No, not “2009 ResolutionS per day.” That’d just be silly. Although I do engage in goal setting, I just think that since I’ve not made any “New Year’s Resolutions” in some time, perhaps a little taking stock and goal setting of the “New Year’s resolutions” type might be in order. So, herewith my first “New Year’s Resolution” of 2009.
It occurred to me that stuff temds to multiply to fill whatever space is available, and not just in the “nature abhors a vaccuum” kind of way. For example, I had a new 400GB hard drive about six or so months ago. It’s now about half full. Of what? Just–mostly–stuff. Heck, I regularly scissor out and toss several gigs of stuff, and yet still stuff proliferates.
Take my desk. Please. *heh* I try to clean it off every now and then. The last time was about a month ago. But does that help? Nope. It’s crammed, piled high, stuffed with stuff.
Storage shed. Garage. Store rooms. Stuffed with stuff.
A goal for 2009? For every new piece of stuff brought into twc central, TWO pieces of stuff must go–preferably of like stuff. I’m not talking about increasing twc central’s use of the landfill, necessarily (although it may come to that from time to time). Most of the stuff we are plagued with is useful stuff, but might well find a more useful home elsewhere.
So. Yard sales. Donations. Want ads. Friends, neighbors and relatives: all potential new homes for stuff over the course of 2009. For example, how many CD/Radio/cassette tape “boom boxes” do we really need? The kids have stopped using them. I no longer use them (as I once did for ed purposes–amazing the usefulness of those lil items). Sure, some no longer have full functionality, but…
And then there’s my closet. How many boxes of “five-to-seven ‘gold stripe'” silk ties do I need, anyway?
And my techie hoard. Yes, I can and do use all the teeny lil bits and pieces I’ve stripped off of innumerable discarded computers, but how many of those old cases (still left after discarding more than a dozen computers last summer) and power supplies and CDROM drives and etc., do I really need to hang on to? How many can be made into perfectly serviceable hardware firewalls to give away? Well, it pretty much depends on how many spare 100mbit network cards I find I still have and how many people might find they really need a hardware firewall.
And the sheet music, books, magazines, manuscripts, records (both paper and LP), tapes, tools, materials of all kinds that is gathered in both organized and topsy-turvy, ramshackle disorganization–all still in need of digging into, even after the major cleanup of the BIG store room last summer.
Tons (possibly literally tons) of stuff that has simply bred and multiplied in the dank, dark storage places where it’s been consigned must go.
And the same goes for my digital stuff. Boxes and boxes of old floppies, CDRs, old hard drives: sorted, cleaned, recatalogued and either re-stored (this time with a digital library catalog and perhaps even bar coding) and that which is to be discarded either run through a degausser (for the floppies and other magnetic media) or shredded (for the CDRs) or melted (NOT burned). Some of the old hard drives, suitably and securely erased, could well find new homes in file servers, but this stuff must either be used or it must go.
So, that’s “Resolution Number One”–no more wildly proliferating stuff. LESS.
You know you are supposed to buy all those organizers for the closets, cabinets and such. Then move to the vacuum sealed home cookin’ and all the other products and services offered to help you with your ‘stuff’.
Then you can succeed in havin’ MO stuff. But hey, it will be organized. (ya, right)
I’ll be spending much of the remainder of the day contemplating measures for making 2009 better than the previous years. Based on the results from this long held ritual I may need to evaluate its usefulness, again.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
Happy New Year
One good way of handling this, David, is to assign one room to each month (small rooms – baths and such – can be combined), and then work on cleaning out that room that month. If you spend an average of 15 minutes per day on cleaning the room, at the end of the month, it’s ALL DONE!
Some rooms might take more, of course. But, if you combine the cleaning with any necessary repairs, you’ll have a much neater and less cluttered house at the end of the year, right?
… Annnd maybe I ought to take my own advice… 😉
Good method, Kat. MY problem is that, I’d have to assign my office every month, unless I can get a handle on the proliferation of stuff that accumulates there. Heck, I no longer have room for the TV and XBox on my desk with my computer, monitor and printer, what with the midi keyboard, books (new), motherboard boxes, and miscellaneous parts, cameras and tools (Oh my!) strewn about its surface…
*sigh*
And that’s just the desk since its last cleanup… last month.
I have places for all these things, but those places are full of (useful) stuff that I need to find new homes for.
I have a feeling–just a feeling, mind you–that once I simply get ALL my tools in the same place, I’ll be able to make some real room by performing some triage (how many pipe wrenches of the same size do I really need, for example, or kits of “jewelers’ tools” etc.?) on just my tools collection. Sure, I have major tools organized in tool boxes and on the garage walls and in my computer tool kit(s), etc., but there’s an awful lot of duplication going on.
And that’s just tools. I really, really need to thin the herd, but rationally, carefully, with thoughtful consideration for future needs.
And then there are the boxes and boxes of “filed away” 3.5″ floppies, CDs (data) and TAPES (data), as well as music CDs, tapes and LPs that need to be recatalogued, tapes (INCLUDING reel-to-reel!) and CDs converted to wav and mp3 and catalogued and archived to CD/DVD. Hmmm, efficient procedure there would compel me to buy some new techie equipment (*Oh wah*! *heh*) like the cassette-to-PC and LP-to-PC equipment from Ion… Oh, well, a guy’s gotta make some sacrifices, I guess. 🙂 (That’d also mean tossing some techie equipment at 2-to-1 ratios, but I’ve got several cassette decks and an old Garrard turntable I can toss to make that swap. Heck, might even find a way to ditch my old AMR mixer)
So, I’ve begun today. We’ll see how it ends.
Stanford: I have five 11’4″ epoxy-coated wire shelving units I picked out of a dumpster (a school techie guy just tossed ’em; they had been used as racks for routers, servers and such, oh my), but I’ve not yet cleaned enough out of the areas where I intend to install them to make good use of them… yet.
I have drawn up plans for building more efficient storage in the kitchen, garage, master bedroom and a conversion plan for the (excessively large) downstairs bath, as well as more a efficient network closet that’d give us back a hall closet, but getting rid of stuff will be our biggest challenge… and show the biggest benefit, overall, I think.