Posts Tagged ‘organizing’
Clutter Rearranging
With the weather finally making a turn for the better, yesterday Cyndie spoke about possibly cleaning up in the garage to find gardening tools. The May labyrinth Peace Walk is only two weeks away, and she wants to trim back the winter-kill on the plants before the big day.
I spent the morning rearranging the gigantic winter manure pile in the paddock, while she brushed the shedding horses as they munched hay. They are definitely ready to be done with their winter coats.
I hope that means they know the cold temperatures are done for the season.
After lunch, we started poking around in the garage. One thing led to another and pretty soon we found ourselves into a full-fledged spring cleaning effort. The kind that uncovers boxes of things that haven’t been touched since we moved in.
I finally got around to sweeping sawdust off the yard tools stand which had been there since 2014 when we had carpenters build the storage room in our basement. That’s four years of not bothering, for those keeping score.
They did the majority of sawing in the garage, and everything got covered in dust, but that tool stand was right in the line of fire and was buried. With all the rakes, shovels, pruners, loppers, and brushes hanging on the portable stand, the sawdust was deemed harmless and not worth the time.
My Achilles heel of order happens to be flat surfaces. After much of the garage clutter had been pulled out and sorted, Cyndie took advantage of our momentum and went after the workbench in the back corner that is a catch-all to a monumental degree.
Old fluorescent light bulbs, some associated fixtures, screws and brackets left over from purchased assemblies, a broken staple gun, boxes, bags, gloves, old shoes, metal rulers I didn’t know I had, an electronic work light I don’t remember.
It’s great to dig into all of this stuff, but the questions that lead to things landing on that flat surface in the first place still remain. Do we throw away or keep? If we keep, where to put it that will be of any value to us in the future? If we throw, how to dispose of the electronic or hazardous items than can’t go in our weekly trash bin?
Unfortunately, way too much of the stuff that we cleaned out of the garage yesterday made its way down to the shop, where the flat surfaces are now doubly cluttered.
The house garage now looks pretty nice, but it wasn’t really a great clutter busting effort in the end.
It was clutter rearranging.
But it’s a start.
We need to go prune some plants in the labyrinth. The shop clean up will be a project for another day, hopefully sooner than in four years.
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Dust Busting
It’s funny how much clutter we tolerate, until we can’t. Or we don’t have to. Sometimes the tolerating is born of a necessary survival mechanism of prioritizing.
When Cyndie was working her previous day-job, her efforts often overflowed the office hours and consumed vast amounts of her time in the evenings and on weekends. Putting energy toward areas of personal interest became a luxury that she rarely had time to indulge. She has been home now for less than a month and in that time has begun to shake the dust off a surprising number of things and places.
The dustiest of them all is, without a doubt, our barn, with its sand floor and the lime screenings surface under the overhang, toward the paddocks. Daily, the horses kick up dry clouds of dust that waft into the barn, covering absolutely everything. Keeping surfaces clean is a losing battle in the barn, so I rarely bother trying.
Last Sunday, late in the afternoon, when I was winding down toward gathering my thoughts of returning to work the next day, Cyndie began moving things out of the barn. We definitely operate on different schedules of inspiration. The hose came out and the barn received a serious makeover for the next few days. 
All that remains outside the roof now appears to be objects she left as a hint to me that she’d rather we find a different place to store.
Last night, about the time I was considering turning in for the night, Cyndie began moving things out of the over-packed storage room in the basement. Dust and clutter are no longer safe around here. Cyndie is home!
It has been a rude awakening to me of how much I was comfortable tolerating during the time I was home full-time. I had no problem overlooking clutter in some locations while I focused on projects in other areas of my interest.
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Relative Something 