Organizing and culling are an ongoing process. The last few times I've moved have been enormously stressful, largely because of how disorganized my relationship with the material world is. A big part of my motivation for getting a place this big was to get everything together, someplace where I couldn't ignore it, and then go through it. Everything together: check! Going through it is going to take a while.
The plan is vague, but with one rigid component: A daily dose of organizing. Thus far, that has been an hour, every day.. At some point this winter that will produce
- a basement where the boxes are at least stacked neatly enough that I'm not worried about avalanches.
- a living area I'm willing to invite people to brunch in.
The main frustration so far is, unsurprisingly, I need a foo to do bar. I know I own a foo. I'm damned if I'm going to buy another foo just to do bar. Punt bar, or find my foo?. I had a bit of luck a couple days ago: I needed a 3/4" socket-wrench to assemble a piece of furniture for the livingroom. I've managed to keep a small collection of tools — small enough to conveniently carry — close to hand and reasonably well organized over the past several years of apartment living. Tools sufficient to the sorts of small tasks I was likely to be doing. My socket set is not part of that tool kit.
I had noticed my socket set go by during the move, so I knew it was at least not buried in a box. So I went to the basement hoping to catch a glimpse of blue plastic somewhere in one of the stacks. I didn't — but I did notice my typewriter, sitting not very far down a mid-sized stack. I recently discovered the existence of Cambridge Typewriter.* I went in a few weeks ago, talked to the owner about my dust-laden Selectric, and decided they would get my busniess when the typewriter turned up. So I decided to extract it from the stack. And what do you suppose it was sitting on top of? My socket set, tucked into the top of a mostly-full box, such that I would never have seen it edge-on.
(Of course, Murphy being Murphy, the 3/4" socket was one of the two that have gone missing. This gave me a reason to go out to The Tool Shed in Waltham (a fantastic place, for anyone local who's not familiar with it). So I arranged to take Tuesday off work, planning a stop at the Tool Shed as the second in a series of errands, all of which could be done in that neck of the woods.Naturally, not having been there in quite a while, I'd forgotten about the weird hours, which are something like 1-4 pm, WRFS. So ended up heading into work around noon on Tuesday, arranging to take Wednesday off instead, and getting my errands done then. @Miss-Emily-Litella{It's always something!}
At any rate, I'm taking today off work and focusing on the basement. The two goals are to end the day with a clear path to the furnace, and a clear path to the breaker box. Wish me luck!
* They were, for many years, on Mass Ave between Harvard and Porter. So I'm willing to let the fact that Cambridge Typewriter is in Arlington go without rolling my eyes.
