Basement library beatdown

I'm back in the basement again pruning the usual junk.  I'm going through the books Dylan had down there and picking out what I mean to keep.

I intend to give some more books to friends and have Powell's Books buy most of the rest.  Though I think I'd like the Portland Art Museum's  library to have some.  Dylan had the most amazing collection of comics by overseas creators all over the world.  I think it would be great to have them in a place where people who love art want to be.

I concede that it doesn't look great down here, but it's better than before.  And you can see the entire bookcases, as I removed the junk on the floor in front of it.

Remember this?

And this?

I'm glad I took pictures.  Otherwise I'd feel like nothing is really changing.

Going through the books this time is surprisingly similar, emotionally, to all the other sifting I did with Dylan's collections.  It's a little easier to reason with myself about where these will all end up, but I still experience some self-recrimination and sorrow.  Also, the mental and physical exhaustion of the process.  I need a foot rub after all this. 

The Fulfilled Basement

I lied, but not intentionally, when I stated I'd get all kinds of things done before my trip a few weeks ago.  They are getting done though.  As you saw, my new bookcase is operational.  I took the one that had been in its place previously (with the help of friend Sean, thanks!!!) and put it downstairs in the basement.  Another friend, Daria, came and picked up the old wooden bookcase I didn't want to keep.  Awesome!  It's funny how the same amount of books on a different set of shelves looks so different.  Now it's time to compare and contrast again, just like we did in Language Arts:

The photo on the left is the best I have of that corner and the old bookcase, but you can see things look a little sunnier in the old basement.

I have Salvation Army coming this Saturday to pick up an upstairs bookcase.  A friend of mine who is moving overseas is giving me a beautiful large set of shelves that can go in my living room.  

The outside of my house is undergoing a transformation.  My landlord decided to tell me that they were going to tear off the siding of my house and replace it, but he waited until a few minutes before they started work.  It's been over a week now and the exterior is covered in Tyvek.  Not long to go now! 

I'm getting a night guard for my teeth.  After years of grinding them in my sleep I'm finally going to have some relief!  I'm getting the final fit on Monday.  Maybe I won't wake up with headaches anymore. 

Easter Adjustments

These past couple of weeks have been full of huge ups and downs.  On the good side, I experienced some of the happiest days I've had in a few months.  The day after Easter was particularly nice, as I wrapped up my tax documents, and recovered enough from a cold to jump in my car and see my family for a day and a night. 

 With the rainy weather happening I've been working on catching up on some things I had been putting off for a while.  I cleaned out the fridge today.  Now it looks really bare!

I've been thinking more about how I can use this blog to help me achieve some more goals, and I thought of a few:

1. Get up earlier, at a more consistent time every day
2. Stop watching TV/DVDs during the day
3. Make something every day

They're not very lofty ambitions but they've been on my mind for a while.  I'm applying the same strategy with these as I have with the basement, and I'm going to try to change for a week.  I'll blog every couple of days and let everyone know how it's going, starting today.

 As for my original project, the basement, it's not too bad but I haven't done anything new.  I have to accept that a basement really is mainly a storage area for houses, and that it doesn't have to be perfect.  The upstairs office has become the new sorting project.  

It seems like yesterday...

...that I was writing the three-month anniversary entry, and now here it is past six months since I started this blog! 

My sister suggested that I lay out some steps for my tidying procedures, which I think is a great idea, but they're very loose as you have witnessed.  However, I think the best advice I could give is just to start with one tiny area and work out from there.  Just do a little each day.  My methodology has not solidified much.  At the start I had to make sure my area in the basement was safe, and the same goes for the upstairs rooms.  It gets like a war zone.  Don't forget stuff that falls on the floor.  I have brown carpets and I've found a myriad of tiny sharp objects: hairpins, screws, earrings, thumbtacks.  It helps to have a bright flashlight to shine in the corners and under furniture before you vacuum or step. 

As for the basement work that I've resumed, it's getting along slowly.  In fact, I'm not sure if the change is even noticeable.  Here's an update photo of the room:

 And, to alleviate the seeming moribundity of that area, I give you the jollier upstairs office, one corner of it anyway:

Dig Dug

I felt a huge sense of accomplishment telling my sister that I'd turned a nearly unusable room into my new bedroom.  Somehow the incredulity of other people at the things I do makes me feel fantastic.  I just got back from California.  I haven't really had relatives in my house in about a year and a half, which is kind of funny since I've gone to see all of them.

