Friday Report

[adair]

Well, I have not really gotten rid of much; took a few books to B2P but I can't see the difference. I did continue surface clearing - one side of the kitchen table where my laptop sits, and the table inside the door where I dump mail and things I brought in the house. Those are in decent order, and I finished some household business which had been hanging fire. I am still working on my desk - that will take time. There is a file basket full of stuff that need decisions made and a fancy folder my bank gave me that I am trying to use for various kinds of financial information, but have not really kept it up. Then there are all the ereaders and tablets that I use from time to time, but most need some data clean-up. I will continue to work, but at least all the requests for political donations have gone to shred, and I can stack the ereaders in one place.

One achievement; I started sorting all the electronic chargers and cords. Some were in the desk file drawer, some in the side table by the desktop computer and all were tangled. Most are now each in its own ziplock bag with a bit of paper telling me what it is for. They are currently in a big plastic magazine file box. I am not done with all this organization, but it is already paying off in less annoyance.

sauscony gave me a wonderful idea for dealing with one of my book problems. I bring home books from B2P that I intend to see if I want to read them and return them. Of course they get lost in the mass of other books stacked about, so they just add to the stack. sauscony wrote that she kept a few bags of books she wanted to skim so she can take a couple with her, or pull one out when she has the time to read a little. This is a Great Idea for me, one I had never thought of, and will help me manage my book mass and get a few more on their way out the door. I have a good cloth bag designated and am starting to put books in it as I come across those I brought home to check out but not to keep.

Comments

[yukonsally]

I cleaned up the kids' art stuff into a shelf, where everyone can see what's there and they can put things away. I sold a table.

The cord organization sounds great! So many cords look alike, but it's never the one needed at the moment.

[tanaqui]

Good work on organising the art stuff so it works better for everyone (including now having an "here's where we put it away" place)! And hooray for selling a table!

[adair]

Good going. Having a designated space has to help with kids managing stuff. Builds good habits.

Yes, cord organization is well worth the time. I have some cords that I am not sure what they go to, but the seem to be USB A with Mimi usb a on the other end. I looked up pictures on line. Those are fairly standard. I can group them all together so when I need one I will have a choice.

[tanaqui]

Yay for finding some more books, even if there's not any visible progress, for moving forward with the surfaces, and for getting the benefit of the hard work organising the cords. Also, that sounds like a neat suggestion from sauscony for the to-be-checked-out books. :-)

I finished reading another book from my non-fiction reading pile (but I'm going to keep it, as it has useful reference material), found 5 other books to donate, upcycled an old t-shirt into a tote bag, cleaned up and put away some garden pots where the contents have been planted out, and carried on beating the weeds and shrubs into submission. Which didn't feel like much while I was doing a bit of work every day, but is very satisfying to look back on.

[sauscony]

:) I'm glad to help. It was actually due to my spouse's decluttering that I came up with the bag solution for the books. His dad had given him a bunch of cloth bags and my spouse gathered them all up and put them in the closet. I already had one bag with books I had set aside to put in the Little Free Library (I couldn't always add books to the library because it was full, so I set them aside at home). Then this wave of I must get rid of some books hit and yay, I have bags to put them in. Maybe because I've been reading for 40 years, I can now tell within the first few pages whether I'm going to like or dislike most books, so the job is going much faster than it used to.

BTW, I've gotten rid of nearly 100 books so far this year, and it hasn't really made much of a dent either.