth trying to give away unwanted dangly earrings, or are people going to be put off by (actual or perceived) risk of infection? Some of them are singletons that I bought as pairs (I lose things): I had thought of wearing unmatched earrings, but it turns out I don't. And some are pairs that I haven't worn in ages: I had thought I would like them better than I do, or maybe my tastes have changed.

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Decluttering

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 02:45:13 GMT

I have slowly been getting rid of papers I don't need anymore, where "slowly" includes going through some stuff and then stopping for long periods. Last weekend I was talking about this, and some of what I had done recently, and that I had hit an entire box full of old letters, and hadn't even taken a deep breath and checked whether it was that or another ten years of extremely out of date bank statements.

papersky started to offer me advice/support about not needing to keep so many old things, and I explained that I knew this already and being told again didn't help. But it turns out not to have hurt, either. With a few days more time between me and opening that box; the desire to stay in the air conditioning today; and an attitude-shifting post from green_knight, I took another stab at it. Green_knight's suggestion (which wasn't intended as such, she was posting about her own current decluttering) is not to set any goal of how much to get rid of or how much will be left, but to think in terms of looking at things, with "decide later" as explicitly allowed, and counting any amount > 0 of things gotten rid of as an achievement, rather than having to get rid of at least a certain amount to count the project as successful.

I didn't open most of the envelopes, just looked at who they were from. I kept a bunch of letters from my best friend from high school, who I hadn't even thought of in years, and threw away everything from other people I knew in high school. I saved a few letters from my grandparents, a couple from someone I dated in college, and a few others. A lot of other people's letters, I didn't feel the need to keep: I hadn't so much made a deliberate decision back in the 1980s, as thrown a lot of things into a box. (Mostly it's letters from specific people, but I also found a grade report for a college course I took my senior year of high school; I thought briefly about hanging onto that and then remembered that I have my B.A., so transfer credits don't matter.) The startling thing wasn't the random "why do I have a postcard from this person?" but "who is this person who I keep finding letters from?" Names that ring no bell at all, but apparently 25 years ago we corresponded regularly enough that I've got a dozen envelopes with their return address.

At some point I may look at the letters I kept; for now, it's enough to know that I have these. But right now, a third of a shoebox full seems to be enough, at least from that epoch. (Maybe I'll flip through the stack of fanzine letters of comment on the bookshelf and try consolidating.)

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Five things make a post

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:35:17 GMT

or, I haven't updated lately except with gym notes, though I meant to.

I've been doing a bit more cooking today (not as much as I would like, still, but cooking is a piece of day-to-day-life that I can pay strangers to take care of). Today, I got cattitude to talk me through his frittata recipe. He also kindly offered to beat the eggs, so as to spare my shoulder. One apple and cheddar frittata, a nice lunch for the two of us. (Or maybe an oven omelet, since it's fluffy and not broiled; adrian_turtle makes a different style of frittata, which I also like.) It's been a while since I cooked something new to me; that's more work that throwing together matzoh meal pancakes or turning the leftover turkey into a rice pilaf for dinner. Those I can do in my sleep.

My joints continue to be creaky, even on days when I don't seem to have done much. That said, the shoulder is healing again, albeit slowly. The knees I am starting to suspect may never get back to normal/pain-free. Or at least not with what we're doing now. At some point I may investigate physical therapy instead of, or in addition to, the balance and strengthening work my trainer and I have been doing. It also doesn't help that any time I seem to be making progress, I push things. (I am not looking for any sort of medical advice here.)

I'm doing a lot of rereading lately, including ebooks (Project Gutenberg and the Baen Free Library). Or it feels like a lot, but my list of recently finished ebooks includes The Voyage of the Beagle and The Portrait of Dorian Gray, neither of which I'd read before.

On the other hand, Cattitude and I continue to cull the book collection and thus reclaim space. This is mostly things we've concluded we will never reread, but not all: we don't need a hardcover Complete Oscar Wilde, given Project Gutenberg. We are not looking for homes for anything this round, though. People might want some of the ones we're discarding this time, but I don't care about them enough to make the effort. I was pleasantly surprised that the copy of Liddell and Scott was claimed so quickly when I offered it. The claimant has made a generous donation to two charities I suggested; I explicitly didn't want to be paid for it directly. That would have felt wrong, somehow.

The OE of A Women's APA sent out invitations a couple of months ago, for all alumnae to send in "this is what I'm up to" notes to be included in mailing 200. I sent about a page, and recently got fourteen pages, including my own. [The "OE" is the person who organizes things, sends out mailings, and so on. I was OE of AWA for a few years. An apa is a bit like a group blog and a bit like a listserv, if that helps; there were a lot more of them before most of fandom could count on easy net access.] I've noted a couple of women's contact information, and may yet try to write to them. (My entry included the contact information here.) I'm trying, slowly, to get more of a social life back. This should probably be more focused on people in the New York area, which most of them aren't.)

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