Now that I'm back here I'm trying to get back to the basement thing and working on that part I had pictured here.  I spent about 20 minutes on it just now and here are some things I found:

• a green coated-wire rack or trellis of some sort, disassembled
• brass lampshade, seemingly for no lamp I own
• green wooden house from an old Monopoly game
• plastic storage drawers filled with actual keepsakes, as wells as rags and vintage hankies
• that fucking bag of papers I referred to in the blog post to which I just linked above.

Part of the reason I'm upset over them is that I'm afraid to look and see what a mess I might have made of Dylan's and my 2011 taxes.  So, they are still in that room being punished.  I can't bring myself to even handle them.

On a lighter note I'm starting to look through the keepsake bits and see what there is.

The days are getting longer, and the SAD stuff is waning, but I've had some mild persistent anxiety for a few days now.  I have a lot on my mind, more to come on that.  I loved being away but I'm glad I have so much to occupy me here.

I finished two books while I was away, The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett and A State of Heat by Sheilah Graham.  I didn't realize I was an Alan Bennett fan until I found this book, he wrote the play The History Boys and another great book that my mother-in-law gave me years ago, The Clothes They Stood Up In.  I wouldn't even have seen the book I just read except that it was on a counter in the library, in a display of small books that tend to get lost in the shelves.  It was standing next to a book illustrated by Tom Neely. 

Crust, Mantle, Core, Magma

"Ha ha ha," laughed the evil, mean Basement.  "You thought you had come so far, and now you must face another trial."

It's time to move from the main room in the basement to its outer reaches.  I mean the room behind the room, which became a DigiWorld of comics, extra furniture, and even more books.  I could build a whole new house with just books.  That's a microfiche machine on the left, remember those?  I've been dreading this task for a while, because some of this stuff might not have anywhere else to go.  The room is small so it's hard to get a good vantage point with a camera.  This is a pretty convincing panorama though. 

I feel like I'm living in the House of Usher this week.  Every room has its little frozen-in-time place that has a life of its own, it's not always easy or fun to encounter them.  I found some papers I'd been searching for since over a year ago, and now I no longer need them.  They were in that room above, far away from where I thought they'd ever be. 

Basement Diaries

I've returned my attentions more to the basement in the last couple days, as it occurred to me that I could sell some furnishings that I couldn't fit into the car to take to the garage sale.  Which, in case I didn't make clear, was 100 miles away and not in the Portland city limits. I took them to Village Merchants' new location.  I have an overabundance of end tables since I got all the furniture from my mother-in-law last year.  I don't want to hang onto them until I move, whenever that is.  I traded the tables and other small things for some cotton curtains and other needed supplies.   The curtains can go across my new closet opening on the tension rod I got the other day, after I wash them.

I think it's time I found some new favorite thrift shopping places.  But then again maybe it's good that I'm not hunting too much.  

I went to IKEA on Saturday with a couple of lady friends.  I feel a little guilty shopping there, but when I think about how I only bought one stick of new furniture in years, I don't feel too bad.  I got a metal trestle leg thing to hold up one end of the desk I built for myself nine years ago. I tried looking for a sawhorse I could salvage, but nowadays the sawhorses are all beefy, almost pony-sized.  A lot of them are made of that heavy duty plastic too.  The trestle is dainty and above all, coordinates with the rest of the desk.

It looks like the old lady could use a new coat of paint.  I used a white stain when I made it and now it's covered with other kinds of stains.  The top looks a little lopsided here, but it's nothing a couple magazines (Oprah and Martha!) won't fix.

I'm glad that Portland is so fond of leaving stuff on the sidewalk for people to find and re-use.  I'm going to put the metal-and-particle board shelf unit that was holding up the left end of the desk out tomorrow.  I don't want to give out my address here, but if you know me and if it's a nice day tomorrow then you might find something outside my driveway!

Law & Order

As if the 90 day anniversary post wasn't proof enough, here it is in triptychlicate.  The great white bookcase is upstairs, ready to go into the new office room when there's space there.  You can see the paintings on the rear wall looking less meek as time passes.  The little fox is braver each time an obstacle leaves the path from his tree trunk!  And you can't even see the flower still life in the left hand photo.

The wooden thing in the lower left corner of the far right pic is a bookcase I'm trying to give to a friend if she'll take it, and she knows who she is!  It's ready to get in the trunk of my car and go live with you! 

The white bookcase concealed the "here be monsters" territory I covered in this post over a month ago.  Now you can see it in its full glory.  At least it's mostly books.

I've just returned from the holidays away at my parents' and ready to clean like the wind!  My mom gave me a brand new dish rack for Christmas.  I'd been wanting one but even the cheap ones seemed expensive with a new tray beneath, which I also needed.  The one my mom gave me is deluxe!  Thanks Mom! 

Là-Bas

It's been about 90 days since the old Fitzrovians began and it's time to evaluate my headway.  As if I haven't been for weeks now.  Still, I've digressed a lot with the parts about my upstairs quarters and I'm going to focus on the basement for this entry.

I would grade myself A+ for thoroughness, A for creative solutions in allocation, B+ for speed and efficiency, B for aesthetics, B for cleanliness (versus tidiness).  As long as something's not coated with dust or has a spider's carapace stuck to it somewhere I'm usually satisified with its sanitation.

So, here is a look back on our beginnings:

And the somewhat refreshing present day:

What's ironic about the title of this blog is that St. Crisp said you never need to clean house: "...After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse."  It's not just dirt I've been worried about, it's avalanches of books and boxes! 

I want to add before I forget that there is a really good resource in Portland for people who are as nuts about recycling as I am: Portland Metro's hotline!  It's 503-234-3000.  They used to have groovy radio ads and I decided to give them a call when I wanted to ditch some odd things years ago.  An operator can tell you who will accept what.

And don't you dare forget The ReBuilding Center.  I had a stack of old plywood in the Bad Apple for a long time, they took it as well as other carpentry bits that were not useful to me.  I found some hand tools that I think they can use too. 

Regression Therapy

Sometimes before things get better, they start to look worse than they did after you did all that work to make things look good.  Such is the case with the basement area, which has had a slight temporary setback while I tried to figure out where a shitload of things are going.  I've even sold books and got rid of furniture from the area and it still looks terrible:

The Salvation Army came Thursday and picked up more furniture, this time mainly from upstairs.  I had that little twinge I get when the furniture disappears from view: there's still so much to do.

One of the lessons I've learned while doing this job is that you shouldn't confuse organizing with decorating.  Trying to work out an aesthetic scheme, while you are simply trying to figure out where things should go and what to keep, is a completely separate task.  Yes, things start to look prettier when they aren't bursting off shelves and covering the floor.  But if you try to work out color schemes and space planning at the same time as the decluttering aspect, you might be taking on too much at once.  Keep a notebook to record your ideas along the way.  And I think I've said this before: refrain from shopping for a whole new look with containers and shelves or design accents, because you might not be sure what you need until the worst is over.

That said, I'm trying not to put any pressure on myself about this.  The holidays are here and I am behind on everything to do with presents and the usual planning. That said, I had a mini holiday party this evening where everyone complimented me on how nice everything looked in the living room.  I had to confess that a lot of stuff was hidden in the other rooms behind closed doors.  I should have taken pictures of my snack buffet table, before everything got eaten!

Drudge Report

I spent a big part of today shredding a pile of old checkbooks.  Also I'm figuring out what I need to keep from a big pile of computer books, boxes, wires, and random parts.  Salvation Army will be here next week to take away some furniture.  I can see more and more of the floor in my computer room!

I found at least two sketch/notebooks of Dylan's.  He used to draw in all kinds of random notebooks that he had handy, and keep story and interview information in them.  I am keeping them together to share with our friends if they want to see them.  I still keep a lot of random bits of paper that he wrote on, as well as other ephemera of his that doesn't have a specific category.  I've been saving these little things in a special file for over a year now.

I have to confess that I've been leaving the basement alone more and concentrating on the upstairs area, partly because it's so cold and wet out and I've got heat upstairs.  For an unfinished basement though, mine stays fairly dry and free of mildew.  Right now it's becoming a little more of a catch-all for things I find upstairs that need to leave the house soon.  I've hit a little bit of a wall in the basement too, because some of the furniture down there is just waiting to come upstairs when I make room for it.  Which is exactly what I'm doing.

I tried reading Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post Consumer World, but it was really off the subject of what I meant to study.  I'm not even sure how I found it at the library.  I did learn how to slaughter a chicken humanely from this book, but it made me glad I'm getting more vegetarian.  There are so many pitfalls that I'd feel more sorry for the bird if I had to take it apart.  I'd end up making it inedible.

Post Vacation Slack

I'm getting back to my old pace before a week ago,  but it's been hard.  I've been recovering from losing my voice, which is still pretty bad.  I had a cold over a 1 1/2 weeks ago and I've been feeling fine but the voice started to go right before the holiday.  Last night after getting home my first order of business was to hurt my back so badly that I needed to lie down immediately, which also hurt.  It happened just as I was bending down to look into a storage box, so I barely had to do a thing to ruin myself.  My back hurt through most of today, so I decided to take it easy.

I did, however, do some critical cleaning work.  I'd been putting off cleaning off a shelving unit in my garage so I did that today.  None of the things on it were very heavy but I managed to get rid of a lot of stuff on it that had been collecting for a few months.  I still kept the box of bonsai supplies though.  Dylan and I started a bonsai hobby when we first moved in together in 1997 and we just held onto the rocks and fancy planter and other things.  I think I'll give it another go.  2013 will be my bonsai achievement year.

Finally heard from the college that's taking my donation of Dylan's books, they are coming Friday!  I am so glad that students will be learning from these books in a matter of weeks.  Speaking of which, there's already a wonderful collection that Caitlin McGurk is organizing at Ohio State University in Dylan's name.  Check out their blog about the Girl Scouts coming to visit and learn how to do their own comics!  I was a Scout once, I would have loved to have this kind of field trip.

I found this photo of me from my early years, cleanin' of course.  A Cinderella story, outta nowhere. 

La Vida Limpia

Every day in every way...

...things are getting better and better, said John Lennon to Sean.  Here's a corner I worked on for about two hours this afternoon.  Does it show?

I had to crop it, you can see in the lower right a portion of a porno-graphic novel that I culled from the Bad Apple's stock.  Whoopsie!

You can see some of the great art I've got downstairs.  The piece in the yellow frame is a painting by my friend Sean Christensen A.B.T.  I made it a note on my to-do list to start finding frames for prints and think about moving my art around again. 

I'm reading one of the latest novels by Juliet Marillier, Shadowfell.  She usually does fantasy fiction that takes place in more or less a real time and place in history, but this seems to be pure fantasy.  I like it but it's more on the juvenile side of her genre.  I've read all of her writing so far and I have another of her new works on hold at the library, where it's getting processed as a new book.  I'm in it to win it.

Just because

I don't have a lot to say today.  I just wanted to drop in, mainly.  I've been feeling great these last couple days.  I think it has something to do with the beautiful fall weather we've been having.

I did a little sorting out of the laundry room, where I've been keeping a lot of movies.  How do you reattach a label from a dvd box when it's fallen off?  I seem to have a lot of those to fix.  I made a box of stuff to take to Free Geek.  I feel like I'm making custom gift baskets for celebrity award show swag every time I go downstairs.

I decided that it's in my best interests to give things away to charity than to make huge efforts to sell them, unless they seem like a sure thing.  My time is too valuable to plan the future life of every object I have.  I decided a long time ago that unless it's beautiful, or of real sentimental value, or very useful, then it doesn't need to take up space in my home.  Function over form and all that.  I can't hold onto everything waiting for the perfect time to have a garage sale.  My sanity is most important right now, not making five bucks in my driveway or putting every little tchotchke on eBay.

Did I mention that I'm making my bed every morning now?  For most of my life I rarely bothered, but I do it now right after I get up.  It's a nice habit that came out of my new quest for neatness.  I read a book about changing habits recently: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg.  It says that changes to one habit lead to other positive changes, and this is an example.  I'm also trying to keep my kitchen cleaner and my refrigerator stocked.  I also make a hot breakfast every morning.  By that I mean oatmeal and fruit.  Maybe the breakfast thing came before the bed making though.

What's behind the mask

Things have come a long way and I'm willing to give myself credit, but there's always another mountain to climb.  Here is a picture of that mountain.  The photos I had taken a few days ago concealed what's going on on the far wall of the room: all these books and magazines.  I think I'm going to get radical with this area.  I'm not going to reveal what I mean yet, but I promise I won't set any fires.

Someday, it would be nice to have a roommate.  I'm not ready for one, but even if I was he or she couldn't move in.  There's too much upstairs that might have to come down here, and there's not enough room still.

While cleaning tonight though, I cleaned up an item I found on the street a long time ago that should help me sort a few treasures:

It was filthy, but now it's on a shelf holding art supplies.  I came up with a new tip: If you can fit a container on a shelf that will hold things that you normally put in a unit that sits on the floor, go with the shelf thingy.  Freeing floor space will free your mind.  Every time I get something off the floor for good I feel ten times better.

I'm having another brainwave about having a garage sale or combining efforts with my mom in a couple weeks and bringing things up to Olympia to sell in her sale.  She has a better garage.  But, I would pay in time and gas traveling up to Oly, and I'd have to hold onto the things for longer.  Those Freakonomics guys should do a study on all the reasoning I am putting into where and when I disperse my possessions.

Eeeeek!!

I'm so thrilled, you can really see the floor in my new photos!  And those piles of boxes?  Disappearing as we speak, because I'm finally using them up.  I still have a conundrum about getting rid of some furniture, as well as a number of lamps that I don't yet have a use for.  They're kind of heirlooms though, I don't want to say goodbye yet.

So far my blog experiment has been an unqualified success.  I'm really following through on the cleanup downstairs and up, and seeing a big change.  There's a long way to go yet but I'm not down about it anymore. I have a different perspective on the manageability of my stuff and the process.

Having this blog to get people to witness this project has got me thinking about other ways I could use blogging to change some of the things I do, or to accomplish goals that I want to achieve.  I don't need an audience for every single thing, but having one in this case really worked.

Here's another view:

Now you can pay attention to the art on the walls instead of the forest of clutter that was there!  I know it's not perfect, but baby steps and all.

I've been reading a book called 9 Highland Road, by Michael Winerip.  My therapist recommended it to me, because I'm interested in reading about mental illnesses.  It's about a group living home for mentally ill folks who are trying to acclimate to life outside psychiatric hospitals.  The actual house is located in a small town on Long Island.  It's about some of the individuals that lived there, as well as their counselors and their experiences getting along in the community.  There's nothing like reading this to let me know that my problems are small.

Another Beer Please

I finally caved and rented Game of Thrones from Movie Madness last night.  I have it on hold at the library but I'm about #350 of 500 holds, and that's for season one.  Everything people have been telling me about it has turned out to be absolutely true: massive amounts of female toplessness, sex and violence, plenty of gore.  And that's just in the first 15 minutes of episode one!  Peter Dinklage is great as ever.  I'm not sure why there isn't more male nudity.  If HBO has a nudity quota, there should be yin and yang.  Behinds almost don't count anymore, after everything we've had to view on NYPD Blue on network TV years ago.

I was away for a while over the weekend but I made up for it last night by assembling the wooden shelves I had repaired.  I put them in the laundry room.  I've already got a call in to Salvation Army to get some furniture I don't want.  I can't understand why you need to schedule pickups a couple weeks ahead, but it gives me time to add to the giveaway quantity.  I also can't understand why a simple do-it-yourself pine shelving set is so hard to get to fit together correctly.  I KNOW it's not because I hit it with my car, because I've had this problem before with another, identical shelf.

Things are looking pretty good in the basement, it's almost time for another update photo.  I've extended  my efforts to include the laundry room.  I had a bittersweet moment last night when moving a shelf and sweeping; I found some of Dylan's underwear and socks that had fallen behind the dryer long ago.  I washed them today, and put them in a collection of special things of his I'm keeping.

It's ok, I'm authorized

I forgot that I did this organizing/moving/space planning thing for a living at one time.  It's been a long time since I had a long term, full time job.  For a lot of reasons, things that happened less than two years ago seem more like a decade in the past.  Back in 2006, I worked for a company that contracted with Intel to move their office spaces and set up new ones.  I'd have to get these big groups of people to pack up their cubicles and I'd get a moving crew to take all their stuff to another place in their building.  Sometimes they'd move to a whole other building or campus.  That seems like a big job.  Then why does my house seem like such a big deal?  Wait, wait, I already know the answer to this. 

A year and a half ago I also worked for a company that also built offices, but furniture and fixtures from scratch.  I have to remind myself that I'm a pro!

I picked up a lot of crap from my bedroom floor this morning, it's been terrible for a long time.  I'm a DJ so I keep my CD library in there, and week after week I had been putting off shelving the CDs in order.  So, I did it today.  This whole straightening business is showing me what a perfectionist I am.  I was concentrating so hard on it that I missed a big stack of random papers that were sitting on the floor and spilling in a heap off a shelf. 

I did a lot of cleanup this evening tonite in the basement after visiting with some friends.  Sometimes I get started and without meaning to I just keep going and going until I don't see anything else I can take care of in that space of time.  In this picture that I just took, you can compare a section of my work with just the previous blog entry:

I figured out something else about myself that kind of bothers me on a couple levels: I want my containers to match.  Remember the one that had a purple lid?  I had to take that off the shelf and replace it.  I don't know what I'll do with it yet.  Uniformity of some things can help make a messy sight look a little better.  It seems like a form of snobbery to need that but if it makes me feel a little better then I'm just going to go with it.

I've been doing pretty well, as far as managing my depression.  I'm just putting as much as I can into my day to keep busy and checking things off my list.  Many years ago I found that even anticipating those feelings, or considering them in any way, made me anxious.  I didn't know how to deal with them, but after some therapy and trying different things I can head off the worst of it before it happens.  Most of the time.  I also have great friends that help me all the time, I have the best friends ever.

Limits of Control

I took a picture of some storage shelves downstairs because they need work, obviously, but it brought to mind some comments I wanted to make about my and other people's cleanup habits.  I noticed that some people buy a lot of containers so they can just stack everything they have.  I'm trying to get to the point where I need fewer containers.  I already have a lot of my buying under control.  There used to be a time when my favorite place to look in a thrift store was the shelves where all the little ceramic figurines sit.  I wanted to have loads for my curio shelves on the wall, and pretty soon I had to put them in those storage containers you see above.  I still have a lot but I try to get a couple a year instead of a handful every few days!

Not much progress has been made since my last entry.  I forgot that when you move the big things, like furniture, you have to find new places to stack the little things.  So now I have that little problem.  Not a terrible thing, but I think I know a way to take care of it for the time being.  I'm going to have to make use of some of those cardboard boxes I showed you before. 

I feel like I shouldn't even be writing here today.  My thoughts have been with my friends on the east coast all day.  I just wanted to make myself do something just a little bit constructive that I have some control over.

 

Free Will vs. SAD

Thanks everybody who has been reading my silly blog, I really appreciate it.  Thanks also to my new followers.  I hope I'll have more soon, but then I forget to be an official follower of my friends' blogs so I don't really deserve it.

As much as I am loathe to I decided to dive into cataloging all the books I'm donating, I made a nice spreadsheet and it's going faster than I thought it would.  I've got to take pictures of all of them too, can you believe it?  I hope the tax man doesn't want photos someday of all the crap I gave to Goodwill this year, because I sure have a lot of receipts for it.  I am asserting my willpower over my urge to put off the book stuff, because after getting back from California last week I became acutely aware that my good spirits wouldn't last while I am procrastinating.  We've had driving rain for days, whereas when I left for the Bay Area and during my trip there'd been nothing but sunshine.  I'm trying to head off any feelings of depression this season.  I have some problems every winter, but this year I'm going to be aware of them before they happen and use some focus to work through them.  I really want to get my living room ready again to have friends over and it's hardly in that state now.

Here is a piece from a really good DVD zine from some creative folks in Canada, it's called the Winking Circle.  I found it at random at the library!

Watching stuff like this makes me feel a lot better about the world. 

In other news, two of my friends had to follow me down into the basement today so we could get to my garage & drive away.  They could see for themselves that I've been working hard!